I think Superman Returns is an interesting attempt to do something somewhat different. It has one foot in the past and one in the present in the worst way, however, and can never get over its identity crisis. That said, I think Bryan Singer is one of the best action filmmakers working today, and it has a couple of very impressive set pieces; the plane rescue in particular is genuinely exciting.

Man of Steel has the opposite problem: it wanted to do something other than “Lex Luthor tries to kill Superman with Kryptonite” and went so far in the other direction that I feels like an Outer Limits episode abut a guy who discovers he has alien origins.