Also, dozens of Frankensteins, Draculas, Sherlock Holmeses, and Robin Hoods.
There’s lots of characters that are constantly being cast with different actors. Comic books are only unusual because the recasts are all coming from the same rights holder, instead of a bunch of different people taking something from the public domain and doing their own thing with it. But from an audience perspective, there’s no reason to view Tom Holland’s Spider-Man replacing Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man any differently from Jeremy Brett taking over the roll of Sherlock Holmes after Basil Rathbone stopped doing it.
I don’t think they have yet to find an actor equal to Christopher Reeve, both in terms of acting ability (he was marvelous as the bumbling Clark Kent) and physical appearance. He really looked like the comic book character in real life, much more than the other actors who have tried it.
I saw Jim Lipton talk about how the anticipation before Superman from critics and people who like serious movies was that it would be, well, nothing much.
Then it began to roll out and everyone was saying, “Who is this Reeve guy?” You could not help but realize he dominated the screen.
One of the best movie-saving castings you’ll see. Like Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Nobody thought much until they saw it.
I saw part of the documentary about Christopher Reeve and I remember that other actors thought he should have continued with theatre productions (prior to getting the role).
The difference is that Johnny Depp pretty much created the character; he wasn’t recreating a comic book or novel character. So we didn’t have any point of comparison.
I don’t know about that. When the movie first came out, I thought his nose was shaped wrong. My mental image of Superman had been shaped by the TV show, and comics and cartoons drawn by artists trying to make him look like George Reeves. No doubt there were Kirk Alyn fans who thought that George Reeves was completely wrong for the role.
That has also varied over the years. In the 1950s and early 1960s, artists usually drew him with a barrel chest, and what to modern eyes looks like a bit of a paunch. In the 1970s they drew him with a more slender build. (Less weightlifter, more decathlete.) Post-Crisis, John Byrne made him look more like a steroid-laced bodybuilder.
I forget where I first heard it, but: he’s also just so danged relaxed and confident, in the tights with underpants on the outside, that it somehow goes past ‘casual’ all the way to ‘you know, it almost seems weird that the guy he’s talking to isn’t wearing tights with underpants on the outside.’
This guy isn’t strong because he has big muscles. There are no human muscles large enough to lift a train. He is strong because he has an alien body. His muscles could plausibly be any size.
His secret identity is as an unremarkable reporter, nobody would believe this average klutzy guy is the most powerful man in the world.
It makes more sense for him to have an unremarkable build, rather than being this insanely jacked guy in a newspaper office that can have a secret identity without a mask. Just my opinion.
I like the idea of him being a tall, physically attractive guy, because he’s a paragon that people admire and look up to. But he doesn’t need to look like a physical freak.
Nah, I still disagree. Yeah, Superman is super-strong, and super-tough, and super fast. If you want to put him in a punch-up story, just put him in against a villain who is also super-strong, super-tough, and super-fast, same as you would literally any other superhero.
I’ve been hearing this for decades, but I’ve never seen any actual evidence for it. If the best Superman stories are Clark Kent stories… what are they? What’s your top ten list of Superman stories where Clark doesn’t put on the blue tights?
The best Superman stories treat Superman like a real person, but he doesn’t need to be Clark Kent to do that. You can give him emotional depth and realistic relationships without touching the mild mannered reporter persona, and there’s nothing about writing Clark Kent that makes that inherently easier than writing about Superman.
Yes, stories without interesting characters do tend to fall flat, this is absolutely true. That’s not so much a secret trick to writing good Superman stories, so much as a universal rule that applies to literally any narrative, regardless of genre or medium.
The recent CW series Superman and Lois had a number of them. Smallville, who up until the final episode had a “no tights, no flights” policy. Lois and Clark, the New Adventures of Superman
It’s not that Clark never puts on the tights, it’s that the focus is on Clark rather that SUPERMAN!!!
And it’s not that it is impossible to match Superman with another over-the-top flying-brick physical-god enemy, it’s just that that sort of story gets old quickly.
