Your brief analysis of Richard Donner's Superman movie gave me something to contemplate over for the past few days and I had to (painfully) admit: the film wasn't "good" from a storytelling perspective. Well, I believe that the scenes involving Krypton and Smallville were well-executed but lacking. The third act is where it came apart because of the conflict between Superman and Luthor. Luthor simply had no motivation for hating Superman, nor did his plan to sink California make any sense whatsoever but then I have to remind myself that the movie was produced in the 1970s, so it took plot cues from Superman's Silver Age when Lex would create some weird gizmo to menace the Man of Steel despite the sheer implausibility of the premise. I suppose I'm more forgiving of that because I grew up reading my mothers Superman/Action/Adventure Comics from the sixties (which explains my love for the Legion of Super-Heroes.) But ye gads, I do hate Otis and Ms. Teschmacher with a passion.
I do still disagree with your assessment being not that great. However, most of them were inconsequential like Glenn Ford's Pa Kent and Jackie Cooper's Perry White. Margot Kidder on the other hand, I thought she made a fantastic Lois Lane (at least the pre-CoIE version) and that she had good chemistry with Reeve.
I will put it on record that Tim Burton's Batman as well as the Nolan films were fantastic and surpassed Donner's Superman on a technical and storytelling level but I never latched on to Batman as a kid. Maybe I would be singing a different tune if my mom bought me Batman pajamas when I was five, and if she read Batman/Detective instead. Come to think about it, was Burton's Batman appropriate for young children? (I was five when it was released in theatres, so I was watching more Disney and less live action.) I remember the film giving me the willies in second grade.
Also of note: wouldn't
Superman: Secret Origin make a good foundation for a Superman movie? If only I had a time machine then I would give 1976/77 Richard Donner a copy. Doubly ironic considering how Geoff Johns was his protege.