Anchorhead said:
No single film can ruin a character or franchise. Unless you let it.
Got to disagree...
1987 Superman IV*
1990 Rocky V
1995 Judge Dredd**
1997 Batman & Robin
2002 Star Trek: Nemesis
... all films that stopped franchises dead for around a decade. Until...
2013 Man Of Steel - Skipping over Superman Returns as that just killed it again ;-) (26 Year gap)*
2006 Rocky Balboa (16 Year gap)
2012 Dredd (17 Year gap)
2005 Batman Begins (8 Year gap)
2009 Star Trek (7 Year gap)
* Souring a franchise for a quarter century was testament to how awful 'Quest For Peace' was.
** My favourite comic character growing up was nearly killed off for my entire adult life because one film sucked so badly that it overshadowed everything that was great about Dredd. Thank god the latest film was awesome! :-)
If MOS2 is so terrible that it fails to perform financially as expected, it would wipe out Superman and possibly Batman with him for another decade. Let's not foget that MOS didn't set the box office on fire. It made a 200m profit, sounds good but 'Iron Man 3' made twice what MOS made at the box office and took home over 800m profit.
200m is only half the budget needed for MOS2 (Including marketing) so this franchise needs to start paying or Warner Brothers are just going to go elsewhere.