There are times when actors take on roles and are absolutely crushed when the movie doesn’t perform as it’s expected to, and I’ll admit that I’m one of those that have stated that Routh wasn’t the best actors to ever don the garb of the man of steel. But as the years have gone by it’s been a little more obvious that he’s not the worst actor to ever play Superman, since really, Superman Returns wasn’t the best movie in the history of this character and should be judged without bringing Routh down. It didn’t exactly kill his career, but it didn’t do him any favors either since the movie felt a little disjointed and as though it was slapped together using various ideas that might have been able to expand on their own but otherwise didn’t really fit together. Kevin Spacey wasn’t too bad as Lex Luthor, but to be real he was a bit over the top and not nearly sinister enough, while Parker Posey was, well, Parker Posey, meaning her acting was definitely over the top and cringe-worthy to an extent that she felt as though she might have been trying to pull off an act from one of the earlier Superman movies. But Routh at least kept his character interesting while Lois Lane was chilly and absolutely Frosty to the man of steel, as James Marsden played the intrepid husband of Lois Lane and didn’t really feel like a completed character.
Seriously, the actors aren’t to blame in this movie, it’s the convoluted and less than perfect script that really tore this thing to pieces and made it feel less than inspired. Now let’s dial it down just a notch and say that compared to other actors that took on the role of Superman, Routh is better and worse since he wasn’t entirely perfect, but he wasn’t horrible either. If anything he felt like a man that was out of place since upon returning to earth after being in space for so long. The problem was that the script had him still acting like a boy scout when in truth it would have been better if he’d grown out of that particular phase and become a little more human in his dealings with people, since while he did uphold the character of the idealistic Superman from decades past, this wasn’t exactly the look or the act that people wanted, since the goody-two-shoes act that has been part of Superman’s character in the past is kind of a dead and buried concept that needs to stay that way. It’s not a demand to see Superman become more aggressive and tough to deal with, since in the DC universe there aren’t a lot of characters that can handle Superman if he goes all out. But instead, it would be great to see him adopt a slightly darker attitude at times simply because he’s been on earth long enough that his optimism shouldn’t have died to be honest, but it should have been dinged more than once by now, as it obviously has in the comics.
Thankfully his career has kept going, and he’s even stuck with DC since he’s taken on the role of The Atom in the CW’s The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. He’s even taken on the role of Superman again for a brief period of time during a crossover event, so it’s fair to say that not all faith was lost in his abilities when Superman Returns was released. But when a movie tanks a lot of people need to find a scapegoat and when someone is front and center like Routh was it’s not hard to guess just who’s going to catch a lot of the heat. To be certain, Superman Returns wasn’t a horrible movie, but it felt as though it could have been tightened up in terms of its story, the dialogue could have been better, and the final confrontation could have been something far more entertaining than Superman launching a chunk of earth that had been threaded through with kryptonite into space. I won’t even get into the idea of what might have happened if the trajectory he set it on ended up impacting with another planet at some point.
But at the end of the day Routh was seen as one of the problems with Superman Returns when the truth is that he did his job and he didn’t really fall on his face since it’s easy to think that even if the movie could have been better, the only real improvement to his character would have been accomplished by adding in a little more attitude. Superman being an all-powerful boy scout became kind of an outdated concept a long time ago. Routh didn’t do that bad of a job, but a lot of people didn’t want to hear that.
Follow Us
