Sure there was a lot wrong with Super­man Returns. He leaves his adopted planet for half a decade, Luthor is still try­ing to get rich from real estate, and then there’s the son.

Super­man is a pro­tec­tor. He’s there to inspire hope. To show human­ity what they can aspire to. I don’t think he’s been por­trayed that way in any of the movies they’ve put out so far.

But I think reboot­ing the fran­chise is a com­pletely unnec­es­sary step and would prob­a­bly do more dam­age. There’s a lot of sto­ries you can write using what was estab­lished in Super­man Returns. While I don’t claim that what I’ve writ­ten below is the best sto­ry­line ever, I think it does have some merit.

*******

TRAV’S IDEA FOR A SEQUEL TO SUPERMAN RETURNS

Set two to four years after the last movie. Lex Luthor is still try­ing to get his life together after almost destroy­ing Amer­ica. Nobody except Super­man, Lois, her fiance and her son know what he did. Lex pub­li­cally puts the blame for what hap­pened entirely on Super­man. Lex runs for office on a “Vote No to Super­man ticket”. His charis­matic speeches begin to sway the public.

An alien space­ship finds the kryp­tonite island Super­man launched into space and dis­cov­ers it’s point of ori­gin: Earth. The space­ship crashes in a Metrop­o­lis park and, using TV images, cre­ates a humanoid avatar that looks almost, but not quite like Lex Luthor. It teams up with Lex to turn Earth into a New Kryp­ton. Lex sees it as a way to become absolute ruler. He’s past the need for money now.

Brainaic take up refuge in Lex­Corp tower and twists it into an organic look­ing spire, that con­trasts with the art deco archi­tec­ture of Metropolis.

With the tide of opin­ion against him, Super­man is now just plain old Clark Kent. He per­forms a heroic few saves every now and then, but noth­ing that can be explic­itly traced back to him. He finds he much prefers being Clark Kent anyway.

The Brainiac kid­naps Superman’s son and uses a vial of his blood to cre­ate a way to give the city’s pop­u­la­tion Superman’s pow­ers, but at half strength. Lex likes the idea of ris­ing the pop­u­la­tion up and mak­ing Super­man less spe­cial by doing so.

Those in the pop­u­la­tion that receive pow­ers (some vastly dif­fer­ent to Superman’s) are lov­ing it. While most use their power for good, a large por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion spend their days fly­ing around and test­ing the extent of their abil­i­ties. Some have even turned to crime.

Luthor dis­cov­ers that the Brainiac means to destroy the rest of the planet leav­ing only Metrop­o­lis. Then he’ll shrink the city down and cat­a­logue it with oth­ers he’s captured.

Brainiac con­trols the large army of super­pow­ered peo­ple through nanites he included in the for­mula. This army ral­lies around Brainiac’s tower as Lex broad­casts Brainiac’s inten­tions to the world. The army attacks the tower doing zero dam­age, but accu­mu­lat­ing heavy casu­al­ties to due the super-powered bodyguards.

Super­man realises he’s the only one who can stop this. He files to the tower and takes out a few of the supers but the large group are more than a match for him.

He shrugs them off and flies into the tower itself. There he fights the Brainiac and knocks it out. Super­man finds his son uncon­scious on a bench. He wakes him up and they fly out of the tower. He drops his son on the foot­path and is then knocked down the street by a metal­lic ten­ta­cle. A big­ger, bulkier Brainiac (2.0!) appears out of the tower and begins to fight Super­man. They fight for a long time. As they trade punches and Super­man rea­sons he can cut loose on the Brainiac as it’s a robot, not a liv­ing being. The streets crack open and win­dows shat­ter as they bat­tle across the city. With one last punch Super­man breaks the Brainiac’s head open. The super-powered pop­u­la­tion regain con­trol of their own bod­ies. Super­man hurls the body into space.

At the end of the movie it’s shown that his son lost all his Kryp­ton­ian abil­i­ties due to Brainiac’s exper­i­men­ta­tion. The pop­u­la­tion hasn’t though. And even if Super­man isn’t con­sid­ered unique powers-wise, he’s still going to show those with good in them how a real hero acts.

The city howled with an icy wind. Two fig­ures hud­dled as they made their way along the cracked bitu­men. Being care­ful to step over the spots where green vibrant grass had pushed through.

The taller fig­ure, a man, walked with pur­pose. He knew where he was going. Sud­denly the smaller fig­ure, a young girl, broke off and ran to a vine cov­ered wall. She ran her hand over it and shot a con­fused look at the man.

“Why is the rock flat?”
The man laughed. “It’s con­crete.” The con­fused look remained. “Some­one made it.”
“Oh.”  She tugged at the green­ery, then went back to run­ning her hand over it.
“Come on.”

The man  picked her up and walked fur­ther along the street, they turned a cor­ner and it opened up on a court­yard. He dropped her on the ground and stared out over a thin, rusted rail­ing. He could see the grey ocean churn­ing in the dis­tance and he was lost in his head for a long time.

“Dad?” The lit­tle girl asked, ner­vously.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Where are all the peo­ple?”
“Long gone I think.”
“where’d they go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So we’re safe?”
“Yeah.”

He felt her small hand grip his tightly. She didn’t like being here at all.

“You want to go?”
She nod­ded yes.

They turned around and began head­ing back the way they came.

“Where are the ani­mals?”
“They’ve been gone even longer than the peo­ple.”
“So no cows?”
He laughed again. “No, honey. No cows.” He looked down at his daugh­ter. “You like cows, huh?”
“Yeah. Rory doesn’t like cows though. He’s says they’re dumb and they smell.”

They were pick­ing their way through the grassy patches near the edge of the city again. The girl lifted her arms up. The man grabbed them and threw her up onto his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t want to live in a place with­out cows.”
“Me nei­ther, kiddo. Me neither.”

There was no time to waste.

As promised, Abdul had left the farm before dawn, but not before pass­ing on a warn­ing: They knew where he was and they were com­ing. “They” of course were the adults. Yakov called in the three old­est kids, plus Pietra. When he’d told them what Abdul had said they just stared at him. Then Pietra began to cry. Yakov hugged her tightly.

Why are they doing this?” She asked between snif­fles.
“They’re just hun­gry.”
“But so are we.”
“I know. Lis­ten to me. I want to you round up every­body around your age. Take them to the barn and lock it from the inside. Bar the door with any­thing you can find.
“But what about you? You can’t even walk!”
“No argu­ments, Pietra. Go!”

It looked like she was going to cry again, but she ran out of the house before Yakov could be sure. He turned to look at the other three.
“Help me.”
“We’re not fight­ers, Yakov,” said Evan.
“I know that, but we can’t let them take this away from us. We can’t go back.”
“Then what?” This was Sally.
“We’re going to have to learn how to fight. This place is too valu­able to lose.”

When he thought about it, it had been too easy. The escape from Kilda, the unevent­ful trip through the bad­lands, and then find­ing the farm laid out wait­ing for them. He wasn’t sur­prised karma had come to collect.

Yakov had clam­bered onto the roof of the farm­house for a bet­ter look. With his leg the way it was this was the best he could do for their group. Down below he made out pairs of kids hid­ing and wait­ing. Sun­light glinted off the pots and pans a few of them had scav­enged from the kitchen. Then some­thing else caught his eye. A black mass had begun to form at the top of the ridge. A lump caught in Yakov’s throat. There were too many of them.
Get ready!” He shouted. He heard a few sobs in response. The mass was get­ting closer now and sep­a­rat­ing into indi­vid­ual fig­ures. At the front of the group he recog­nised his father.

One of the adults threw a rock through the win­dow and then it was on. The adults swarmed over the farm tram­pling the newly sown crops. A group of kids ran out and tack­led those clos­est to them. Once the other adults saw the pot dan­gling from Sean’s hand they pounced like wild ani­mals, scream­ing “We’re hun­gry. You have to feed us.”

Other kids ran out from their hid­ing places swing­ing in wide arcs in an attempt to ward off the rav­en­ous horde. Yakov saw the car­nage below and braced him­self on the win­dow sill.
“Stop it! Stop it all of you!” Hans pulled a woman off the still body of Sean and stared at Yakov through sad eyes.
“Oh no,” she cried, “What have I done.”
The kids quickly formed a wall between the adults and Sean.
“Get out of here. Just go.”

They trekked for days through the burnt detri­tus that encir­cled their for­mer home. Rain poured down from the dark grey sky soak­ing each child through to the bone. Morale was low and more than once mem­bers of their lit­tle band had given up and turned back.

They fur­ther they went the less inclined they were to idle chat­ter. Yakov could sense a full scale mutiny approach­ing if they didn’t find Eden soon, but the con­stant rain was mak­ing it hard for him to get his bearings.

It was only through sheer luck that, early one evening, he found a path through the black­ened land­scape to the green-hilled utopia beyond. He grabbed Pietra and gave a loud whoop. The chil­dren rolled out onto the sod­den grass laugh­ing and cheer­ing. Pietra watched them for a moment then turned to Yakov.
“Where’s the farm, Yakov?” He scanned the unfa­mil­iar hori­zon, pointed in an arbi­trary direc­tion and replied, “Umm…that way.”

The group marched all night through the wet grass. With­out cover Yakov didn’t want to risk them stay­ing out in the open exposed to any­thing. And any­one. As morn­ing broke they crested a small rise and looked out on to acres of graded land and beyond that: a large farm­stead.
“Wow,” gasped Evan, the brother of Yakov’s pre­vi­ous trav­el­ling com­pan­ion.
“Race you!” shouted another as he took off down the slope. The other kids launched them­selves down the hill towards the farm­house. Yakov stood watch­ing them all until his sis­ter tugged at his arm and said “Come on, Yakov. You don’t want to be the rot­ten egg!”  He laughed and raced her down. Care­ful to let her pull ahead and win at just the right moment.

*****

Yakov and a few of the oth­ers spent the whole morn­ing doing an inven­tory of the farm. The pre­vi­ous own­ers had left the place in rel­a­tively good con­di­tion, but they’d taken almost all the food. In a crawl­space — so small that only the youngest boy could fit — they found a stash of alu­minium cans, the labels long since faded; a Tup­per­ware con­tainer filled with seeds and a dusty leather jour­nal. In the front of the jour­nal Yakov found a folded piece of paper, a check­list for get­ting the farm up and run­ning again. The seeds, the jour­nal told him, were wheat, or would be once they’d weeded the field and sown them. He looked up to see Pietra and two of the younger girls walk past munch­ing on hand­fuls of black­ber­ries.
“We found a bush,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Surely it couldn’t be this easy? He thought to himself.

He organ­ised a few of the older kids into groups to help him work through the check­list. There was a well some­where nearby that they would need and with the rain stopped and the sun out they could begin to clean up the field. Pietra, ever help­ful, put together her own group to help pick the rest of the blackberries.

“Yakov? Is that really you?”
“Yeah, Mum. It’s me.”
The grey-haired woman hugged her disheveled son tightly.
“Is that you, boy?” Hans stomped into the entry and glared at his son. “What? You didn’t bring any­thing?”
“Hans, be nice. Your son is back. Quickly, gather the town.”

*****

Yakov was lean­ing against the rail­ing look­ing down at the assem­bled crowd. It seemed to him that the entire pop­u­la­tion of Kilda had turned out to hear him speak.
“Where’s the oth­ers?”
“They..umm…didn’t make it.”
“What do you mean?”
The fat man was stand­ing to close to Yakov. He could see every bead of sweat rolling down his pink, bloated face. He was wring­ing his hands and fid­get­ing at the same time. Almost like he was try­ing to dance.
“I..err…that is too say…they never made it back here.”
“What?” Yakov began to hyper­ven­ti­late. “I can’t do this. I just need to rest for a while. Maybe I’ll do this tomor­row.”
The crowd began to stir. “Tell us what you saw!” Shouted a woman cradling a baby.
“Yeah! What are you hiding?”

Yakov turned back to the crowd, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them the first thing he saw was Pietra stand­ing in the mid­dle of the crowd gnaw­ing at some­thing black and gnarled. An apple maybe? His shoul­ders stiff­ened. He knew what he had to do.
“You want to know what I saw?” The crowd yelled it’s approval. “O.K. I saw lush, green plains. Open space as far as the eye can see. Peo­ple farmed this land. Grow­ing what they needed instead of scavenging.”

The crowd seemed to wane. He wasn’t grab­bing their imag­i­na­tion. He noticed his sis­ter again.

“And I saw apples. Huge, red apples. So big they bent the branches that they hung from.” His sis­ter looked up at him, dropped the apple from her mouth and shouted up to him “Show me!” Then quickly added, “Please.”

A mur­mur went through the crowd. Then was sud­denly silenced by, of all peo­ple, his father.
“Stop this. Stop this lying, Yakov.”

The old Yakov, the one whose life expe­ri­ence was dis­tilled from his father’s would’ve backed down. But not after every­thing he’s seen. He was his own man now.
“You stop, Dad. You think you’re the voice of rea­son? You’re not. You’re the voice of fear. You’re afraid.”
“I have every right to be. You for­get that you were the only one to come back.” Yakov felt a lump rise in his throat.
“I did, and now I’m going back there.”
“To what? A land of milk and honey? Where apples fall from the sky?” His father snorted.

“I’m going back. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Every kid in the crowd cheered. They’d never heard of any kid stand­ing up to any adult before, and now, right in front of their eyes Yakov had stood up to his own father. They began chant­ing his name as loudly as they could.