I had promised myself that I was going to write a review as soon as I got home from the movie theater Tuesday night. On the way back from the theater, a friend of mine asked me in about a dozen different ways what I thought of "Superman Returns," but to be honest, I had no real answer. I didn't know.

Overall, outside of some shoddy film editing and far too much concentration on nostalgia, the movie worked. It was what we come to expect from Superman: Someone gets in trouble, Superman swoops in to save them. A big mean bad guy shows up, tries to rule the world, and Superman stops him, while losing his powers or getting de-Supermanned along the way.

I didn't have an issue with how Brandon Routh pulled off a very Christopher Reeve-like Superman. I enjoyed Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. I thought John Ottman's score, when not influenced by John Williams, was amazing. So why did I walk out of the theater feeling sucked punched in the stomach?

And then it hit me. It had nothing to do with the quality of the film in any way. It's just that it's been 19 years since we've seen Superman on the big screen, and in those 19 years, the world has changed considerably. Yet, we got a film, we got a Superman, that comes out of a time period that we no longer live in. So the question mirrors exactly what Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) won her Pulitzer for: Has the world moved on without Superman? I would have to say that the answer is yes.

Think about it. What does Superman represent? Think back to the Richard Donner movies of the 1970s and 1980s. Think back even further to the George Reeves serials. Even consider any of the comic books and such. What does he really represent? Truth, justice and the American way? Sure, if you like propaganda. What Superman really represents to me is a license to be reckless, and to not take any responsibility whatsoever for one's actions.

"Hmmm ... let me step on this creepy boat with my 4-year-old kid while I wear this nice cocktail dress. Sure, I could get in trouble like I always do, but never fear, Superman will come bail me out."

That's what Superman has come to represent to me. Not the overgrown Boy Scout with a blue tight and red cape fetish. But actually that father who is always around to bail his son out of jail for doing something stupid. "Not to worry ... dad will be here soon to get me out of this mess."

Is that the American way? Is that the human way? To recklessly live our lives in the hopes or even with the knowledge that someone else will have to stick around and clean up our mess? Is that how spoiled we as a society have become?

I grew up to Christopher Reeve's Superman, as well as the Superman in the "Super Friends" animated series. I remember always loving Superman, but thinking that Batman was just dull. I mean, come on. He didn't come from another planet. He didn't have any super powers. He was only a part of the team because he had a fast car and a belt full of devices that could do tricks.

That changed drastically as I got older, however. Batman made more sense to me, he seemed more real to me. Someone who used the natural human talents given to him to better himself and to give back to others. He didn't have to rely on some supernatural phenomenon to make it happen. He was able to achieve a status as high, if not higher, than any other superhero, and simply because he was nothing more than a normal person using his normal abilities the best he could.

Superman, on the other hand, was too perfect. Nothing could hurt him, except for some radioactive rocks that somehow made it to Earth in a period of just a few years from deep space. I remember back when Liam Kincaid was introduced as this very omnipotent-style alien in "Earth: Final Conflict," where his powers seemed to have more functions than a Swiss Army knife. I referred to it even back then as the "Superman effect." Where the only vulnerabilities are the ones that are forced created by the writers to try and add some type of human aspect to him.

That gets us back to "Superman Returns." I have to say that while I liked the way Kevin Spacey portrayed Lex Luthor, and while I also liked some of his lines, overall, I didn't get Lex Luthor. I mean, we have Bryan Singer who did such amazing things with "The X-Men" over in the Marvel universe, where the bad guys made sense, because they weren't bad for the sake of being bad. They were "bad" because they had the same goals as everyone else ... they just had some (pretty justified) different approaches to achieving those goals. I mean, can you really say that Magneto was all that bad of a guy? Sure, his tactics weren't the greatest, but in the end, wasn't his goals similar to that of Xavier's?

Lex Luthor was bad just for the sake of being bad. He apparently loves real estate, because once again (as he did in the 1978 film), he tries to create more valuable land by killing a lot of people. Greed is a great motivating factor, but audiences have become more sophisticated than "Superman IV." They see motivators in the face of evil that goes beyond greed. Just look at people like Osama bin Laden ... there's no greed there.

in the movie, Luthor gets his hands on a lot of money and, after finding Superman's sanctuary, discovers the true power of the crystals Superman owns. He then take those crystals and decides he is going to create an entirely new landmass that will eat away the North American continent and kill billions of people. In the meantime, Superman returns from a five-year vacation to Krypton to discover a new world -- one where Lois Lane has had a child, and where society is still more fascinated with celebrity than with things that could actually affect their lives.

I was not a fan of Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. Not that she isn't a good actress, but I really didn't feel she fit the part. Sure, in other incarnations of Superman, Lois Lane is a walking Barbie doll. But ever since Margot Kidder, who I personally feel is the greatest Lois Lane of them all, this dashing reporter was more of a handsome workhorse than a delicate beauty queen. When I looked at Bosworth, I didn't see a tough-as-nails reporter. In fact, I didn't see a reporter at all. And it made a big difference.

It was cute having a cameo from the late Marlon Brando as Jor-El. I even thought the whole Christopher Reeve-like salute and flyby at the end was endearing. But sheesh, did we have to do an entire movie almost as if it came from Richard Donner himself? I know that Singer was attached to the theme, and feels it's as necessary as the themes are to "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars," but it isn't. Yes, it's highly recognizable, but unlike the timeless settings of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, Superman seems to catch up with the times technologicially, and thus, changes its setting and its look. John Williams did a great job in 1970s, but in 2006 ... doesn't work. To me, it's like adding ABBA to a Shakespearean play.

But if you want a little darker Superman, you have it. And in that respect, it's good. There are some more serious themes than what you'd find in previous Supermans. And I have to agree that in all, it does outpace the former big screen installments.

However, when you compare it to another sort of revamped hero movie, let's say "Batman Begins," I just get a feeling that there could've been so much more.

"Superman Returns" stars Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey. It was written by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, based on a story the two created with Bryan Singer, who also directed the film.