Originally Posted by
Ascended
I think you're both right, actually.
How many films have we seen with a threat between "city-wide" and "global" in the last twenty years? How many evil scientist businessmen have threatened to rip our way of life out from under us all, how many potentially extinction-level events?
I think you could take Superman either over that and put him in some serious universe/multiverse level stories (and Marvel is getting into that kind of stuff so you better jump right for the Source Wall and go full-on crazy), or bring him way down to the Golden Age street level. Both are spaces we don't see nearly as often in super-cinema. Both are places where Superman has been successful before, and with the right story could be successful now. Both have pretty amazing stories to draw inspiration from. I mean, for real, just do a live-action version of Superman & The Mechanical Monsters, maybe throw Ultra-Humanite in as the Big Bad, and you've got a hit on your hands for virtually no budget at all. And a weird high concept "big" story like All-Star? Who doesn't want to see Superman fight a evil sun? You ever see an Avenger fight the sun and punch it in the face?
But honestly? I don't think the trick is doing something unique and new. I think the trick is doing it well. Seriously, how many differences are there between Iron Man 1 and Ant-Man 1? Evil, bald corporate scientist who steals the hero's tech and makes a scarier version of it. Wise-cracking lead character and a female "guy in the chair" with romantic chemistry. The list goes on. Yet Ant-Man, and all the other films that have followed the MCU formula (and not all do of course) don't seem to have suffered much for their lack of real originality. Make a good, quality Superman movie, and people will see it.
But if you really need Clark to do something no one else is, he already has. He's far more powerful than anyone else leading a movie. It took six Avengers and a whole army of aliens to wreck one of New York's neighborhoods. But Clark and Zod tore Metropolis up just as much, all by themselves. We've seen bigger strength feats from MoS Superman than we've gotten from anyone at Marvel except, arguably, Captain Marvel.
If that's not enough, well, in the source material Clark's got an alien fortress full of toys from across time and space, a dimensional prison, a super powered dog.....and if you need original visuals, he's got a dozen powers he can use in conjunction in ways that we have never seen on film. You want original? Just script a scene where Clark actually fights to his potential, using everything he's got access to all at once, instead of trying them one at a time. You do that right, and Clark's going to look like a reality warper more than he's gonna look like Thor.