James Gunn’s New Movie and All the Others Ranked

The plan was to make Superman I and II simultaneously, and for the most part, that’s exactly what happened. Gene Hackman, for instance, shot all his Lex Luthor scenes for both films back-to-back. But before production on the sequel could be completed, director Richard Donner ran into “creative differences” with father-and-son producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind and was replaced by Richard Lester, the auteur behind A Hard Day’s Night.

But whatever. The sequel — in which Reeve’s Man of Steel gives up his powers to settle down with Lois Lane, just as three escaped supervillains from Krypton arrive to conquer Earth — is almost as good as the original.

Part of what makes the film fly is Terence Stamp’s scene-stealing badassery as General Zod (“Kneel before Zod!”), but part is also Lester’s lighter touch. He’s the one who shot the Niagara Falls sequence, where Superman rescues a kid who falls over the railing (“Of course he’s Jewish!” someone shouts off-camera from the cheering crowd).

But Donner’s fingerprints are still all over the film, too — most notably in the full-on Kryptonian brawl in downtown Metropolis, which predates Man of Steel’s citywide mayhem by 30 years, but does it with a whole lot more grace and cinematic finesse.

There were a ton of false starts between Reeve’s final Superman film — 1987’s The Quest for Peace, which bombed at the box office (see below) — and the release of this low-key but poignant reboot. In the mid-1990s, Clerks director (and famous comic book geek) Kevin Smith tapped out multiple drafts of his never-produced Superman Lives, then Tim Burton signed on for a version that would’ve starred Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel (and, in a much more promising bit of casting, Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen). J.J. Abrams, McG, Brett Ratner — they were all at one point attached to a Superman movie.

In the end, though, it was X-Men auteur Bryan Singer who brought the character back to the screen, with another unknown — Reeve lookalike Brandon Routh — wearing the red cape, Kevin Spacey shaving his head to play Lex Luthor, and a touching storyline about lost love. Although it disappointed at the box office and drew only lukewarm reviews — “reverent, beautifully crafted and a little too sedate,” sniffed The New York Times — it had the one superpower that matters most in a Superman movie: soul.

Yes, it’s four hours long and soaked in operatic self-importance. And Superman is dead for the first half of the movie (and when he does come back — thanks to Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash — he’s wearing a black suit). Still, of all the Zack Snyder Superman movies, this one probably gets it the most right — or at least the least wrong. Zack Snyder’s Justice League softens the character a bit compared to the brooding gloom of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman; there are even moments when Henry Cavill’s Kal-El cracks something resembling a smile — not to mention a shirt-rip callback to the Christopher Reeve era.

The plot is a mess (something about an alien warlord uniting three world-ending cubes?), the CGI is distractingly awful, and the tone remains almost entirely joyless. Joss Whedon’s earlier version — he took over the 2017 theatrical release after Snyder suffered a family tragedy — adds more quips and color but is somehow even more incomprehensible.

This one’s a curio — just 58 minutes long, shot on a shoestring budget, and originally intended as a kind of proof-of-concept for a potential Adventures of Superman TV series. But there’s something kind of wonderful about it. Made at the height of the Red Scare, it plays like a blunt but heartfelt parable about paranoia, prejudice, and mob mentality. When a pair of wide-eyed, big-headed creatures emerge from deep underground (thanks to oil drillers boring too far into the Earth), the townspeople panic, grab their rifles, and prepare for a Mole Men lynching. But George Reeves’ Superman shows up to save the day, scolding the bigots and protecting the outsiders. “They’re not monsters,” he insists. “They’re just different.”

It’s corny, sure. And the Mole Men look like toddlers in bald caps. But it’s also pure. Idealistic. Uncomplicated. And in its own modest way, more faithful to what Superman is supposed to be than a lot of what came after… like, say, Man of Steel.

Zack Snyder’s first crack at Superman isn’t just a tonal misfire — it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the character. Instead of portraying Kal-El as the bright, benevolent savior he’s always been — a kind of sci-fi angel who swoops down from the heavens to save the innocent — Man of Steel gives us a brooding, joyless slab of existential ennui. Snyder clearly wants to do for Superman what The Dark Knight did for Batman, but in stripping away all the warmth, idealism, and moral clarity, he leaves behind a character who barely seems to like humanity, let alone has any incentive to fight for it.

Cavill looks the part, but he’s mostly asked to glower and sulk, while the movie drowns him in grim flashbacks, dead-dad lectures, and Jesus imagery so heavy-handed it borders on parody. The plot is essentially a reboot of the 1978 film — Kal-El crash-lands in Kansas, grows up confused, and must face off against a fellow Kryptonian, General Zod (a snarling Michael Shannon), who wants to terraform Earth into a new Krypton. The final act devolves into a city-obliterating CGI brawl that racks up more collateral damage than three Michael Bay movies combined — and ends with Superman doing the one thing he’s never done before in any major screen adaptation: snapping his enemy’s neck.

Sure, it’s glossy and expensive and takes itself very seriously. But it lacks the one thing a Superman movie should never be without: hope.

If Man of Steel misunderstood Superman, this sequel seems to actively resent him. Snyder doubles down on the grimdark here, pitting a sulky, superpowered alien against a rage-fueled billionaire in a metal batsuit, somehow making both equally unlikable. Cavill’s Superman is as brooding and disconnected as ever, while Ben Affleck’s Batman is paranoid, brutal, and seemingly just a few Bat-gadgets away from full-blown fascism. The plot is a Cuisinart of mythology-building and Justice League leftovers, with Jesse Eisenberg’s twitchy, millennial Lex Luthor pulling the strings for reasons that never entirely make sense. There’s also a resurrected cave troll named Doomsday, a forced Wonder Woman cameo, and another massive CGI deathmatch in a smoldering cityscape. There are moments — fleeting, glimmering moments — when the film hints at something mythic and operatic. But then Synder blows it all up. Literally.

Christopher Reeve is still game, but the story — a baffling mashup of slapstick and sci-fi — seems like it flew in from a totally different franchise. Richard Pryor is inexplicably cast as a wacky computer hacker and there’s a plot (of sorts) involving a synthetic kryptonite that turns Superman into a boozy, stubbly jerk, leading to an unintentionally hilarious junkyard brawl between “bad” Superman and “good” Clark Kent. The effects are cheap, the villain laughable (Robert Vaughn as a corrupt wannabe coffee mogul) and the magic of Reeve’s first two movies is nowhere in sight.

By the time this one limped into theaters, the series was out of ideas, out of budget, and — judging by the final cut — out of dignity. Superman IV was Reeve’s passion project, built around his desire to deliver an anti-nuclear message. But it’s buried under bargain-bin effects, stock footage, and one of the most unintentionally hilarious villains in comic book history: Nuclear Man, a mullet-sporting solar-powered baddie who looks like he wandered in from a heavy metal album cover (played by Mark Pillow, in his first and — unsurprisingly — last film role). The plot? Superman collects all the world’s nukes and throws them into space, battles his glowy nemesis on the moon, and tries to save both Lois Lane and the franchise. He pretty much fails on all counts.