These Boots were Made for Filling: Casting Superman

Clockwise from top left: Henry Cavill (The Tudors), Matthew Bomer (White Collar), Joe Manganiello (True Blood) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men).

Let’s face it. Casting Superman is going to be a pain in the “S”.

But it’s fun playing the guessing game along with everyone else. I would say we will probably not hear anything about who is going to portray the last son of Krypton until early 2011 at best.

I have a few thoughts on casting:

Go with a relatively unknown actor. Something about going with a star seems like it would be distracting. This worked with the original Superman films and it was one of the things that worked with Superman Returns. Surround our hero with the A-list actors to give the film the necessary chops, but audiences should describe the actor in the cape as “That one guy from…”.

Make sure he has presence. Brandon Routh was not a bad actor. But nothing clicked with him. There was little he did that was memorable in terms of his presence in the film. Perhaps he didn’t get the right opportunity to show his stuff, but there was nothing like the balcony scene in the original film where the audience gets a feel for who this guy is. Christopher Reeve brought sincerity and a human quality to Superman that is required if audiences are expected to relate to and cheer for our hero.

Do screen tests between the Clarks and Lois’s! If you have ever seen the original Superman screen tests (they should be available on YouTube if you don’t have any of the deluxe edition DVD’s) between Reeve and Margot Kidder, it is clear that the filmmakers were dead set on finding two actors with chemistry. If you don’t believe in Clark and Lois, you won’t care if a man can fly.

Lastly, and I may be alone on this: the spit curl is not essential to Superman’s character.