almost wish this movie wasn't being made at all. I would have thought that a movie about our favorite hero would bring everyone together and everyone would be excited. Instead there's been nothing but animosity and hate. Luckily I haven't seen any of either on this message board. The fans here have a pretty healthy attitude. I've seen other message boards that have had people just outright arguing. It's nasty. And it's all because things aren't being done exactly their way. That's life. They're not the ones making the movie. I'm sure if they were there would be the same kind of reactions Singer is getting on the message boards. You can't please ALL the people ALL the time. Some people are never pleased.
Can you imagine what it would have been like if the internet had been around in 1977? Imagine all the outraged fans who would have been up on their digital soap-boxes. Donner turned Krypton from a Flash Gordon utopia into a barren ball of ice, Jor-El and Lara were too old to have conceived a child, Kal-El's rocketship looked like a Christmas ornament, there was no Superboy, the Phantom Zone was a spinning mirror with only three prisoners, Ma Kent survives to old age, etc etc. What would the fanboys have made of all that?
Keep in mind this was back in a time when comics had REAL continuity (explanation for modern fans: "continuity" is when facts and events are consistently portrayed and built upon for more than two months in a row). The Superman legend did not get a reboot every year and a half...Donner was messing with sancrosanct stuff! And yet, by most accounts, what he ended up with was just fine, if not great.
It's funny to me that modern fans want a film to adhere to Byrne's run, or Smallville, or whatever, given that those versions are themselves reboots of the legend. For that matter, the Weisinger era I love was a huge reboot from Seigel and Shuster's original vision. Sooner or later, if you stick around long enough, you see that it's possible to tell an old story in a new way and make it interesting again. Of course, it's also possible to screw it up, but better to be hopeful, I figure.
Comics are funny...the emergence of semi-organized fandom in the Silver Age probably saved the industry. Adding letter columns made fans feel they had a real voice in the direction of their favorite books. But eventually, in my opinion, it went too far. Every fan out there seems to think he or she has some "ownership" of characters just by virtue of buying a certain number of issues of their books. And they figure that if they can get enough fans to echo their opinions, then DC and Marvel "have to" listen to them and do what they want. And a lot of times, because DC and Marvel know this nutty subculture is their only audience left, they bow to pressure and give in. So then when a major studio makes a film, the same fans think they can push them around, too. But Hollywood's a whole different world, boys and girls.
I still remember Trek fans threatening to boycott "Wrath of Khan" because it killed off Spock. Heresy! And in the end not only did they line up to see the film, they -- for the most part -- now consider it the best in the series.
Bottom line: fans are often too close to a subject to see it objectively. And there's usually a reason they're fans and not pros. If they want to muck up Superman (or Batman or whoever), let 'em do it the old-fashioned way...get a paying job at DC.