Originally Posted by
Adekis
We definitely can be selective, haha! But I don't begrudge anyone their pop culture nostalgia.
Superman II is interesting because a lot of fans like it a lot more than me. I can complain about Superman the Movie occasionally but it's ultimately all nitpicking done for my own entertainment. Superman II on the other hand first just makes a bunch of choices I don't really think work, and one of which is actually painful. It's not all down to Donner vs. Lester either. I respect what they were trying to do with Superman giving up his powers and all that, but ultimately the fact that he has no idea how to act when he's Clark without powers just bugs me. It's really a phenomenal piece of acting from Reeve, but it also makes it look like without his powers, Clark has literally no idea what he's doing, he's utterly reliant on them. To someone whose idea of a great Superman-with-no-powers story is Hereafter from JLU, Superman II just makes Superman look bad. I don't really care that he goes back to beat up the trucker or whatever, I've seen people argue that it's out of character for Superman to go back for petty revenge, but I never really cared about that, I just cared that he couldn't handle a nobody trucker in the first place. Some of the other, lesser issues include the abandon with which powers Kryptonians don't have in the comics show up, the question of how Clark got back to the Fortress without dying, and a general disregard for Hackman's Columbo-Lex, but ultimately those are lesser concerns compared to the issue of how he acts without powers. Even that, I might be able to look past though. After all, I regard it as a failed experiment, not something awful.
The really big problem with Superman II is the mind-wipe though. Again, I see what they're going for - Superman sacrifices his own happiness in order to protect the world without causing Lois undue pain and stress. It does not help in the slightest. He violates her sanctity of mind without so much as asking for her permission - which obviously she never would have given. It's a truly monstrous, heinous act and it cannot be excused. Superman II has a lot to like )"General, would you care to step outside?"), but that thing in particular stops me from having a good opinion of it as a whole.
(Ironically, I'm quite fond of the much less popular Superman III; I think the Lana Lang plot is far and away the best single thing in the Reeve movies, and the fact that Asshole Superman has to fight Regular Clark did a lot to cement the now-popular idea of Clark as Superman's heart, which despite being overblown these days is generally a really good concept. For those elements, I'll sit through Richard Pryor spectacularly failing to live up to his comedy skills.)
Batman v. Superman is the opposite of Superman II for me - a widely hated movie that I really like. Clark's dedication to the vulnerable and marginalized shines through better in that movie than any other (except maybe "Superman and the Mole Men") and because of frustration with systemic apathy to their plight, and fear of unintentionally harming them himself, he feels unsure of himself. I'm generally not a big fan of "Superman quits due to feelings" plots, but I think BvS does a really good job coming up with a complex nexus of believable problems that would make Clark wonder whether he ought to stop, in contrast to comics where it's usually something like "people are treating me like Spider-Man and for some reason I just can't handle it," even in otherwise stellar comics like Birthright or Superman and the Men of Steel. The only real problems with Superman's arc in BvS are that he spends most of it out of his costume, and that Snyder didn't take his time to remind the audience that Clark's not brooding and concerned as a person. I feel quite the same way with Brutal, Murderous-Intent Batman. He's not supposed to be like that all the time, and by the last fight scene, both Bruce and Clark had moved past their respective issues. So Snyder messed up by expecting the audience to be more familiar with the characters and the way he's playing with them than they really were - it's a mistake, but not a damning one.
Also, Lois totally solves the whole mystery by being the greatest ever, so yeah, awesome.