Here's how powerful each movie version of Superman is. The Man of Steel has appeared in eight feature films thus far: four starring Christopher Reeve in the 1970s and 1980s, one headlined by Brandon Routh in 2006, and three with Henry Cavill wearing the Super suit from 2013-2017. Superman also cameoed in 2019's Shazam!, although Cavill didn't play him, but he will return in Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max in 2021.
Superman is generally regarded as the most powerful superhero in the DC Comics pantheon and that has certainly held true in every movie the Man of Steel has appeared in. Superman's powers are legendary: thanks to the light of Earth's yellow sun, Kal-El of Krypton can fly at amazing speeds, he's incredibly strong, he's invulnerable to most forms of physical harm, and he has a suite of abilities ranging from Super Breath, Heat Vision, X-Ray Vision, Telescopic Vision, and Super Hearing. If that's not enough, the films directed by Richard Donner, Richard Lester, and Sidney J. Furie gave Christopher Reeve's Superman even more outlandish abilities, cementing the caped wonder as a god on Earth.
Superman has had live-action television incarnations with George Reeves in the 1950s, Dean Cain in the 1990s, Tom Welling from 2001-2011, and Tyler Hoechlin in the Arrowverse all playing the Man of Steel. Brandon Routh also reprised his Superman role in the Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover. However, the limitations of TV budgets occasionally forced those versions to downplay Superman's power levels, whereas the films' special effects have repeatedly gone all out to showcase just how mighty the Kryptonian champion is. Donner's movie, in fact, innovated filmmaking techniques to make audiences believe a man can fly.
Christopher Reeve's Superman
Richard Donner and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz based the Christopher Reeve version of Superman on the Silver Age Kryptonian hero of DC Comics. Reeve's Superman has "powers beyond reason" and, in Superman: The Movie, Kryptonite was the only thing that could stop and kill him. In a deleted scene, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) tested Superman's invulnerability to fire, machine guns, and being frozen solid - none of which phased the Man of Steel. Superman was fast enough to catch a nuclear missile and he also was strong enough to lift the California continental shelf before it sank into the ocean after a nuclear detonation on the San Andreas Fault.
Superman's greatest (and most infamous) display of his godlike powers is when he flew around the world and turned back time, which his father Jor-El (Marlon Brando) expressly forbade him to do. In the sequels, Superman showed off even more strange abilities, such as being able to make Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) forget he is Clark Kent with a kiss. In the later Superman films, the Kryptonian manifested ridiculous powers like "Repair the Great Wall of China Vision", but this was likely just a shortcut because of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace's budgetary issues.
There really were no limits to what Superman could do in Christopher Reeve's films, and that included splitting himself into good and evil versions in Superman III so they could fight for supremacy in a junkyard. This made finding worthy opponents for Superman a challenge for the filmmakers. In Superman II, Kal-El met his match with the three Kryptonian villains, General Zod (Terrence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O'Halloran), who all had the same powers as he did. In Superman IV, Superman was defeated by Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow); in that same film, Superman captured every nuclear missile on Earth, placed them in a giant net in outer space, and hurled the net into the sun.
Brandon Routh's Superman
Brandon Routh's Superman was intended to be the same character played by Christopher Reeve. Bryan Singer's 2006 film Superman Returns was a sequel to Superman II vaguely set "five years later" that ignored Superman III and IV. Since Routh and Reeve were the same Kryptonian superhero, Routh had all of the powers and did all of the things Reeve did in the first two Superman movies. Despite being able to fly in deep space, Routh's Superman still utilized a Kryptonian space ship to travel to the ruins of Krypton in the five years he was gone from Earth at the start of Superman Returns.
Most of what Routh did as Superman was catch and lift heavy objects, such as when he performed a spectacular airplane rescue and landed the vehicle in the middle of a baseball field to wild applause. Superman's strength was truly tested at the conclusion of the film when he lifted Lex Luthor's (Kevin Spacey) Kryptonian crystal continent into space, which was all the more impressive since the alien landmass was laced with Kryptonite and he nearly died in the attempt. Otherwise, Superman's godlike invulnerability to harm was thoroughly intact in Superman Returns, as a thief found out when the Man of Steel effortlessly withstood machine gun fire and allowed himself to be shot point-blank in his eyeball, which repelled the bullet harmlessly.
Henry Cavill's Superman
Zack Snyder's version of Superman was apparently no less powerful than Christopher Reeve's or Brandon Routh's, although Henry Cavill's Man of Steel has yet to showcase a display of power as outlandish as flying around the world to turn back time. However, Cavill's Superman did something neither of his predecessors have: repel a full-scale alien invasion by Kryptonians and murder General Zod (Michael Shannon) in cold blood with a neck snap. (Although to be fair, Reeve's hero apparently also killed Zod by dropping him in the chasms beneath the Fortress of Solitude in Superman II.)
In Man of Steel, Clark Kent traveled around the world and performed heroic deeds like saving people from an oil platform fire before he became Superman. He also destroyed a man's truck who bullied him by impaling it with wooden logs. Judging from the massive devastation they caused while fighting in Smallville and Metropolis, Batman (Ben Affleck) feared Superman as "an alien who, if he wanted to, could burn the whole place down." Superman's great strength was obvious in his good deeds like catching an exploding rocket and pulling an ocean freighter across the arctic ice in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Superman also survived a nuclear detonation when he battled Doomsday in outer space, although the monster did kill him by impaling him in the heart.
The most impressive displays of Superman's power was after he was resurrected in Justice League: the Man of Steel easily took on Aquaman (Jason Momoa), could see the Flash (Ezra Miller) moving at superspeed, and he even overpowered Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). Superman was the difference-maker against Steppenwolf and his invulnerability allowed him to survive the implosion of the Mother Boxes. Superman also showed off by lifting an entire building full of people to safety in Russia while the Flash attempted to save one family. It's not clear who won Superman's climactic race with the Flash but the Man of Steel was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the single most powerful member of the Justice League. Meanwhile, just how powerful Superman will be in Zack Snyder's Justice League remains to be seen.
