One of the most overlooked superhero action scenes is finally getting its due

Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns holds an unusual place in the history of superhero blockbusters for a number of reasons, but there’s one element of the polarizing epic that everyone agrees on.

The Big Blue Boy Scout’s first cinematic outing in almost 20 years was the most expensive movie ever made at the time it was released in the summer of 2006, but a $391 million haul at the box office on a $200 million budget ensured the profit margins were razor thin, which ultimately led to an announced sequel being canned in favor of what became Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

Of course, praising anything that involved Singer and Kevin Spacey in major roles is hardly the conversation people want to be having in 2022, but social media has rightly been revisiting and lauding the jaw-dropping airplane rescue sequence, which doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.

It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to call the sequence either one of the best or most underrated set pieces to emerge from Hollywood’s favorite genre during the 21st Century, and it’s exactly the sort of action-packed, intense, and exhilarating scene that Superman Returns could have used at least a couple more of.

It isn’t a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely way too reverential to Richard Donner’s 1978 classic, and Brandon Routh deserved a much better shake of the Clark Kent/Kal-El stick than he ended up getting, even if he got to settle those old scores when he suited up for the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event.