The Rocketeer is a period piece short story character in the vein of a serial though. The film pretty much fit in everything Stevens put down and all these IDW sequels are squeezing the same lemon. By the time Reeve was suiting up, there was a mountain of original material to represent and even that well received take just scratched the surface.
Not that I mean to say a great vision with great direction wouldn't make a better film than we've had, just that a serial product requires less effort to translate Superman