Not so, says the New York Times.

Every era gets the superhero it deserves, or at least the one filmmakers think we want. For Mr. Singer that means a Superman who fights his foes in a scene that visually echoes the garden betrayal in "The Passion of the Christ" and even hangs in the air much as Jesus did on the cross. It's hard to see what the point is beyond the usual grandiosity that comes whenever B-movie material is pumped up with ambition and money. As he proved with his first two installments of "The X-Men" franchise, Mr. Singer likes to make important pop entertainments that trumpet their seriousness as loudly as they deploy their bangs. It's hard not to think that Superman isn't the only one here with a savior complex.

Sadly, the L.A. Times agrees, calling the film "a hummingbird in reverse": "The tiny beast shouldn't be able to fly but does, while the massive movie should soar but only sporadically gets off the ground."

The movies have always misunderstood Superman and what makes him work as a character. They wasted Lex Luthor, they just about ruined Lois Lane, they relied far too heavily on Jor-El and Kryptonian nonsense magic (for my money Krypton has always been the worst part of the Superman mythos and any direct contact with it should be avoided at all costs), and worst of all they constantly gave him ridiculous new powers like an amnesia kiss, the ability to split into two people for no clear reason at all, the ability to rebuild a wall just by looking at it, and, most infamously, the ability to turn back the rotation of the Earth and thus, for some reason, time.

Superman's not about any of those things, or X-ray vision, or superstrength, or even about the flying. The Superman story is a human potential -- not in terms of superpowers, but rather in terms of decency, of basic moral goodness.

He is, in essence, the better angel of our nature.

The only thing that ever really worked in any Superman movie was Christopher Reeve, undeniably the perfect man for the role, who despite dated special effects and often terrible scripts can still make you believe a man can fly. He was the living emodiment of Superman, his humor, his strength, his innocence, his good heart. Without any exaggeration the casting of Christopher Reeve in Superman may well be the single greatest instance of casting in film history. Without Reeve the Superman films would be merely an embarrassing cinematic footnote; with Reeve they endure, despite their many flaws.

I've seen nothing that makes me think Brandon Routh has that sort of gravitas, and that, more than anything else, gives me a sinking feeling about Superman Returns.