My friends know that I consider films and some television to be the modern mythology of our society. It sparks some enthusiastic discussions. And sometimes it just gets heated.

The other night I was out with friends for dinner. The talk turned to failed films and particularly films we thought were great missed opportunities. Hey, last week our little Saturday night supper club talked about organic gardening and factory farms. We talk about a very wide range of topics.

Anyway, I lost a bet. So here it is, how Superman Returns could have worked. I have to tell a hundred people. Well, a hundred and sixty-nine actually. Something about 13 thirteens.

Brian Singer's idea for the film was that it would take place just a couple of years after Superman II and would ignore the remaining Superman films. Actually, it would follow the mythical Richard Donner vision of Superman II (a version of which is available on DVD). That is fine, except those films are products of the 1970s and 1980s.

Here's my take of Superman Returns. A take 13 if you will.

It's been almost thirty years since Superman disappeared. The Earth has moved on and mostly forgotten him.

Martha Kent developed Alzheimer's and lost the family farm during the early 1990s. She died in her sleep in 1996.

Perry White retired in 1985 and successfully ran for the U.S. Senate. After serving several terms and still displaying the passion for defending the little guy, he was drafted into the Presidential nomination in 2004. Never expecting to win, he went along with the party. Much to his surprise, he was elected by a landslide and serves as the current POTUS.

Very soon after Clark Kent vanished, Lois Lane married a film tycoon from Star City. Her husband and young son were killed in a freak airplane crash over Lake Michigan. Lois never remarried. She used her husband's fortune to buy the Daily Planet, where she serves as publisher and editor-in-chief. Recently she just won the Pulitzer Prize for a piece called "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman."

Jimmy Olsen became a hard hitting television reporter nicknamed Mr. Action. He built his career on exposing corruption, going to troublespots all over the world, and telling truths that must be told. These days Jimmy walks with a cane, but he runs the internet news network Planet Krypton. He still does the occasional story to keep his hand in the game.

Publicly, no one has heard from Lex Luthor in decades. Luthor looted the Fortress of Solitude and combined it with his own genius to create amazing technology. No one knows that Luthor is behind the wildly successful Star Labs, widely regarded as the birthplace of most modern technology. And if you have the price and are looking for that extra special weapon system, you can deal with Luthor's Black Lance Group, an underground arms firm with nearly unlimited resources and tentacles into government and corporations all over the planet. Lex Luthor is emperor of Earth in all but name. None the less, he fears that one day Superman will return to take it all away, and wears a kryptonite ring to keep Superman at bay. Long exposure has given Luthor cancer and he is dying.

Over the years, many have tried to kill Luthor. But it seems he has an ace in the hole, some immense power at his command who serves his interests. And yep, that is literally an Ace in the hole. No one knows about him officially, but a superpowered young man works for Luthor in exchange for drugs and sex. He tends to wear out his sex partners quickly. He doesn't quite have the power levels that Superman was supposed to have had, but he has some other powers that Superman never had.

Yep, the infant son of Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane was kidnapped. The son of Superman was raised with the voice of Lex Luthor in his ears, guiding his actions.

It's the mirror image of Jor-El and Kal-El.

And yes, Luthor keeps him under control with drugs that would kill anyone else.

If he can't kill Superman, Lex Luthor will corrupt and control his son.

The film opens with Superman's spacecraft returning to the Kent family farm. Which was foreclosed years ago and is now a shopping mall. The spaceship crash doesn't kill anyone, but does millions in damage.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Olsen breaks the first story about Lex Luthor being the secret arms dealer to most of the world. Literally within seconds of the file being uploaded on the internet, the Planet Krypton servers are smashed and the building collapses. This one DOES kill people. Olsen promises to upload the next Lex Luthor story as soon as he can.

Federal agents in jetpacks arrest a mysterious figure emerging from the flames of the Kansas shopping mall. It's Superman, weak from his journey, white at the temples and with a healed scar across his face.

So let's do a little back story.

Superman left the planet to confront an alien power that was seizing any part of Kryptonian technology that was left in the galaxy. He was hoping to keep it away from the Earth. After it was defeated at the remains of Krypton itself, Superman returned to Earth, confident that the threat was gone.

He was wrong.

While the world is deciding what to do with an older Superman, nearly invisible flashes of red and blue are seen all over the planet. Testing, probing, provoking. Soon, the figures aren't moving as fast, almost as if daring humanity to stop them as they cause disaster after disaster.

Yep, duplicates of Superman. All of his powers, but not as stable. If they use too much power, they disintegrate. After a week or so, they disintegrate anyway. Apparently they have no ability to think and they are being remotely controlled. Still, there is almost no hope to stop them.

Jimmy Olsen's stories are now revealing just who Lex Luthor is and what he has done.

There are more and more Superman duplicates all over the planet. Superman is fighting them, but two or three can match him for a while.

But Lex Luthor has a plan. He's built a Kryptonite ray gun. He meets with the the President to hand over the prototype and the plans in exchange for a deal. That's when the duplicates attack. Luthor and White are killed and most of Washington with them.

But Luthor always has an Ace in the hole. There's a second prototype. Much larger and more powerful. As Superman fights duplicates over the skies of Metropolis, a superstrong young man carries the huge prototype into the air. Superman grapples with one of the duplicates.

Ready, aim, fire!

The single shot from the prototype shatters all the duplicates but one. Superman catches about half the concentrated power of the ray blast and falls to Earth dying.

Yep, I just killed Superman.

Meanwhile, the duplicate who was grappling with Superman changes. His body becomes oddly crystalline. The blast makes him much more stable and even more powerful than Superman ever was in his prime.

Yep, it's Bizzaro.

Ace caught the backblast and is down for the count.

And in the sky, there's a skull-shaped ship with tentacles that is demanding that all Kryptonian based tech be surrendered at once.

Yep, it's Braniac.

And that is where the film ends, with Superman gone and with Earth soon to be under the total dominion of a organic computer.

With Superman's son a drug addicted sociopath who is probably a murderer who just lost two fathers, without his powers and going through massive withdrawal trauma.

Obviously it is a setup for the next film.

Humanity enslaved. A resistance movement spearheaded by Lois and Jimmy. Ace trying to recover enough power to take on the baddies. More and more of the Earth's technology becoming a part of Braniac. Brainac controlling Bizzaro.

Will Ace put on the suit?