I think this subject is fascinating. Personally I don’t understand this aloof Superman watching over earth. I never get the point of the nerdy Clark Kent, why the secret identity?
Now I liked Dean Cain’s Superman because he is portrayed as an ordinary guy gifted with godlike powers. He is more concerned about fitting in then relishing in the things he could do.
Superman is created because his conscience forces him to help people when it’s so easily within his powers. But he don’t really want the adoration that reminds him that he is different. He don’t want people to be scared about him either so he get a funny suit and smiles a lot.
Like most humans he wants what he can’t have in his case an ordinary life. The ordinary life is also important because it stops him going crazy. If you could do anything with impunity it’s pretty likely that you would cease to care and simply indulge in it. And that is Superman’s greatest fear and that’s way he fights so hard to be Clark Kent. Because really he is neither. His work, His adopted family, his friends and his love for Lois sustain the illusion that he has restraints.
Now many people don’t like Dean’s Superman because he lack the the alooness, the lonely majesty, the quiet confidence in his powers that surrounds the superman of the movies. I don't get the appeal except possibly nostalgia.
L&C was the first on screen adoption of Byrnes post-crisis version of Superman
With Clark as the real person and Superman as the disguise. As I understand it they made this change to make him more interesting, suggesting that the Robocop superman wasn’t what people wanted. Presently in the comics he is a happily married family man right? Yet Hollywood seem to think that the pre-crisis Superman is what sell tickets. I suppose the continuity from the earlier movies work with that, but I still think they get further by making him more human.
