Quote Originally Posted by Yoda View Post
I'm not trying to trash Routh, I like him a lot. I like his Superman a lot. But he's played Ray Plamer for the last 4 years as more or less a take on his Clark Kent. The distance between those two performances is not vast. His Superman acting was fine, but he didn't do anything of consequence with it beside speechify on hope. There's no battles except the stalemate with Hoechlin, he doesn't "rally the troops," etc. His CGI fight with Hoechlin was actually pretty balanced between the two. He then got turned evil by Lex, went back and forth with Hoechlin, makes a few speeches, then gets killed and replaced by Lex.
The Supreman we saw in Crisis was a lot different from the Ray Palmer we've seen Routh play over the last few years in my opinion. Less goofy and dudley do right-ish and more like a leading man Superman who's been around the block. Even their character voices were very different, as was how how they carried themselves physically.

I think I already pointed out how Crisis really didn't give him much to do. It's just from a performance standpoint I think Routh was able to make the most of what little he had to do and in a memorable way.

So what else is this praise he get's for "presence" besides his look? Which if they redid Hoechlin's suit and gave him better blocking in the scenes they'd be 90% of the way there.
I'm definitely not going to argue they could give Hoechlin a much better suit. But I definitely think there was more to Routh's performance then just looking peak Superman.
As far as Hoechlin goes for his own show, you can already see how they are building up Superman to be the central hero of the Arrowverse now. There's a line in the latest episode of Legends of Tomorrow where once Sara and Ray get back to the Wave Rider they ask them about the crossover and specifically ask "Was Superman there? It's not a big crossover unless Superman is there." Similarly Barry's reaction to Superman's praise on the Hall of Justice is a subtle signal to his importance.
Cisco is also wearing a Superman shirt in previews for the Post-Crisis Flash episode.

So yeah, hopefully having his own show will get to really up Superman's standing in the Arrowverse. Again, I think it helps that he'll finally be separated from Kara.