Greetings Heroes!

Hollywood is a very diverse place. Why, you have stars such as Michael Keaton, Tobey McGuire, Chris O’Donnell, Nicholas Cage, Christopher Reeves, Brandon Routh, Adam West, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Gardner, Tom Welling, Robert Downey Jr., and many more. What, you may ask, do theses names have in common? (Duh, what site are you on?)

They are all super- or at least, pretend to be.

Superheroes appear in all mediums and in many different forms. Even the comics that print them from month to month are inconsistent in how they depict their facial features, body builds or ever personalities. Whoever the hero may be, he is rarely depicted by the same person twice.

Personally, I find this to be a positive thing. It means that a hero is bigger than the actor who plays him- and his ideals and mission are more important than the name behind the mask. I thought about this when I read about an upcoming Justice League of America movie that is now in pre-production (www.superherohype.com). Apparently, they’ve decided to use an actor other than Brandon Routh, who recently portrayed the Man of Steel in 2006’s Superman Returns. At first, I found myself a bit surprised by this decision. I’m not a huge fan of Routh, and personally I found his performance to be a bit wooden and unfeeling in Superman Returns. However, I was still surprised that they would go with a different actor with Routh so recently having donned the blue tights.

To further examine this question, I decided to look a bit further back at actors who played Superman. We all know, of course, Christopher Reeve will forever be remembered as the definitive Man of Steel, but when he was hired he was an unknown actor. Routh, himself, was also unknown. Other actors like Christian Bale and Tobey Mcguire had little fame before they donned their tights and went out and saved the world.

Other movies with blockbuster names playing the leads *cough*Batman and Robin*cough* don’t seem to fare as well. After taking all of this into account, I decided that maybe it’s alright to have different actors constantly playing different heroes. It’s not as damaging to continuity or as out of place as changing Darren on Bewitched without saying anything, because heroes represent the best in all of us and what we dream of being. When we watch our favorites, we’re not seeing an actor; we see ourselves on the screen swooping in to save the day.

Till next time,

STAY SUPER!