Henry Cavill may officially be the next actor to don the Superman costume, but is he right for the role? Here’s James’ opinion...
The casting of a new Superman has the potential to be a huge moment in any geek's week, but with the character's stock damaged following the underachieving Superman Returns, it's hard not to be a little cautious about it.
The geeks' choice was undoubtedly Jon Hamm, an actor whose performance as Don Draper in Mad Man already shares much with the Man of Steel, a lonely individual, disconnected from his past, possessing gentle inner strength and leading a double (occasionally triple) life. All you'd have to do is put a cowlick in his hair and you're virtually looking at Superman already.
However, many, including Hamm, for that matter, considered him too old for the role. Which begs the question: how old is too old? This is a story about a super man, after all. If anything, the concern should be casting someone too young (something that didn't bother previous director Bryan Singer, who chose an actor younger than Tom Welling, who was still playing 'Superboy' over in Smallville.)
A character like Superman doesn't just rely on his strength and powers to inspire people, but his experience, empathy and, to some extent, authority. The marketable appeal of actors in their mid-20s is easy to understand, but we'll know the time has come for movies to treat Superman seriously when a director dares to cast someone in their 30s in the title role. Someone with the gravitas and life experience to make you believe he knows what he's talking about.
Still, maybe Henry Cavill can adequately pretend. That's what he's paid to do, after all. Bearing the constraints of the industry in mind, Cavill does seem like a good choice. In particular, his relative obscurity works for him the same way Brandon Routh's did. The idea that you might cast someone more popular, or with inherent drawing power, is easily dismissed. In a Superman film, the actor should not overshadow the icon.
This is because the Superman story is, at its heart, about an outsider showing us how good we can be. The last thing you want in the role is an ‘insider'. As much as the much-rumoured Nic Cage Superman would have been a true sight to behold (whatever your opinion of The Cage!), it would have given Superman the wrong power balance. Just because he can fly, it doesn't mean he gets to talk down to us mortals. That's sort of the point.
Casting someone on his way up, rather than someone at the top, neatly sidesteps that concern that we might find Superman's message trite, patronising and self-inflated. We already know we'll never be Nic Cage, but watching Cavill step forward and make the role his own would remind us that even the best of us was a nobody once.
Of course, it all depends on what the story is, and as yet, there are no details. One can only hope that Zack Snyder shies away from J. Michael Straczynski's recent Superman: Earth One as a template, particularly given the faithful manner in which he translated 300 and Watchmen to the screen.
Clearly written with the intention of giving Superman's origin a cinematic reboot, Earth One features a Superman initially more interested in earning the big bucks than saving humanity, and a woeful villain in the form of alien general Tyrell, who brings an alien fleet to Earth looking for the last son of Krypton in order to fulfil the terms of his demolition contract.
You know a re-telling of the Superman origin has taken a wrong turn when it ends with the edict "Avenge the death of Krypton!", and the hoody-wearing sulky version of the character that permeates Straczynski's comic is worryingly present in the mind when you consider that Cavill was Stephenie Meyer's first choice for moody sulky Edward Cullen in the Twilight films. Let's hope it's a coincidence.
Still, the casting of a new Superman is but the first of the many hurdles that a Superman director has to leap. Snyder has arguably cleared this one without much trouble. Nothing about Cavill screams 'mistake'. We just have to hope Snyder knows how to use him better than Bryan Singer used, or rather, didn't use, Brandon Routh.
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