Maybe Brandon Routh has really bad personal hygiene habits.
I remember reading (around the time that they obtained Routh’s costume) that all that stuff had been resolved. And if it was indeed still a problem, I don’t see how they could have shown as much as they admittedly did.
Curiously, though the name “Superman” was used twice in the Finale, I don’t recall ever hearing the name “Superboy” in the entire series.
Entirely possible, I suppose. But then they could’ve made a new costume. They certainly spent enough money on other costumes!
Without the luxury of a producer or director quote I’m as certain as I can be that every moment of we saw of Welling in costume was in fact CGI. They were all long shots, and the close ups all looked the same, his head super imposed on an obviously CGI cape and background. It became distracting and I kind of wished they hadn’t have done it in retrospect. Though the implication of Clark and Lois making eye contact on the plane was kind of important.
It’s incredibly strange. I know early on there was an edict from the producers which made it into interviews, “no flights, no tights.” It informed the shows entire MO. “Smallville”, was never supposed to be about Superman, it was supposed to be about “Clark Kent”, and the lessons he learned.
The producers probably never figured the show would be as successful or last as long as it did. But as the years drug on it probably became obvious that they were going to need to pay off all this build up at some point.
Did Tom Welling specifically object to wearing the costume? I’ve heard rumors, but honestly, I don’t know. The finale would seem to answer the question definitively though.
And yeah, given the show’s premise, if he was dead set against EVER wearing the costume regardless of the circumstances he should have passed on the offer.
To be fair though if I had been in his place as a struggling actor/model and the opportunity had been presented itself 10 years ago as it did him, I probably wouldn’t have done differently.
Me too, to be honest.
But given such strong opposition to wearing it, they should have come up with some other way of ending the series. Do I really need to search the interviews from the past few months to be able to cite how many times the producers said things like “The fans won’t be disappointed”? Surely, they must have realized how disappointing this sort of ending would be.
And I think that word sums up a lot of what I feel. It would have been a lot less disappointing if they hadn’t built up our expectations.
Just to clear this up…
Back in 2006 there was a lawsuit concerning the rights around “Superboy”, not “Superman”. The estate of Jerry Siegel argued that Superboy was a distinct and separate entity from Superman which DC comics/Warner Brothers had never obtained the rights to.
There’s been a lot legal wrangling over the definitions since that time and I’m not entirely certain what the current status is.
If anyone is really interested in this I can probably dig up some cites. On a cursory google search I can’t find anything post 2009. So, again, not sure about the current status. Keeve is right though. Superboy is never uttered in the show. And it was a very conscious decision for Smallville because of this lawsuit.
Hmm, I hate to quote myself, but I’m going to have to backtrack on this a bit. I was just perusing the Superboy link on Wiki and according to that the “Superboy” name is actually used twice in the show. Once to refer to another character, and once with Clark himself. So maybe the rule doesn’t seem to have been cast in stone.