You might want to consider missing Superman Returns

After flying off into space to look at the rubble of his home planet for five years, Superman comes home to find his lady love has taken up with some other man. So, does he do the stand up thing- recognize his mistake, leave Lois to be happy, and move on? Nope. He starts using every trick in his stuffed shorts and all of his super powers to insert himself back into Lois's life at all costs, and thereby steal her back from her all-too-human paramour. Superman - what a dick!

Above all, Superman Returns is two things: long and boring. And the worst part of it all is that the story of Superman's love child is full of dramatic potential. Why in god's name are all the best bits of the story outside the scope of this movie?

For example: Does Supes know Lois is pregnant before he leaves? His x-ray vision ought to be enough to clue him in. Is her pregnancy the very reason he leaves? Did he leave because an apparently anorexic LL approached the dreaded triple digits? How is he going to feel letting his rival for Lois's love parent the baby he knows to be his?

Also, does Lois know she's pregnant? Is that why she takes up with another man right away after Superman flies the coop? Or does she really not know who the father is? At what point does she figure out who the father is? What's it like giving birth to a super-baby? Will she tell her boyfriend the truth? When? How? Will she try to keep things together with her man (also her boss's son) or leave him?

Thirdly, does Lois's new man know he isn't the father of the child? Does he know it's Superman's baby? Won't he figure this out eventually when "his" son starts flying around the house and setting things on fire with laser beams from his eyes? Will he willingly parent a child he knows isn't his? Will he try to cover for the kid when his super powers begin to manifest? How will he react when Superman sits him down for the, "Sorry I cuckolded you, but would you mind looking after my son while I'm stealing your lady?" conversation? What kind of concessions will he be able to wring from Superman for keeping the secret?

My first inclination upon thinking this movie over was that Superman is just a character that doesn't survive moral ambiguity that well. On further reflection, however, I think this is not a shortcoming of the character, but just of this particular movie. If you're going to try and introduce a 'gritty' element to Superman - losing his lady love, fathering and preemptively abandoning a child - you've got to follow through and deal with the fact that Superman isn't quite the all-American good guy we've been led to believe. A good place to start (and a huge improvement in this movie) would have been to give us some moments of uncertainty or angst on Superman's part. In Singer's version, the only quandary Superman seems to face is whether to (a). quit and leave Lex Luthor to win the day or (b). go back at great personal risk and save the world. Hmmm, I wonder which one he'll choose? On a related note: this movie was crying out for a reasonable, rather than cartoonish, super-villain as a foil for Superman. Lex Luthor was at least as bad as Poison Ivy/Bane/Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin. No kidding.

If you're going to make a movie 154 minutes long, you'd better use those minutes to show me something more exciting than a computer-generated Brandon Routh hanging out in the upper atmosphere in his undies. Drama! We need drama! I don't want to belabor the point, but it's worth reiterating: Superman Returns stinks.