Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Superman Related Superman Returns vs. Man of Steel

Is this even a fair match up?

It seems to me Man of Steel should win hands down. I am shocked I have seen people say they prefer Superman Returns.

While I get that some people do not like Superman killing in Man of Steel, most will admit that it was really his only choice, and they object to him being backed into a corner, not to him actually doing it in the setting where he did.

In SR we get Superman as a dead-beat dad, which was one thing in "Chip off the Old Clark" where it was a false accusation, but is another where he really is the father who abandoned his son.

Realistically, if SM cares about his son's emotional well being at all, he would not try to rekindle a relationship with Lois, and realize it is best to leave the son with the one father he has ever known.

The other big problem is that Clark lacks a sufficiently compelling reason to go to Krypton. This gets even worse if this is a sequel to Superman 2. There we have a major problem because there is no Superman for a few days. He says he won't leave again and then leaves for 5 years. How does that make any sense?

I have to admit I loved Man of Steel, but will admit it could be better. Still, it certainly beats Superman returns in my view. OK, I will take Lois knowing any day, but if it is Lois does not even know the full identity of the father of her child.

I think I would rate Man of Steel as the best Superman movie ever, and I am tempted to rate Superman Returns as the worst, but on the bottom of the scale, I have to say that Superman IV is very cringe-worthy, and Superman 3 almost writing Lois out of the script is very problematic too.

I found this link [http://www.debbieschlussel.com/2120/superman-returns-update-previous-supe-attacks-new-supe/] where Dean Cain specifically attacks Lois Lane endangering her child in Superman Returns.

I have to say he has a point. Lois being reckless is one thing. Lois being a reckless mother is another.

I believe comparing Superman Returns to Man of Steel is a bit like comparing tomatoes to apples.

I hated Superman Returns, but I still have to say it was better than that Richard Pryor movie in which Superman had a bit part. The only redeemable thing about Superman III was the Clark and Lana scenes. Actually, Spider-man III reminded me a lot of Superman III. The heroes turn bad and the villain is slightly redeemable and I wouldn't want to suffer through either of them again.

Superman:The Movie and Superman II were good films until the end of II. The beginning of S:TM is very long for today's audiences, but put into the context that in the mid-70's with the emergence of new special effects this isn't too surprising. I find the MoS Krypton scenes more entertaining and less "look at these amazing sets I built". Both S:TM and MoS spend too much time with the Jor-El guidance scenes. I'm paying my money to see a Superman film, not a Jor-El film. I believe the movies spend too much time and effort trying to convince audience members that no matter how hard we try to be our own person, we're still the product of our genetics and upbringing. This isn't necessarily a theme I like.

I will still say that I liked S:TM better than MoS, but I've never been a big fan of Zod (or Nor) and prefer SM battling the villains of Earth than from other worlds. If I were to compare Superman II with MoS.... hmmmm. I'm not sure which would come up on top. I never understood the logic that Clark had to give up being Superman to have a relationship with Lois, but I liked in SII that Superman took Zod, et al, out of Metropolis and worked harder at trying to save human lives. Then again, Zod et al, didn't have big World Killer machine as they did in Mos. I liked Luthor trying to make a deal with Zod in Superman II, but I liked that humans (and Lois) weren't just helpless victims in MoS. I'm going to have to think about this more.

I keep trying to remember Superman 4 and the more I do, the more I'm convinced I never saw it after how incredibly horrible SM3 was.

I've seen most of SMIV, and it was horrible. It was way too in-your-face with Superman getting involved in political issues, Superman uses the memory wipe kiss on Lois again, and we get the idea he has done so repeatedly, and we have the scene where Lois and another women are on a double date with Superman and Clark Kent. I guess it is funny, but in a really stupid sort of way.

Although, to be fair, one of the most annoying things about Superman Returns, Lois being a single-mother who does not know the paternity of her child is a direct result of Superman II. Well, sort of, her having a 5-year-old child and not having actually married the guy she treats as the child's father is I think what caused some of the outrage at it, but the reason for that is they wanted to leave open an option for Superman and Lois to rekindle their romance, but make it seem nearly impossible.

I still blame Superman for that whole problem, and it is why I never can really tolerate the film at all. I don't really blame Lois. It is Superman who creates a child and then abandons it, leaving Lois to be a single parent.

Technically, Lois and Richard, I believe, didn't start dating until after she had Jason, so I don't think she ever considered that Richard was Jason's true father. Lois wasn't the type to sleep around, so to find herself impregnated soon after Superman left Earth made her wonder if it was possible *he* was the father. Her belief that Superman is Jason's father and may return someday, was why she never finalized her engagement of Richard into a marriage. It was why she became a Superman-basher after Superman left, because she was so angry at him for doing that to her. Yes, she was trying to move on with her life with Richard, and did end up using Richard to some extent, but a part of her hadn't given up hope for Superman's return.

It was wrong for Clark to leave on that journey without saying good-bye to Lois, but he *didn't* know that she was pregnant, so to blame him for abandoning Jason and being a deadbeat dad really isn't fair. As soon as he discovers that Jason is his son, he tells Lois that he wants to be part of his son's life and not be the absent father.

I guess my view is that he should have considered that Lois might be pregnant. Also, I guess I think he lacks any compelling reason to leave.

It is overall just a horrible setup.

Did Jor-El / Lara (I can't remember who he talks to in SM-II) tell him that he would be "human" or just "essentially human without any powers" once he went through the process he goes through before he sleeps with Lois in the Fortress? If not, then he could still be under the mistaken belief that because they are from two different planets such a birth would be impossible (Of course, the mini-series "V: The Visitors" proved that it is was. ). It's been of my observation that most stereotypical men in the 1970s didn't take pregnancy into account / their thought process during or after sex unless hit over the head with the reality of what, biologically, sex leads to... i.e. children. (SM:TM and SM-II were essentially 1970s movies, despite SM-II being released in 1980. They were both written and filmed in the 70s, which was during the height of the pre-AIDS and free-sex-for-all era.) Yes, I know, Superman is supposed to be better than that, but he did have not only a one-night-stand of premarital sex with Lois, he erased her mind of the knowledge afterwards. So, the ideal man he clearly isn't.

That's a given. My explanation was given under the guise that SM had a compelling reason to make his stupid trip.

Which is why I have to say I like MoS more than SMII. He does have flaws in MoS, but nothing as bad as a 1 night stand/erasing the memory of it afterward.

It also leads to my other view. Many of the things people complain the most about in Superman Returns are not really problems with that film per se, it is that they follow too closely on Superman II.

I guess this is why I like L&C Clark. He is a very patient man. Thinking about that, really Lois should not be so shocked when he tells her. Why do I say that? Because during "Chip off the Old Clark", he says something about "Really there has only ever been one women in my life, and she is wearing a ring". I guess that actually does not necessarily prove he is a virgin, but I am not sure he could really be fully truthful in saying that if he had ever had sex with anyone but Lois to that point, so since she knows they have not had sex, she should not be too surprised. I guess it is possible Lois did not quite take that line at face value, but her later reaction is more like she forgot she ever heard that line at all.

I just had to laugh at this line.

Although the critics seem to have liked "Superman Returns" more than "Man of Steel", but the general audience seems to have gone the other way, although maybe not by a noticeable amount. Although to some extent people will go see Superman movies no matter how bad they are.

I have read responses to people ripping on "Superman Returns" where they basically say "the whole Lois Lane/Superman set up sounds horrible, but they can't possible have it for more than the start, so I still will go see the show even though I hate this."

The problem is that they never resolve it. They did apparently plan to make a sequel, and signed deals with Singer to do so, but it never panned out.

I wonder if "Superman Returns" suffered because it tried too hard to be a continuation of Superman:The Movie and Superman II, without really updating at all. Continuing the existing franchise might make sense with some movies, but when you have something like Superman, where you have lots of TV series and the comic books going as well, treating the previous movies as the only basis to build on seems extreme.

I guess this especially sticks out because "Superman Returns" continued the Clark as a disguise line that had been scapped in the comics and clearly was reversed in "Lois and Clark".

Of course Man of Steel takes us to the other extreme, Clark has other disguises (Joe, for example, I think that was his name at the bar as well as on Elsemere Island), but we only get a glimpse of Clark Kent, reporter at the end.

I was reading an set of explanations of "Superman Returns" and they said this:

"In "Superman: The Movie" Jor-El's voiceover during Kal-El's original trip to Earth mentioned that the trip takes 3 years. In the Fortress of Solitude, Jor-El says, "By this reckoning, I would have been dead for many thousands of your years". This is because of Albert Einstien's Theory of Relativity, which, in part and abbreviated, states that when one travels close to the speed of light, time speeds up for everyone else not traveling at the same speed or traveling at a slower speed. It's possible to assume that when Krypton's Sun exploded, it scattered the remains of Krypton outwards. Parts of Krypton would be closer to Earth after many thousands of years, therefore, the trip to certain remains of Krypton would only take 2-1/2 years, instead of 3. Thus the round trip would only be 5 years."

So wait, if I am reading that right, Kal-el aged 3 years on his trip to earth, but it took thousands of years. Wouldn't that mean that while he is gone for him 5 years, the earth should have aged at least 100. If Clark is really lucky/unfortunate, he should find Lois in a nursing home about to die.

So shouldn't "Superman Returns" have Clark trying to romance say Lois's 4th-great-grandaughter. Although if that is her descendant through Richard, wouldn't that by creepy.

This provides another opportunity for me to recommend one of my favorite fanfics, Family Reunion by Mr. Beeto.

It starts out by positing that Superman has to go to Krypton to save his cousin, Kara, who barely escaped Krypton's destruction. Kara is in suspended animation. Superman has to get their before her power runs out and she dies - so no time to linger around on Earth. This is a much more believable reason for him to jet off to Krypton on a moment's notice.

Mr. Beeto also gives a great reason for Jason's conception, and the Phantom Zone, and a whole lot of other things. Frankly, he should have written the movie. He eliminates a lot of the logical inconsistencies and "WTF?" moments of SR.

Plus, in his fic, there's a happy ending!

Highly recommended - don't miss this one.

Honestly, the fact that Superman killed Zod in Man of Steel didn't bother me, because the movie made it crystal clear that killing Zod was Superman's only choice. What did bother me was the complete decimation of Smallville's downtown, and a large section of Metropolis and, likely, the accompanying deaths of thousands as all the buildings collapsed. Granted, Superman was barely holding his own for a while, but if they'd shown him taking even a few steps to avoid the mass casualties (and perhaps not throwing Zod into buildings, but trying to pull him away from the city center), I would have been happier. Even worse, they showed Superman come down to the ground in the center of a field of ruin to kiss Lois Lane and crack jokes about their relationship. Really? Did he even care that thousands of people had probably just died?

All of this would have been rectified with just a few bits here and there with him actually attempting to control the damage. Even if he'd failed, at least they would have shown him trying. In Superman II, Superman's entire fight with Zod revolved around Superman preventing casualties and expressing remorse for the people, and I find that more fitting for his established morals/character than the thoughtless bam smash pow of Man of Steel.

I'm not sure it's fair to call Superman a dead-beat dad, when it looked like from the context of SR, even Lois wasn't certain who the father was until Jason threw that piano. The fact that Lois told Superman he was Jason's father at the end of the film smacks to me of him simply not knowing. He may even have considered that yes, sex can lead to children, but with Lois's amnesia, I'm not sure it's likely she would have figured out she was pregnant that quickly, let alone felt it was any of Clark's (or Superman's) business.

This of course brings up the issue of Lois's amnesia, which was rather heinous, but that is the fault of Superman II. Superman Returns was left with a mess to clean up.

Very true. It doesn't make any sense at all. To me, both movies had systemic problems of different kinds, and both were enjoyable for different reasons.

I actually find myself favoring SR over Man of Steel despite its inconsistencies. The Zod fight in Man of Steel left too bad a taste in my mouth.

I like elements from most of the movies. If Superman: The Movie hadn't made Lex so cornball, I probably would vote that my favorite. As it is, I'm not sure I can really pick, beyond saying Superman III and IV were by far the worst, and Man of Steel had too many issues to be the best.

I read that one, and I was still at Superman for running off without telling Lois, his "you were boarding a plane" seemed very weak, but I have to admit he did have a sufficiently compelling reason to leave, and as long as we assume he thought the results of time-reversal were total, and only later learned that it did not fully remove the results of the event, then it is a reasonable action, I guess if it overcomes major levels of death.

Mr. Beeto, in my opinion, explains things with a more reasonable and realistic set of reasons as to why CK/SM run off. Clark is too wimpy to say goodbye to Lois as Clark. Then when he's Superman, Lois has taken an airplane to get on a story, and if he wants to say goodbye to her as Superman, he would have to pull her off an airplane in front of everyone.

In S-II, Lex Luthor used Lois as bait to get Superman in target range of Zod et al. This makes it obvious to Superman that the villains see that Lois is someone they can use as a hostage or blackmail, to get to him.

A major plot point in "Family Reunion" is that Superman doesn't want Lois publicly associated with him anymore. In fact, Superman goes so far as to say that he won't speak with Lois anymore and requests that the Daily Planet set up a revolving pool of reporters to deal with him. (Of course, this is after Lois knows that CK=SM, so she understands Clark's reasoning here.)

So... Clark is going off on a five-year mission to Krypton. If he, as Superman, pulls Lois out of a plane just to say goodbye, then everyone will know she's special to him. And he won't be there to protect her - after all, he's off in space, headed toward the remnants of Krypton.

Total agreement here.

I still think Christopher Reeve did the best job of capturing the "aw-shucks" and "wow, it's great to fly" bits of Clark and Superman. There are a couple of scenes I just love from "S:TM":

1) At the end of the movie, where Superman is flying and you see Earth in the background, and Reeve just smiles . Yeah, the green-screen effect is obvious, but the thrilling John Williams score and Reeve's acting make it great.

2) Right after SM has taken Lois flying, and Clark comes to her apartment to pick her up for his date. Lois is puttering around in her bedroom, and for a minute Clark looks in the mirror, takes off the glasses, and stands up straight. Suddenly you could actually believe that everyone at the Daily Planet would be fooled by a pair of glasses.

This is my favorite part of Christopher Reeves' portrayal of Superman - he makes it believable that no-one realizes who Clark is. Clark doesn't necessarily have to be as bumbling as he portrays him, but there's a significant difference between the voices, the stances, the way he carries himself, and the way he talks in the two personas.

It's been a while since I've seen Superman Returns, so I don't remember how Clark's presence comes across. In Man of Steel, Clark is just always Clark. He hasn't come up with separate personas yet, which I think is a problem.

I see Clark as needing to have two personas long before he actually becomes Superman. He has his real self, which he lets out when he's at the farm around his parents or by himself. Then he has meek, nerdy, glasses-wearing Clark that he puts on when he's at school and around other people. He does this to make people not notice that he's invulnerable, untiring, and super athletic. He pretends to get winded during PE. He fakes a cold now and then to avoid having perfect attendance. He's occasionally clumsy. He tries to appear physically ordinary. Then, when he gets home he can be perfectly graceful and at ease. His public Clark persona needs to be in place before he becomes Superman, or else it won't work as a disguise. Argue all you want that "he's really Clark disguised as Superman, not the other way around," but he can never really be himself in public. Both Clark and Superman need to be masks to some extent.

As to which movie I like better, I'm not sure. There are plenty of things I like about both SR and MoS, and plenty of things that I don't like about both. SR felt much more like a Superman movie to me. I can't stand the premise, though. Superman leaves Earth for 5 years, comes back, and finds that Lois is raising his son with her fiance? Who came up with that?

When I saw SR, I didn't like the muted color pallet. After having seen MoS, SR seems vibrant by comparison. It's a superhero movie. It's supposed to be bright and colorful. (There are exceptions, of course, like Batman, but come on. It's Superman. He's the king of primary colors.)

This. I was ready to get up and walk out of the theater during MoS. The Young Clark stuff -- well, anything with Clark -- was great. The endless fighting and destruction totally turned me off. If I ever rent the movie in the future, I'm going to be using the fast-forward button a lot.

SR, on the other hand, I saw in the theater 3 times, then bought. I don't watch it that often, and I admit it has its flaws (the lonnng crystal-growing scenes, the suspect circumstances with him being gone for 5 years, which they failed to explain properly (but it DOES get better explained in the novelization) and a few other things.) But at least I didn't ever want to get up and leave the theater when seeing it.

So, maybe if I watch MoS again I'll feel differently, but as it stands now, SR > MoS.

I've been wondering whether the movie makers are getting lazy with their plots because of novelizations. Do they think, "it doesn't matter whether we explain it well in the movie because the novel explains it"? Do they leave out important details thinking that they're not really lost because they're still available in book form? I understand that a book has much more room available to flesh out characters and plot details than a movie does, but a movie needs to be complete on its own.

I think part of the problem is that plot-driven scenes seem to get cut for time in favor of action scenes. There's a cut scene in Revenge of the Sith, for example, that shows the formation of the Rebel Alliance. I'd rather have that in the movie and cut down the length of that weird lava lightsaber fight between Vader and Obi-Wan. Action is fun and all, but I like it to have some purpose as part of a plot that makes sense.