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Choosing the Man of Steel for a New Superman Era |
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One of the biggest challenges the filmmakers of Superman Returns faced was casting the role of the Man of Steel.
The character of Superman has a long time association with the late Christopher Reeve who did an excellent and convincing job as both Clark Kent and the nearly invincible Man of Steel.
The filmmakers knew that the person selected had to be convincing as a trinity of people and personalities:
1) Kal-El
2) Clark Kent
3) Superman
The person would have to fit the mental view that people have formed as to what Superman looks like and would have to be someone relatively unknown. The challenges would be much that Richard Donner faced when he selected Christopher Reeve to be the original super hero.
Donner says that the person selected has “got to bring to life the son of Jor-El. He’s got to bring reality and purity to this character. He’s got to then evolve into a super hero. If in any way he is tainted with past references, it would be a major mistake. I think Bryan (Bryan Singer, director of Superman Returns) faced the same conundrum. The moment you associate the actor with another role, you lose the character. To make a man fly and believe it, it had to be an unknown then, and I think today it’s even more true.”
More true indeed. Director Bryan Singer and his casting team spent months searching for the perfect person to revive the role made famous by Reeve. They found an audition tape, for an earlier planned Superman project, of 26-year old Brandon Routh, an actor who had grown up in the mid-west and pretended to be Superman as a child, flying around in his pajamas.
“Just talking to him I got a sense of his mid-western upbringing and all the classic ideals that come from that sort of childhood, which are the same kinds of ideals that Superman embodies,” says Singer. “Then, of course, there is his physical presence. He looks like he walked off a page in the comic book. Pretty much at that point, he became my first and only choice because I felt confident he could handle all three roles – Kal-El, Clark Kent, and Superman.”
And so the part was cast and Routh’s childhood fantasy became a reality as he donned the clothes of Clark Kent for the first day of shooting. The reality set in.
“My first shot was walking across the farm yard and I felt it then too. It’s such an all-encompassing experience, playing this character. It’s a big responsibility to be true to Bryan’s vision, and to embody someone that so many people around the world have seen in their minds.”
And it helps when you’re a little like Clark Kent too. Routh is 6’3” and was raised in Iowa. He’s always been a bit shy and screenwriter Michael Dougherty found the resemblance to Clark Kent to be refreshing.
“Clark comes naturally to him because he is Clark,” says Dougherty. “He’s this guy from Iowa who is 6’3 and good looking, but shy and kind of awkward at times.”
Routh was able to tune out those Clark Kent tendencies, however, and stand tall as one of Earth’s most beloved super heroes. He was no longer in his pajama’s pretending. Now it was real and the city of Metropolis welcomed him with open arms.
