Your Dream Superman Movie?

[Anonymous]

a golden age story set in WWII similar to  Sky captain, and pearl harbour...
futurisitc looking metropolis and gritty war scenes.

[The Ceb-Man]

A Superman movie with Brainiac.
Years ago  The Salkinds were going to do Superman: The New Movie with Superman, Brainiac, Kandor, and written by Cary Bates and Mark Jones.
I was looking very forward to that.
Hopefully, in the Superman Returns sequel, Brainiac will be the villian.

[Great Rao]

And maybe they'll even use Cary Bates' old script for it.

[dto]

A dream Superman movie?  Imagine if...

George Reeves was still alive and active during the mid-80s,

"Superman III" centered on Superman dealing with the unexpected arrival of cousin Kara (what the "Supergirl" movie SHOULD have been), and was successful enough to spin off a "Supergirl" television series...

Now check my earlier post about an Elseworlds story, but have "Earth-2" the same year as "Earth-1" instead of a 1955 Metropolis so the "Adventures of Superman" cast would be older.  Restore the characters names to the originals (no "Christopher Kent"), and also change the 1950s atomic bomb test to another incident involving a nuclear device.

"Superman IV:  Strange Visitor From Another Planet!"

http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=10133&highlight=#10133

(Otherwise we could keep the 1955-era Earth-2 and turn this plotline into an animated movie with the original actors doing the voices.  Earth-1 would be contemporary animation style while older Earth-2 would be more Fleischer-inspired.)

Sigh... only in my dreams...  

[King Krypton]

Rock Hudson as Bizarro? Inspired, man... Inspired.

This is another casting choice I take brickbats for. And it's my second go at casting Bizarro. My original choice was Errol Flynn, because of his jokester reputation, his desire to break out of the period-film image, and because he looked enough like Tyrone Power that he could easily be made into a deformed clone. I got skinned alive for the idea becauuse "You've turned a great Robin Hood hero into a moron villain!" The attitude was that if Errol Flynn's going to be in a Superman movie, HE should be playing Superman. (My own mother thought I should have picked him and DeHavilland as Superman and Lois instead of Power and Darnell.)

So I replaced him with Hudson, who I figured would be a safer choice because he'd played the fool in so many Doris Day movies. Alas, I got torn apart for casting "a Superman type" as Bizarro. I just can't win with this character....

[nightwing]

I remember an old JLA lettercol from the 60s that reported readers' votes for who should play the various heroes in a JLA movie (a purely hypothetical movie of course, but funny to see we're still having similar conversations 40 years later!).  

Anyway, Rock Hudson was the clear favorite to play Superman.

As a huge Flynn fan, I have to agree it would be a waste to make him Bizarro.  Why pay all that money for a super-handsome leading man only to cake his mug in monster make-up?  Plus I can't help thinking he'd take it as an insult to play a supporting role to a rival like Tyrone Power (even if he did do exactly that near the end of his career in "The Sun Also Rises"...stealing the movie in the process, I'm happy to say!).

As long as this is a "dream movie," why not pretend we can combine today's modern effects capabilities with a cast of yesterday's greats?  I say put Rock Hudson in there as Supes AND Bizarro.  They are supposed to be made from the same stuff, after all.  And what actor wouldn't love a chance to hog twice the screen time? :-)

Actually, my dream Superman would have been Guy Williams.  I was recently watching my DVD of the first season of "Lost in Space" and he definitely had the build, the jaw, the eyes (steely and intense when needed, kind and fatherly otherwise) and the hair (thick and black).  In one scene in "Follow the Leader," he even has a black forelock fall down over his brow and I had to freeze the image: "Superman!!"

Tyrone, with his dark brooding looks, I see more as a Batman type.  But you gotta admit the swashbucklers provide a rich candidate pool!

[King Krypton]

As a huge Flynn fan, I have to agree it would be a waste to make him Bizarro.  Why pay all that money for a super-handsome leading man only to cake his mug in monster make-up?  Plus I can't help thinking he'd take it as an insult to play a supporting role to a rival like Tyrone Power (even if he did do exactly that near the end of his career in "The Sun Also Rises"...stealing the movie in the process, I'm happy to say!).

So I guess you would be in the "Errol Flynn should only be in a Superman movie if he's the one playing Superman" camp. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I concede that he could have been a great Superman. It's just that I think Tyrone Power's an even better choice.  :wink:

As long as this is a "dream movie," why not pretend we can combine today's modern effects capabilities with a cast of yesterday's greats?  I say put Rock Hudson in there as Supes AND Bizarro.  They are supposed to be made from the same stuff, after all.  And what actor wouldn't love a chance to hog twice the screen time? :-)

I would argue against it because the Clark/Supes fight looked awkward to me in Superman III. Having the same guy do a "twins"-like fight scene doesn't come off right in live-action, at least to me. (It's one of those things that animation does better.) And Bizarro's deformity would allow you to get away with casting another actor, and you wouldn't have to rely on split-screen or any other tricks to get the two characters in the same frame. You'd have them bashing each other in-camera, which I think would look better. Especially if, like in Justice #4, Bizarro's not the only one attacking Superman at one time.

Actually, my dream Superman would have been Guy Williams.  I was recently watching my DVD of the first season of "Lost in Space" and he definitely had the build, the jaw, the eyes (steely and intense when needed, kind and fatherly otherwise) and the hair (thick and black).  In one scene in "Follow the Leader," he even has a black forelock fall down over his brow and I had to freeze the image: "Superman!!"

Tyrone, with his dark brooding looks, I see more as a Batman type.  But you gotta admit the swashbucklers provide a rich candidate pool!

There's also screen-shots of Power with a Superman-style forelock, which I have. And the minute I first saw him in Son of Fury as a little kid, my eyes bulged, and I couldn't stop picturing him in the red and blue. The guy looked like he marched right out of the comic book. So from that moment on, there  hasn't been another actor who more perfectly matches Superman in my mind.

As for Batman...Gene Kelly. The look, the athleticism, the dancer's grace and fluidity, his ability to wear colorful tights and not look stupid, and his  energy in the action films he did make clinches it for me. Remind me to post up my Batman and JLA casts some time....

[nightwing]

King Krytpon wrote:

So I guess you would be in the "Errol Flynn should only be in a Superman movie if he's the one playing Superman" camp. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I concede that he could have been a great Superman. It's just that I think Tyrone Power's an even better choice.

I'm in a variant camp: Flynn should not be in a Superman movie at all.  Flynn's all wrong for Superman; it takes more than good looks, broad shoulders and athleticism.  There's a spark to Flynn, a hint of the rogue, a quickness of tongue as well as hand. In short, he's a wiseguy.  Even in his most straight-laced roles, he never becomes the goody-goody hero totally, and I think his personality is more suited to playing, maybe, Green Arrow (no big surprise there).  

Superman should always be played by an American.  In the course of this discussion, I just realized another perfect candidate, a wonderful dramatic actor who also was a professional acrobat and first-rate swashbuckler: Burt Lancaster!  The more I think about it the more I like it.

Yeah, Burt Lancaster as Superman.  Cool.

I would argue against it because the Clark/Supes fight looked awkward to me in Superman III. Having the same guy do a "twins"-like fight scene doesn't come off right in live-action, at least to me. (It's one of those things that animation does better.) And Bizarro's deformity would allow you to get away with casting another actor, and you wouldn't have to rely on split-screen or any other tricks to get the two characters in the same frame. You'd have them bashing each other in-camera, which I think would look better. Especially if, like in Justice #4, Bizarro's not the only one attacking Superman at one time.

Well, I'm the wrong one to ask as I'm in no way a Bizarro fan.  He's good for the occasional comic relief, but he was never 100% "villain" in my book, and rarely handled well by any writer, other than Seigel's stuff in the "Bizarro Tales" back-ups.  Any "dream movie" of mine would by definition have to exclude Bizarro.

As for Batman...Gene Kelly. The look, the athleticism, the dancer's grace and fluidity, his ability to wear colorful tights and not look stupid, and his energy in the action films he did make clinches it for me. Remind me to post up my Batman and JLA casts some time....

That's an interesting choice.  At least he beats the one Bob Kane always suggested, which was Robert Wagner.  Hard to imagine what he was thinking there; Wagner always had a baby face, plus he doesn't seem limber enough to play Batman somehow.

I'd have to go with maybe a really young Randolph Scott.  Or for the dream "Dark Knight Returns" movie, Robert Mitchum.

Maybe somewhere in the Multiverse is an alternate Earth where George Reeves won the Oscar and a frustrated actor named Burt Lancaster opened malls in the red-and-blue tights to make ends meet after years of playing Superman on TV. :shock: