It’s good to be a comic book superhero at the Cineplex these days.
Crime-fighting legends like Batman, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and even relatively newbies like Hellboy, have made major knockouts both with critics and audiences alike. Yet, throughout this current superhero Renaissance, it’s been two decades since the granddaddy of them all, Superman, soared majestically across the silver screen. Despite nearly 10 years of interest and attention from A-listers–including Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Nicolas Cage, McG, Michael Bay and Brett Ratner–it just didn’t materialize. But that’s all about to change next summer when superstar director Bryan Singer–no stranger to superhero franchises as the helmer behind the first two X-Men films–brings the Man of Steel back to the big screen with the highly anticipated Superman Returns.
Singer recently took a break from filming on location in Sydney, Australia, and flew (in a plane, presumably, and not under his own power) to San Diego to unveil some footage especially prepared for the die-hard fans at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Hollywood.com was backstage just moments after Singer left the convention hall, where his clips were received so enthusiastically they had to be played a second time.
It took quite a while–and a revolving door of potential directors–before Warner Bros. was finally able to get Superman Returns into production. How did you end up being the one to get this film made?
Bryan Singer: “I directed two X-Men films, and I love Superman. I have enough credibility I guess where Warner Brothers will trust me with what they consider to be one of their largest franchises. I pitched the story and they responded to it. It’s sort of a story about Superman finding his place in a world that’s very much changed, and ultimately he does. At the end of the picture, it leaves some things open to future films, possibly, but they just responded to it quite instantaneously. My deal to make this movie was made in 72 hours.”
How do you relate, personally, to Superman?
Singer: “I am adopted and I’m an American and I’m only child. Superman was these three things, except that he is the ultimate immigrant and he carries what makes him different–this special heritage–he carries it with a pride, in the suit, in the sense of the suit. He’s very idealistic. Unlike Wolverine, who’s very cynical, Superman is extremely idealistic, and that kind of represents a bit of what America is and the pitfalls that one experiences in their idealism. So I very much like the character. I find him very pleasant. I’d like to think that there were people like Superman, or aliens like Superman, that existed. Plus he can do anything.”
What were some of the biggest challenges in making Superman, who’s been a pop culture icon for almost 70 years, relevant to an audience today?
Singer: “The biggest creative challenge is just to make a good movie. I don’t really care about things having to do with the relevance of today. I don’t particularly worry about where we are right now because where we are right now, what you consider today, will be different tomorrow. So I just basically wanted to be respectful to the ‘Superman’ universe. I think that the one thing that makes it more modern is the fact that it is about what happens when old girlfriends come home. The world has moved on since Superman was the idyllic young man who emerged from the Fortress of Solitude as Superman.”
What are the challenges of balancing huge super-heroic action scenes in film which you’ve essentially envisioned as a character piece?
Singer: “That’s why it’s so funny because I’m showing a character piece, but the movie is huge. There’s probably fifteen hundred, two thousand visual FX shots. It’s got sequences where you’ve not seen a character do things of this scope. It takes you from outer space to the depth of the ocean. It’s quite a big canvas.”
Is there a huge sense of responsibility in taking this franchise and moving it forward, especially with the changes in the world?
Singer: “I feel enormous responsibility very simply because it’s Superman. It’s an icon that surpasses probably any comic icon and most icons that exist in popular culture. I guarantee you, take the Cross and the ‘S’ into the jungle and you will have 50-50 recognition. It’s an extraordinary responsibility.”
Super Stars
As is always the case with comic book-to-film projects, there were some detractors when the first images of Brandon Routh in the costume were released. Now that you’ve shown some footage from the film, do you think you’re winning over the nay-sayers?
Singer: “Yeah. It’s hard when you just see a photograph of it because it just represents one thing and people interpret it, but it’s just a photograph. But when you see him in motion, how we’re treating it with lighting and color–and this was only our first pass at color timing and this little piece was sort of done on the fly basically graded on a very small screen very quickly for this, but I think that he sells it. I mean, if you were to meet Brandon in the suit that’s when you really feel like, ‘Oh, that’s Superman. OK. I get it.’ But I hope that it’ll be a good reaction. You can please some of the people some of the time.”
Have you given Brandon any direction to replicate what Christopher Reeve did in his films?
Singer: “No. We looked at some of the original Superman just to take a look at it together, but by no means did I ever say ‘Act like Christopher Reeve.’ It’s weird with Brandon: One moment he’s a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve, and the next minute you see that he’s completely different. So it kind of captures moments where you’ll recall the first film, and then moments where he’s his own Clark and he’s his own Superman.”
How comedic are you and Brandon going with the Clark Kent character?
Singer: “He’s goofy. He’s playing a role. Clark is definitely–he’s not young Clark from the farm. I mean, you’ll see a bit of that, but in The Daily Planet he’s awkward. He’s the invisible guy. He’s playing a role. That’s his costume, as Quentin [Tarantino] said in that picture [Kill Bill, Vol. 2]. That’s his costume. Superman is him.”
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What inspired your decision to cast Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane?
Singer: “I’d seen the movie Beyond the Sea twice and I thought that she was phenomenal, and I really liked her. I brought her in to read with Brandon, and they had a chemistry. And it was a combination of her work in <>Beyond The Sea and the chemistry that she had in the room with Brandon and the general sense that I had in the meeting. I’ve had a good record with casting and it’s sort of in the meetings when I fully make that decision.”
In the clips we’ve seen, Lois is in a live-in relationship with Richard White, played by James Marsden. Is Superman going to be something of a homewrecker here?
Singer: “Not a home wrecker. It’s just what happens when old boyfriends come back into your life. Something happens and it’s tough. And they’re not married, Lois and the Marsden character–Richard White and Lois Lane are not married. She doesn’t like that question.”
How is Kevin Spacey approaching Lex Luthor? Will it be a more campy or more sinister portrayal?
Singer: “Well, there’s humor. I don’t like the word campy. I don’t particularly think that Gene Hackman was campy. I think that Gene Hackman was phenomenal. But on the other hand, with Otis [Ned Beatty] and the way that it unfolded there, there was a kind of humor. I’m exploring some of that humor, but at the same time he’s probably going to be a bit darker and a bit edgier. Somewhere in between what you’re seeing on Smallville and what you saw in the first Superman. Parker Posey and Kal Penn and a group of thugs are part of Luther’s gang, who are kind of modeled loosely after the crime gang in the [1966 Broadway] musical, which has so little to do with this movie. Please don’t say, ‘He’s basing it on the musical!’ It’s not that at all, but I’m just saying that there are a bunch of these guys.”
Everything Old Is New Again
You’ve made no secret about the influence of previous incarnations of the Man of Steel on “Superman Returns.” What are your personal favorites?
Singer: “I think that it was a combination of the George Reeves series and then it was Richard Donner’s ’78 Superman. Those are my biggest inspirations I guess. I think that’s a wonderful film…There are things that you couldn’t do back then. Now that we have sophisticated visual FX we can do things technically that he couldn’t back then, but I think that for what he had back then he did an amazing job. You couldn’t even paint out cables back then. You just had to move the camera in such a way and Chris Reeve had to act it and hid things, rigs and that sort of thing. So what they did was very challenging back then and we’re trying to meet the challenge of today with flying.”
Richard Donner loosely based Metropolis on New York. What’s your Metropolis going to look like?
Singer: “Richard Donner didn’t loosely base it on New York City. He made it New York City! He had the Statue of Liberty. I mean, it was New York City. He didn’t make anything about that. We have a city that sort of captures the look and the whole idea of the film, a 1940’s love story. So there will be a bit more deco and things like that. But ultimately, we’ll be based on something in between today’s New York and the New York of 1938.”
Are you planning any other special nods to longtime fans?
Singer: “Oh, absolutely. There are two cameos in the film, Noel Neill and Jack Larson who play the originally Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen from the ’51, ’52, ’53, whatever series. Jack Larson plays the bartender with Jimmy Olsen which is great. They have a scene together. It was fun to shoot that. It was a very long day. Jack came there, flew fifteen hours to get there and then worked an eighteen hour day and he’s no young. So he’s got a lot of energy and I was really impressed.”
With most of your vision drawing from the previous films, did you dig very deeply into the original comic book source material?
Singer: “Very little. Little to none. It’s mostly like original material. If you look back into the comic history, they’ve done pretty much about everything. Superman has rescued everything, picked up everything, thrown everything, caught and captured everything. Everything has bounced off of him. You have to just sort of see what serves the story that you’re telling at the given moment. But there’s definitely a respect to taking an overview of the series and an overview of the movies and an overview of the serial and an overview of the musical which I’ve seen and they actually did. It’s taking a piece of everything–and the comics, of course–in all it’s incarnations to kind of give a general feel.”
Has the recent successful relaunch of another superhero film series with Batman Begins affected how you’re approaching Superman Returns at all?
Singer: “No. I don’t think about other films and their success both financially and critically. I actually don’t. I look at this film individually, completely separate from that. I’m excited. It’s good for Chris [Nolan]. It’s good for Warner Brothers and it’s good for ‘Batman,’ but it’s not something that I can factor into the movies that I make one way or another.”
You’ve now worked with Marvel and DC characters now. What’s been the difference between the two companies?
Singer: “There’s no real difference. They’re both companies that are passionate about their universes and hold them dear and are affording me a great amount of trust in the direction that I’m taking. But I’ve been afforded as with X-Men tremendous control over the picture. So it’s just all support, all good stuff. We have a [Superman Returns] videogame. They’re doing a videogame and I’m involved with that, with EA, and that’s spectacular. That’s going to be quite a videogame. It’ll be for the Next Generation console which will be amazing and that’ll be different. It’ll have elements of the movie in it, but it’ll have elements that will make game play more exciting in terms of the construction of Metropolis and Superman and his powers and stuff like that.”
