I've been thinking about this a fair bit too, ever since watching Reeves'
The Batman.
So here's my take, inspired largely by Morrison's Action Comics run, along with the original Siegal/Shuster stories, the Fleischer cartoons and STAS.
We start with an extended pre-credits scene, which begins with a guy in a hoodie walking to a printers, showing him a sketch of the familiar S symbol and asking him to print it on a blue shirt. The next scene is intrepid reporter Lois Lane undercover at a night-club, trying to get dope on a corrupt local politician who's working with a gangster. She's found out and they abduct her and take her to a green car...which is then stopped by a man in a costume (the suit is basically the Siegal/Shuster suit with the symbol from the Fleischer cartoons...but it looks very makeshift, like something put together manually), who rescues Lois, gets the crooks out of the car, and then smashes it up with his bare hands. Later at the Daily Planet, Lois is talking about her ordeal to Perry White and a bunch of other reporters, some of whom are skeptical. Lois strikes up a conversation with Clark Kent, who's just joined the newspaper. He asks her what she's going to call the mystery man once she writers an article about him, and she says that because of the S and what he can do she'll call him ''Superman''. Clark, secretely, is a bit taken aback but looks happy about it.
At this point we get the titles (either just the title or an opening credits sequence which will highlight news reports and footage of Superman's actions all over Metropolis). We then jump forward to six months later. Superman has become a familiar figure in Metropolis, though there are few decent photos of him and he's still a mystery-man. He's also a controversial figure - denounced by some as a vigilante, a 'freak' and a menace, while others admire his ability to use brute force to solve problems that the authorities can't. We get to see Superman's usual MO - Clark investigates a story about a tenemant that's been constructed with substandard materials due to municipal corruption and is a massive health hazard. As Superman, he goes, evacuates the slum, and demolishes it single-handedly, forcing government intervention. We also snippets of some of his other activities - stopping armed robberies, beating up a wife-beater, smashing up a drunk-drivers car etc. There are political debates about him in the media and the Metropolis PD has been ordered to form a task force to hunt him down, though many cops secretely admire him, not least Inspector Henderson and his right-hand woman Maggie Sawyer. In the meantime, we see Clark going about his daily life, working at the Daily Planet but always in Lois' shadow - developing a crush on her and admiring her spunk and determination and amused (and a bit frustrated) to realize she's infatuated with Superman. We also see that he has dreams about an alien world under attack.
The US military, specifically Lois' dad General Sam Lane hires renowned scientist Lex Luthor to investigate Superman, since the military suspects that he might be an alien. We learn that the military has the pod that brought Superman to earth, which we're told was discovered in Kansas ''over 20 years ago''. Lex has been hired to investigate if Superman has any connection to the alien pod.
Superman fights a giant robot causing trouble in Metropolis. It's his first real challenge but he's able to destroy it. The robot was deployed by Luthor and was a test to gauge Superman's power levels and also map his DNA against samples taken from the rocket, which confirm that Superman came to earth in the rocket. Luthor also tests the alien cells against a small glowing green rock he found embedded in the exterior of the rocket and notices that it causes the cells to degrade...he theorizes that the rock is a weapon that can be used to weaken and even kill Superman. So he develops a battlesuit, powered by the radiation from the mineral, which Sam Lane's hotshot and xenophobic subordinate John Corben is chosen to pilot.
Lois, in the meantime, who has a stormy meeting with her dad, confides in Clark that her sources say that her dad is in Metropolis working with Luthor and apparently has an alien ship in his possession. This leads Clark to have a flashback to when he was a teenager, and his adoptive parents told him about how they found him in a rocket, swaddled in the red blanket (which became his cape). They were just about able to get him and the cape from the rocket before the military showed up. Clark heads back to Smallville and meets his parents. He confides his fears that the world may soon find out that he's an alien and that they'll reject him, while his parents try to reassure him.
Clark heads back to Metropolis when he hears sightings of another 'robot'. It's Corben, wearing the ''Metallo'' suit, who manages to defeat Superman in combat, captures him, and takes him to the secret base where Luthor and Sam Lane are. Luthor is able to experiment further on Superman, harvesting more of his DNA and his biometrics, which enables him greater access to the ship. Under the influence of the torture from the kryptonite, Superman has more fragmented memories surface of an attack on his homeworld, Krypton and of his parents, Jor-El and Lara, putting him in the ship.
Unknown to Luthor, his activating the ship's systems alerts Brainiac out in deep-space that the ''last Kryptonian'' is on earth. This triggers an invasion of earth. As Brainiac's drones attack the military base, Superman is able to escape. Instead of running away however he fight and destroys some of the drones, saving some of the soldiers there, as well as Lois (who had arrived at the base earlier suspecting that her dad had something to do with Superman's abduction). However Superman is no match for Brainiac's more powerful and aerial drones (his power is at Siegal/Shuster levels...though he's steadily becoming more powerful at this point he still can't fly). Metallo attempts to fight some drones but is seemingly killed. Superman also recognizes the drones and the tech as being what attacked his home planet in his vague memories from his infancy.
Brainiac demands Superman in return for sparing the earth. Lane and Luthor are ready to hand him over but have no means to do so since Metallo is 'dead'. Superman however agrees to surrender himself, not because he believed Brainiac but because he feels the best chance of fighting Brainiac is within his ship. Lois insists on going with him and stows away on the ship sent to retrieve Superman. Brainiac and Superman come face to face, after Superman is restrained and weakened due to Brainiac replicating Krypton's atmospheric conditions. Brainiac explains his own origins to Superman - he's an alien intelligence from the planet Colu who crashed on Krypton and was discovered by Jor-El. He allowed Jor-El to believe that he'd 'invented' him and over the years steadily infilitrated Krypton's information systems, its politics and every aspect of its society. Brainiac gathered all the intelligence that it could on Krypton, and then triggered its destruction. Jor-El discovered Krypton's impending doom but Brainiac ensured that he would be discredited. However, Jor-El, not trusting Brainiac, had secretely developed a rocket to send his infant son Kal-El to earth, even as Brainiac's forces launched an attack on Krypton to prevent anyone else from escaping. Brainiac mentions how this is his standard MO - studying a planet, gathering date of its collective knowledge, and then eliminating it, which he's about to do to earth (since its a primitive planet and he can do with it what he took years to do on Krypton). Brainiac taunts Superman, claiming that in earth's atmosphere and under its yellow sun, Superman should have the powers of a God, yet he restrains himself, using only a fraction of his powers to intervene in ''petty concerns'', afraid of showing his true alien nature.
Lois is able to free Superman and he's able to disable the controls to restore earth's atmosphere to Brainiac's ship regaining his powers and takes down several of Brainiac's drones within the ship, though his costume is damaged. He finds an old Kryptonian relic in Brainiac's ship, a battlesuit that can be 'reformatted' based on the wearer's thoughts, so he puts it on and it transforms into a new suit (which resembles the Rebirth suit from the comics). Superman, finally unleashing his full power, is able to destroy Brainiac's fleet threatening the earth, as well as his ship. Brainiac, before he is destroyed, reveals that he's merely a drone and that there are dozens of him out there in deep-space.
In the aftermath, Superman is hailed as a hero almost universally for the first time. He finally gives Lois an interview, revealing the full story of his alien heritage, which he's now learnt from Brainiac, to the world. We see him tell Jonathan and Martha on the farm that while he'll always be Clark Kent, there's now a whole other side to his life that he needs to explore and make a part of him. He retrieves his rocket from the military which he takes to a cavern in the Arctic where he's retrieved other alien technology from the wreck of Braniac's ship and his forces and is slowly building the Fortress of Solitude. He activates the ships system and meets the holographic recording of Jor-El and Lara for the first time, ready to embrace his alien identity. But he's gained a boost in confidence as Clark Kent as well, as he asks her out.
A post-credit scene reveals that Luthor retrieved some of the alien tech as well, and he's recovered the comatose and badly damaged body of John Corben, intent on transplanting his brain to a new kryptonite powered cyborg body...
PS: Apologies for the
long post...got a bit carried away, lol