I disagree, what the animated series did to drive stakes for a lot of Superman stories can very much work in live action, there's also countless stories like Superman Smashes the Klan where he can't just punch his way to victory too. Again, the issue with the past few decades of Superman movies is that they just weren't good like Man of Steel having Clark's dad say "No, do not save me, you need to become Jesus because being for truth, justice and the American way is for *******, now kill the bad guy at the end"
Also guess who turned 27