I've only seen Superman the Movie twice. The first time was a few years ago, the extended cut downmixed to stereo; and the second time was over the summer, the theatrical cut with the remix played in full 5.1 mode. I own the theatrical dvd, but I think it only has the remix, so unfortunately I've only heard that version and never the original mix. My experience of it was that it seemed to be pretty good--certainly it had strong dynamic range and powerful LFE, and made good use of the surrounds and so forth--but I couldn't tell if there was any specific issue that made it less good than it should have been.

But I completely understand what it's like to despise a remix that compromises the sound compared to the original, because that's exactly the way I feel about Star Wars--the 2004 dvd mix is abominably bad, and its huge degree of suckitude is part of why I put as much effort as I did into approximating the 70mm soundtrack, so there could be a powerful-sounding version where everything was just as it should be.

Now I'm rather curious to hear the original stereo mix and compare it. Are there specific changes in the new one that come across badly, or does the original just have a better overall balance? The film did have a 5.1 mix on 70mm, but that hasn't been heard in any form for ages.

I've only seen the Lester version of Superman 2 once--aside from a few minor flaws, I found the Donner version so superior that I only want to watch that one from now on.