I hate it when people call Superman Returns a disappointment. The movie made nearly $400 million worldwide, was not catastrophically bad, and did good by the legacy of Christopher Reeve and Superman himself. Just because it didn’t do Spider-Man style numbers, or the audience-grabbing parody of the Spider-Man sequels doesn’t mean it’s an unqualified disaster that should never be mentioned again. If Alien vs. Predator gets a sequel, so should this one.
That’s why I’m glad that director Bryan Singer won’t give up on his plan for a Superman Returns sequel, titled Man of Steel. IESB.net reports from ShoWest that Singer is “100% on the sequel,” and studio heads have confirmed it too. The writers from the first film, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, have said they won’t return for a sequel, which caused many to doubt whether the movie would ever get off the ground. IESB also suggests that Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzmann, the writers behind Transformers and the upcoming Star Trek might take over the duties. From one hit franchise to another—ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Singer recently got scooped by Gus Van Sant on his long-planned biopic about San Francisco politician Harvey Milk—Van Sant is hard at work on Milk, while Singer’s planned The Mayor of Castro Street will probably never be made. Man of Steel seems like a good way to get Singer up and moving again, especially since he’s done such a good job so far of combining actual human emotions with comic book wizardry. I don’t care if he doesn’t bring back Brandon Routh or Kate Bosworth or anyone else, but just give the guy a chance! He’s given us so much already, and regardless of what anyone says, he hasn’t disappointed us yet.
