Now I Understand.

Reading the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes for Superman Returns I learned that the new movie is supposed to be a followup to the classic Superman films of the late '70s. I suppose I heard this was the case a good while ago but wrote it off as a silly idea. Frankly it still strikes me as a silly idea. Why make it a sequel to a pair of films much of your potential audience may very well have never seen? At the very least they won't have any attachment to the old films, as to them they're just some old '70s superhero films they've seen on TV. The makers of Batman Begins quite rightly felt no need to make a linkage to the Michael Keaton-George Clooney-Val Kilmer quartet. The characters are more than iconic enough that they don't need to reference previous big screen attempts.