In a number of ways,
SR suffers by being an amalgam of a reboot, a vague sequel and a remake. So even when Singer made an obvious improvement to something from
STM, he got blame (with some justification) for
copying - rather than credit for
fixing. Take Lexs real estate scheme, for instance.
In
STM, it was ridiculous. After setting off a couple of nukes and destroying half of California, we were supposed to believe that a wanted criminal would be sitting pretty as the legal owner of the
other half of California.
In
SR, the plan was actually different and a tad more plausible. In super villain fashion, Lex was going to rule the world! by means of brute strength/advanced technology. He wasnt going to produce ownership papers when the authorities knocked on his door - because there was no pretext of legal ownership and thered be no authority left.
Unfortunately, Singer kept giving his Lex the real estate lines from
STM. And this gave the impression that the schemes were near identical. Had
SR kept its scheme but lost all the
STM lines, the comparison would be harder to make.
...
Btw, the remaining crystals didnt fall into the ocean. Theyre on NK - which is now a small asteroid orbiting the Sun.