Prefacing this: I hold strong opinions, but completely respect your right to have ones that contrast, refute, or agree with my own. This post is merely to illuminate my own thoughts on the matter in counter point. I wouldn't bother typing them out if I didnt think you'd explained how you felt well in a way that made me wish to do the same
Superman Returns was weak to me because Superman didn't have a real foe, and didn't feel utilized or properly challenged.
Every problem that was thrown at him was not solved because he was too powerful (besides one - I'll get back to that) but because they were not superman level threats. Yet at the same time, his one weakness is thrown at him, in a continental scale, and he still shrugs it off. This felt like amazingly weak, poor storytelling.
Maybe with Christopher Reeves you could just have a man with super powers and make it interesting, maybe the believing a man could fly story was interesting enough back then, and the movie isn't bad... but it isn't particularly good, either.
Superman can have emotional crisies. Clark Kent can have emotional crisies. The problem is, you need to give a conflict where I feel like the character has a chance to lose. You cant shove Anti Superman at him and have it be that easy for him to overcome. You can't go through a whole movie with nothing that truly challenges his above human limits, or makes his strength a weakness. There are a thousand ways you could tell a good superman movie. It just doesn't feel like Hollywood wants to do that - in a way I agree with.
Superman: The Animated Series did a great job of giving us an emotional connection to Clark, and someone to root for in a fight in Superman. He has an innate duality that lets him have two stories at once, and have them be at odds with eachother. I know Superman II explored this theme but... shamefully, I've actually never sat through the whole thing. Not out of a dislike for it? It just hasn't happened. Perhaps I should watch it and then come back here and post again.
But there were challenges to Superman in that series. You don't need to throw Darkseid at him (such as they did in the finale) to make things threats. You don't need to give him a son with Asthma to give him a drama piece. Superman abandoning the planet? He's not that weak, not the well written Superman that I know and love. See, that's the thing. I'm a person who will strongly fight for Clark and Supes being good, incredibly versatile characters... when the writing is there.
As Clark, he has possible emotional conflicts with the family that died and sent him to safety, and the planet that adopted him. The Kents are his parents, and have given their son a good life, but does he long for his biological family? Does he feel shame for wanting more than the kents gave him? Does he want more, but is still happy being a Kent? These are all great themes to explore! Its amazing! And as Superman, when he fights threats capable of destroying planets, subjugating entire races, etc, how does he stand by no deadly force without being dumb? What will make him cross the line? What stops him from going too far? What happens when he needs to push himself to his limits after holding himself back from killing robbers with a flick of his finger for so long?
I don't think that nobody likes Superman. i think implying that we don't like a strong personification of an ideal is humorous at best, and offensive at worst. Perhaps an oversimplification. We still tell many of the same stories as those old mythologies - if not the same stories with a new coat of paint. Superman being a deadbeat dad who knocks Lois Lane up and then leaves had no chance to make him anything but emotionally weak. He shared an intimate connection with Lois, and then abandoned her.
Superman as the demigod boyscout is a character that I like. A lot. I don't think that I'm a rarity in this. I just think most people don't get to see him written well, used properly, pushed to his limits.
Dark Superman is a contradiction in terms. Superman is a hopeful character, even when times get dark. That's what he should be. That's what he's good at. I resent a dark, gritty superman feared by society because all it does is perpetuate the White Wolf like belief that gritty or dark is realistic. There is darkness in the world, but there's hope, and light, too. And I'm really getting sick of storytelling loving to show us how people can't trust people anymore, or how everything bad has changed the way the world works.
Throwing the military into stories where they don't belong is also reeeeally getting old. I didn't like it in Transformers. I don't like it in these trailers. Maybe its not very modern to just ignore that sort of thing, but as far as I'm concerned such things are big red flags for "this is a serious modern movie!" which usually tends to mean "you should probably skip this one."
You make points that you support very well, but I come to very different conclusions from my own bits of information
I think that believing only Clark Kent or Superman is interesting means you may as well either watch a story about a news reporter, or a movie about a guy who fights things a lot. Both are really amazing, and can be weaved together. But that's just me, and I know that's hard to write... but its possible.