Frequently Stupid Questions:What went wrong with Superman Returns?

Q: Why is Superman getting rebooted? It almost broke even!

A: Well, merchandising is very important in the entertainment industry, And I think this trading  cards in the Cinnamon Life Cereal be the best evidence of just what went wrong there...
The Love interest in the film.
The Protagonist(or so I'm told).

The Protagonist's secret identity.

The protagonist's pal.


The antagonist of the film.

Uh, both the protagonist and the love interest.
Uh...a place that some scenes took place in?

Space.
If your huge summer tentpole film is so devoid of marketable elements that SPACE is worthy of a trading card, it better more than break even. How many of the things above can you make toys about. What things are missing here? Kal Penn and the other thugs? Lex Luthor's Girfriend? Kryptonite Island? Martha Kent and that dog she had? The Super-kid? No, here's what it was missing...

An actual villain.
If they where gonna put romance in there, that's fine. But by making the film as bland as possible any chance of a sequel was lost. While X3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Whatever the hell subtitle had millions of characters cramed in there to put in T-Shirts and posters and backpacks, Returns had a vast, empty vacuum of Space.

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