Now that you mention Kevin Smith's attempt to do Superman, I've finally accepted the possibiliy that it could have been worse. Tim Burton was slated to direct Smith's script, but Burton hated the script, as did producer Jon Peters. Burton, who brags about how he never reads comic books, wanted to make things fast and loose and Jon Peters wanted something that would just give them room to make a lot of toys, and they didn't like the faithfulness of Smith's script. Needless to say having a guy who refuses to read comics in the boat with a guy who does like comics just isn't a good match. Burton and Peters wanted to get rid of the classic Superman suit and they didn't want him to fly - they wanted him to wear the all black suit with the silver 'S' emblem and at one point actually had Superman travelling around in a "Super Mobile" and teleporting himself as opposed to flying. I also hear that Burton wanted to get rid of Nicholas Cage, another comic book lover, and replace him with Ralph Fiennes (Feinnes? never can get that name spelled right) and/or Sean Penn.

I don't like a lot of what I've heard about Bryan Singer's approach to this movie, but after hearing what Burton and Peters wanted to do, Singer's stuff doesn't sound quite as bad. Still terrible, but not as bad.