Holding out for a hero

Why did Bryan Singer want to swap the X-Men for America's favourite illegal alien? Lesley O'Toole looks up, up in the sky
Bryan Singer
'Probably the most heterosexual movie I've ever made. Really' ... Bryan Singer, and Brandon Routh as Superman. Photographs: Lucas Jackson/AP

With the US summer box office season almost in full swing, Superman Returns, which opened there on Wednesday, will almost certainly benefit from an enviable state of affairs its savvy marketing team did not institute. Never has American public morale been so low. More than 2,500 US soldiers have died in Iraq, and support for the war is waning as fast as that for the least popular president in decades. With the immigration debate front and centre of the country's war at home, there has never been a more poignant, symbolic time to resurrect Superman, the quintessential all-American hero.

  1. Superman Returns
  2. Production year: 2006
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 12A
  5. Runtime: 154 mins
  6. Directors: Bryan Singer
  7. Cast: Brandon Routh, James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey
  8. More on this film

The irony of his being an illegal "alien" is not lost on anyone, least of all director Bryan Singer. This inordinately talented 39-year-old passed on the chance to complete the X-Men trilogy (his first two films deservedly earned raves) to shepherd Superman's big-screen return, 19 years after Christopher Reeve last donned the famous cape and tights.

What is it about Superman then for Singer, who one might inaccurately deduce has had his fair share of superheroes?

"He can fly. I think that's it. To me, he's the ultimate superhero, the first superhero, the ultimate immigrant, an only child. I'm an only child, I was adopted, he was adopted; he has blue eyes, I have blue eyes. He was not raised by a particularly wealthy family and I was not either. Being adopted, you know, you wonder where you come from. And he can do all the things I wish I could do."

Singer inevitably appreciates the timeliness of such an icon's return.

"He is the anti-terrorist. He may not be everything we do as Americans but he is everything we aspire to be as Americans. At a time when there is moral confusion and ambiguity, it's nice to see a hero who has his obstacles but also shares a common idealism."

He was adamant that his Superman be played by an unknown actor, in this case 26-year-old Brandon Routh. (Oddly, Christopher Reeve was also 26 when he made his first Superman film in 1978.)

"If you cast a famous actor in the role it will always be 'such-and-such' as Superman. I saw the tapes of a lot of famous people as Superman because I had access to all the original auditions. Many famous people, trust me, and no, not in tights. But trust me, it would be fascinating for you to see. I don't want to say the names but seeing these really famous people pretending to be Superman, well, it just felt weird. Superman has to look and sound as if he's stepped out of your collective consciousness of who Superman is, and part of that consciousness is Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, the comic book, the Fleischer animation, Smallville. It's all those things. I needed somebody who could embody that."

The return of Superman indeed gives new meaning to the often-bandied Hollywood term "development hell". Warner Brothers has been trying to get a new Superman franchise off the ground for almost a decade and had already spent millions, long before Singer's version filmed its first frame. Nicolas Cage, Jude Law, James Caviezel, Ashton Kutcher and Josh Hartnett are just some of the names previously attached or rumoured to be under consideration to play Superman.

Once the studio had acquiesced to the version Singer wanted to make, he began his own casting odyssey, watching hundreds more contenders on tape.

"There was just something about one of Brandon Routh's tapes that intrigued me. It wasn't until I met him and we talked at length that I realised I would cast him, but I didn't tell anyone. Two months later I told him."

If America's wars at home and abroad have imbued Superman Returns with something of a home court advantage, there is another, less arbitrary factor at play. The Los Angeles Times recently ran a comprehensive feature about the gay hype surrounding the film, while the cover of May's The Advocate read: "How Gay is Superman?" There is endless internet speculation on the subject, extending to detailed treatises on why even Brandon Routh must be gay (he has worked with more than one gay director!). Routh is quick to tout his girlfriend of more than two years. Singer, meanwhile, is what Hollywood terms "openly gay", though he is not inclined to address the subject today.

"I think the LA Times needed something to write about," he says, slightly defensively, when he has until now been friendly and upbeat. "And it's the internet! There's a lot of stuff all over the internet. And please, he's Superman."

So the gay hype is not detrimental to the movie's box office chances?

"No. He should be on the cover of every magazine. Any time you get a guy who's real handsome and in tights you're going to have that. I always tell people that, if you look at all of my films, Superman Returns is probably the most heterosexual movie I've ever made. Really."

Some online bloggers, then still to see the film, were not convinced: "Gay director, gay outfit, gay Superman, and now GAY POSTER!" wrote one. "What teenage boy wants to see the movie attached to this poster?" jeered another.

There was similar speculation surrounding the X-Men films: the term "mutant", it was often posited, was a metaphor for "gay".

"If I could have split myself in half I'd have done the third X-Men movie and Superman Returns," muses Singer. "It was very hard for me to give up X-Men 3 but I felt better about the fact that Brett Ratner, who's a friend of mine, did it."

Clearly Singer's version would have been more cerebral and the predominantly negative reviews bore that out. Conversely, reviews to date for Superman Returns have been resolutely positive, none citing any homoerotic subtext but some concerned that the paucity of big fat action shots might make the film too pedestrian for an over-gratified MTV generation. That generation may be only temporarily sated by the film's one stunning special effects sequence, but Singer hopes that they will be hooked in by more traditional cinematic devices.

"I wanted to give Superman a vulnerability, and an obstacle besides Kryptonite and Lex Luthor, something we haven't seen him confront. In this case it's the fact that the woman he loves has moved on and has a child and a fiance who's not a bad guy. That's something we haven't seen Superman encounter before and that's the thesis, so to speak."

With Warner Brothers reportedly needing the film to earn upwards of $600m worldwide, it is fortunate that Singer believes his product has genuine mass appeal.

"This one is for everybody, and I don't say that in a pandering way. I also think that it can be a real date movie."

Singer is so persuasive a director that his three main cast members - Routh, Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor - signed on without even reading a script. Spacey seems destined to have played the villainous role - he was approached by two of the previous three directors attached to the project (one being Ratner, oddly) - but of course has a history with Singer. Singer's second ever film was 1995's The Usual Suspects which, unsurprisingly, launched both his and Spacey's film careers.

Singer's casting of Spacey was in any case extremely circumspect given that he plays nemesis to an unknown, unproven actor.

"I did that for the same reason I had Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in X-Men. They are actors with extraordinary gravitas surrounding Hugh Jackman, who was a relative unknown. And there was obviously the same thinking at work when Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando were cast opposite Christopher Reeve."

Does Spacey feel indebted to Singer for The Usual Suspects?

"We're friends. I think the feeling is mutual. Making this, it was like no time had passed. He was just the same person he was, except this time he had no hair."

· Superman Returns is out July 14.

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