Yeah, I’m someone who has hated Superman Returns for a long time now and I think a lot of fans view it with rose-colored glasses because of Donner nostalgia or the fact that Snyder’s take on Superman also sucked. But Snyder’s Superman being bad doesn’t retroactively make Singer’s Superman good. Superman/Clark barely had a personality in it. I was saying in another thread recently that he acts like a d*** throughout the movie (spying on Lois in her home, deserting the Earth and his pregnant girlfriend for 5 years with no explanation, chucking a ball into the next state while playing fetch with his dog). And the rest of the time, he’s either standing around silently while the other cast members do the acting, lifting some giant object, or occasionally rehashing some line that Chris Reeve or Marlon Brando said 100 times better. It’s so obvious that the movie is less interested in who Superman is as a character than how his presence (or lack thereof) impacts the world. Ironically, this is the same mistake Snyder made.
Routh fared better when he played Superman again in that CW crossover. Not sure whether that was because he had improved as an actor by then or because they actually gave him dialogue (probably both). Regardless, Superman Returns was a complete failure.