Here's the IMDB breakdown (still a flawed sample, but not a terrible measure of audience reaction):Most people rated it 10, but certainly there were a lot of detractors. Weighted average is 7.3/10.

As disappointed as I was with SUPERMAN RETURNS, I felt it beat any season of SMALLVILLE deep into the ground.

And is the audience for SMALLVILLE large enough to sustain a feature film?

Yes he does! Routh has a better screen presence, especially as Clark Kent.

Yep. I agree, the 2nd half of that is very silly.

Beg to differ.

Welling, and even moreso that Rosenbaum (sp?) dude who plays Lex just OWN their respective roles. Welling is the Superman that folks can actually relate to, and Rosenbaum is the Lex that is surely misguided, but not beyond redemption (yet)...at very least, he's not batshit crazy and surrounding himself with abject morons.

Sounds about right. I'd personally give it a 6, I think.

Clearly, you misunderstand my frame of reference here. I don't even LIKE Smallville all that much. It's a POORLY written show. I wouldn't want the same writers and directors within 100 miles of the set.

However, the two leads are terrific and could easily have made the transition to the big screen. Smallville would make a fine launching point for a series of movies in much the same way that a campy little show called "Star Trek" did.

Before Returns came out, there seemed to be two camps...the folks who wanted to continue from the old movies, and the ones who wanted something Smallville based. One camp has pretty much been proven wrong. The other...remains to be seen...though it's probably too late.

I think doing a Superman movie set in Metropolis with the Smallville leads needs to wait until that show's off the air. Otherwise it messes with the integrity of the television show.

The thing is, with big summer movies like this, IMDb ratings tend to skew upwards while the film is in general release, then drop once it hits DVD and cable. In another year, I'd be surprised if the film is above 7.0.

Not really. I thought the X-file movie really disproves this.

But the X-Files movie was within the show's continuity. It didn't jump ahead several years as Smallville would have had to do, and then jump back.

Agreed...though I think the show should have been off the air about two seasons ago.

Thank you.

Phantom Menace was #16 in the top 100 during it's theatrical run, for god's sake!

Yet, I don't expect Superman Returns to have a tremendous drop around DVD time. It'll eventually go down, but not by a lot (A lot more IMDB voters/users have been added since Phantom Menace to keep Superman afloat)

Another thing that hasn't been talked about yet is Singer's comments at Comic-Con. On an interview seen on G4, he sounded so relaxed and confident that a Superman sequel is indeed along the way and that Singer wants to get "Wrath of Khan" on it. So maybe he knows something that we all don't know!

Stop.

The only reason that the word disappointment is brought up is because Pirates came out one week after this film. The movie itself, while not perfect, is very entertaining. There will be a sequel and hopefully it won't be hammered by the release schedule like this one was. Routh did a fine job, just as good as Welling does on SV. Why does it have to be either or?

Also, I hardly think that the "continuing the films" camp was "proved wrong." This movie has made back its budget before home video and that is what is most important. I think we're seeing the top out of movie budgets. A film truly has to be a phenom to break the $200M domestic gross these days. I think more and more people either see things once or not at all and wait for DVD. This definitely hurts box office grosses.

I think that had POTC come out two weeks later, then Superman Returns would already be over $200 million. I also think that had Narnia come out this X-Mas as opposed to last year, then King Kong might have broken $300 million domestically. It's amazing how much strong competition from the mouse near your movie can wreck you.

The take on Serenity was a little disappointing, but not entirely surprising for me. I wouldn't go so far as to say near perfect, but I did really like it and I am happy that it happened.

My opinion of my fellow forum members has grown by leaps and bounds.

I honestly expected to open this thread and find 48 variations of “Is the Pope Catholic?” as a response to the opening question.

Huzzah.

Does a bear shit in the woods. ;)

The thing here is that it's a success in one major aspect for WB. In that stopping the bleeding of having to pay so much to get the franchise kicked started. They were already in the red because of the failed attempts. With simply getting a film off the ground they did something that they needed to. Stop that bleeding.

At this point, it's on track to do roughly the same as batman. Yeah, Batman held stronger during the weekends after, but it also had more screens. It's still roughly ahead of it by 7 million and that could help pad out the decline in theaters for a bit of time.

It will be huge in dvds and the tie in market was insane. If the hulk could get a sequel, then superman can work something out. Lower the budget and get it out with the right frame of mine and not right before a mega hit. It's not like folks weren't expecting pirates to be huge.

Excellent point. POTC2 broke several records during its weekend and catered to the exact same crowd as Superman. We're talking $135 million in 3 days! Now had something else followed Supes and opened in the range of $50-$60 million or some similar number, then I think Supes definitely earns more than $21 million during week 2. Pirates would have stolen business from Batman much like it did to Superman.

And Batman had much less competition. Bewitched, Land of the Dead, and Herbie: Fully Loaded opened during Batman's second weekend. They combined for a whopping $42 million. War of the Worlds followed in the 3rd weekend and its weekend opening matched Pirates' second weekend total.

Rosenbaum does own the Luthor role. I felt that Spacey just phoned his in, sadly.

Infact, I think Rosenbaum would of been casted perfect as Lex, opposite of Routh. Hell, the whole cast looked young, may as well go with Rosenbaum . I can see why WB didn't though, general public would of thought of it as a Smallville adapation then.

The budget for the next one, if they decide to make it, can be lowered by actually making the movie when they say they will and not getting a bunch of pay or play garbage going. I think that if they start the next one with Singer at the helm and everything in place from day one, then their budget will be substantially lower.

You mean those same SMALLVILLE writers that wrote a little movie called SPIDER-MAN 2? :)

seems like the movie is dying a slow, painful death in theaters the way it keeps sinking down.

I don't think it'll make 200 million but I don't think it's fair to expect the fans or the people who enjoyed this movie to throw out more cash on the movie just to help the movie "break even" despite the studios' careless spendings on production.

edit: to answer the question, I think it's more of a disappointment for the studio than the audience.