Top 10 comic book characters hardest to adapt to the big screen

6. Superman

The Past: Like Spider-Man, Superman has seen a decent amount of big screen successes and failures. The Donner/Reeve era is a stand out and Superman II is considered one of the greats. Then there’s Superman III and IV…

Flash forward years later and you have Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, which was more of an homage to the Reeve era than a stand-alone film. In comes Zack Snyder, who would become the architect of Warner Bros and DC’s own cinematic universe. Man of Steel opened in 2013 to mixed response. It did well enough though that an upcoming sequel is being used to lay the groundwork for a Justice League movie.

Why He’s So Hard to Get Right: Superman is the original super hero, the formula for every cape wearing super person to grace a comic book page after him. He is the embodiment of everything super heroes are supposed to stand for. So why doesn’t he translate well onto the big screen? Audiences like to relate to their heroes, and if they can’t relate to them, they don’t want to be bored by them. Batman may be a billionaire crime fighter, but he’s still just a man, and audiences dug the brooding realism of Christopher Nolan’s take on the character. For years-no, decades-Superman was considered the ultimate a boy-scout, a by-the-book super hero from an alien planet with super powers that basically rendered him unbeatable. It’s hard to make a guy like that interesting in a film.

He’s had hits on the small screen: the Justice League cartoon series was wildly popular as was Smallville, which was on air for a whopping 10 seasons. But as far as the big screen goes, Superman is still hit or miss, and largely miss. The aforementioned Superman Returns failed to reinvigorate the character for a new generation. Snyder’s Man of Steel aimed to do exactly that, and succeeded to an extent, but still had critics split, mostly because it was an emotionless, brooding Superman in a world populated by colorful Marvel characters.

The Future: Superman will pop up next in March’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Warner and DC better hope that goes over well if they’re hinging an entire universe on its success. I for one am a fan of Man of Steel-it’s basically just what the doctor ordered-but it remains to be seen how its Bat-fueled sequel will resonate with fans and critics. Batman isn’t on this list, so maybe that will be just what Supes needs.