(CBS) He was our first superhero.

A product of the depression, he lifted America's spirits from the moment he arrived on the scene. And we've been looking up to him ever since.

Look - up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!

Director Bryan Singer always felt a connection to Superman.

"You know, I'm adopted. I'm an only child. So, I kind of identified in some strange way with Superman," he says.

Now, the 40-year-old director of the first two "X-Men" movies is bringing his boyhood hero back to the big screen in "Superman Returns," a more than $200 million extravaganza.

"Superman Returns" is a loose sequel to the two movies from a quarter century ago.

After a five year absence searching for his home planet, Superman is back, but his world - and that of his alter ego, Clark Kent - has changed.

There's Lois Lane, the love of Superman's life, with a fiancé, and a young son whose paternity is in question. There's Lex Luthor - his archenemy - out of prison, with diabolical plans. And there are plenty of special effects.

The key thing for me was to not lose the emotional center with all the spectacle and all of that. And that instead of having the usual comic book film where the boyfriends have to drag the girlfriends to go see it, maybe this will be one that the girlfriends will drag their boyfriends to go see," says Singer.

Does that mean it's a chick flick?

"It's a chick flick," says the director, in an interview with CBS News correspondent Serena Altschul.

Superman has never left the pop consciousness. For 68 years, every generation has adopted Superman as its own.

"You meet Superman as a kid, but he stays with you all your life," says Kevin Burns, who directed a Superman documentary that Singer produced.

"Superman is a modern myth. It is our Hercules. It is our secular version of, you know, a Bible story," says Burns.

Burns believes the time is right for another telling of the Superman legend. "9/11 changed the landscape. It made us more open to the idea that there could be a hero."

The only two people, says Burns, who saw the potential of a post 9/11 Superman were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

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