Do you consider Brandon Routh's Supeman to be the same as Chris Reeve?

[bat39]

All valid points. A lot of interviews have been taken offline since 2006, so I can't find the exact interview (I did copy/paste it on another forum 17 years ago...), so I did some digging around. The Superman Homepage had this to say in their SR Q&A:



Anyway, that's why I say Super Routh experienced something similar to Superman II but not exactly.

The other plot point I feel Singer didn't think out very much was that if Lois really thought Jason was Superman's kid, then boy did she rebound to Richard really quickly. But I suppose that's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things since the idea of Superman being an absentee dad for all those years was the biggest plot point of SR and its intended sequels, and that just didn't interest me at all.

It does seem as though Richard really believes that Jason is his kid (and Lois believed that Jason is his kid too). No one disputes that. Frankly, if Richard was known not to be the father, then people would likely speculate that Superman was the father, but the thought doesn't occur to anyone in-universe - at least until Jason manifests some power on Luthor's yacht.

My guess is that Lois may have been seeing Richard casually around the time she has her sexual encounter with Superman. But when Superman leaves earth, a heartbroken Lois turns to Richard and their relationship gets serious. Around that time, she discovers she's pregnant and assumes that Richard is the father.

Granted, you'd expect Lois to suspect that Superman could be the father - but maybe Jason growing up normal (or rather, weaker than normal) convinces her that he couldn't be Superman's child?

"Superman is Superman is Superman," to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.

There is only one Superman. Imagine this as a Platonic ideal. Everyone is trying to evoke that single character. Alvin Schwartz expresses this better in AN UNLIKELY PROPHET.

So, in that sense, Brandon Routh is playing the same Superman as Christopher Reeve. As is George Reeves, Henry Cavill, Tom Welling, Dean Cain, Bud Collyer. But it's not fair to Brandon Routh to say he was playing Christopher Reeve. They are two different actors.

Yet, it seems like every movie and T.V. series, after the Christopher Reeve pictures, has exploited those in some way for their own gain.

When I watched SUPERMAN RETURNS--first day it was out and not reading any reviews, so my perception wouldn't be spoiled by what others thought--I was totally immersed in it as an homage to the Richard Donner movie. By the end I was a blubbering mass of emotions--it completely worked for me on that level.

But Brandon Routh deserves the proper respect as an actor, to be seen as an individual. There are many other movie sequels, where a completely different actor plays the character. Let's not burden those actors with so much responsibility. They aren't the ones who produced, wrote and directed the movies.

With the Arrowverse Crisis, Brandon Routh showed more of his range in the Superman role. I wish they had done a full "Kingdom Come" type mini-series featuring Routh.

True enough. We're discussing a point of continuity here though.

That said, I agree that Routh had the potentially to grow out of Reeves' shadow, and its a shame we didn't get to see more of his Superman in the Arrowverse Post-COIE (then again, Routh himself was booted from the Arrowverse not long after ).