By Gill Pringle
“We didn’t care that much whether the actor was unknown or not,” Zack Snyder told FilmInk in 2013 of his search for an actor to play Superman in his world-building epic, Man Of Steel. “You know what it was? It was when he put on the suit. It was the difference between someone dressing up like Superman, and someone feeling like Superman. Henry Cavill came into the room in his Superman costume, and we just knew that he was Superman.”
Born on the island of Jersey (fourteen miles from the west coast of France, and 100 miles south of Great Britain), the fourth of five boys, Henry Cavill had been slogging away at a professional performing career for over ten years before he was cast in the game-changing Man Of Steel. He scored his first career break at the age of seventeen when he was cast as the teenaged swashbuckler, Albert Mondego, in 2002’s The Count Of Monte Cristo, which then led to supporting roles in Tristan + Isolde, Stardust, Whatever Works, and Town Creek. Cavill’s next big role came with the steamy historical TV series, The Tudors, on which he appeared from 2007-2010, which led right into his eye catching turn as the buff hero of 2011’s epic fantasy, Immortals. “Henry’s very young, and enthusiastic,” Cavill’s Immortals co-star, Mickey Rourke, said while doing press for the film. “He was running around doing push-ups and cartwheels. I remember when I used to get that excited. I thought that maybe he’d better work on his lines,” the actor laughed.
Now comfortable in the red, white, and blue, Cavill famously pursued the role of Superman for many, many years. “Henry and I worked on a film together called Tristan + Isolde,” actor, James Franco, said in an interview around the time of the release of Man Of Steel. “I played Tristan, and he played my backstabbing sidekick. My hunch is that he didn’t like me very much. I don’t know this for certain, but I know that I wouldn’t have liked myself back then, because I was a difficult young actor who took himself too seriously. What Henry took seriously back then was Superman. He wanted to be Superman more than anything in the world. Personally, I’m not sure why. I missed the whole Superman film phenomenon. I was more a fan of director, Richard Donner’s The Goonies and Lethal Weapon. Henry was dying to do the Bryan Singer version of Superman that was being put together as we were shooting Tristan + Isolde in 2005. Henry was in the running but, in the end, he was passed over for Brandon Routh. The night of the premiere of Man Of Steel, I saw Henry from afar on the red carpet, and knew that this was the moment that his whole life had been building toward. His dream had come true, and I was happy for him.”
Cavill was indeed cast by director, McG (Charlie’s Angels), for the intended project, Superman: Flyby, back in 2003. “He was almost Superman ten years ago, back when it looked like a J.J. Abrams script was going to get made with Warner Bros,” Man Of Steel producer, Charles Roven, told FilmInk just prior to the film’s release. Cavill held the leading role until McG was replaced on the project by Bryan Singer, upon which the direction of the intended film changed. Cavill was eventually ousted in favour of unknown actor, Brandon Routh, and considering how that franchise reboot fizzled with 2006’s retitled Superman Returns, the actor is likely happy with how things turned out. In turn, Zack Snyder’s greatest success in Man Of Steel came with his casting of Henry Cavill, who made for a charming, dignified, engaging, and slyly humorous Superman. Though the film had its detractors (which comic book movie doesn’t?), Man Of Steel was a box office success, and was more than enough to push DC and Warner to greenlight not just a sequel, but a mythology-expanding universe builder with Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, in which Superman faces off against a new and equally famous foe.
At the press conference for the blockbuster, Henry Cavill is debonair and articulate, and his love for the character of Superman is plainly seriously obvious. “It’s about going back to the source material,” Cavill replies when asked how he approached the role a second time around. “There’s an awful lot of psychology in Superman, because it’s the one way that you can find to crack the shell. When it comes to playing the character – especially in this movie, because we still get to see the growth of Superman before we see the fully developed character that we know and love from the comic books – it’s about delving into the psychology and discovering the weaknesses therein. It’s about playing upon the conflicts that he has.”
That principal conflict is, of course, with Ben Affleck’s far more ambiguous crime fighter, Batman, who takes direct and extreme umbrage with the chaos and destruction caused at the end of Man Of Steel, when Superman flattened most of Metropolis during his knock-down-drag-out fight with the villainous General Zod (Michael Shannon). This Batman (as played by Ben Affleck) is a far more weary, burnt out, and dangerous one than we’ve seen before. Angry and violent, he has a lot more in common with the ageing, futuristic crime fighter of the seminal Frank Miller graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns, than he does with Adam West or even Christian Bale. “I knew the Frank Miller comic book, and I knew of the relationship between Batman and Superman in the various comic books,” Cavill says of his on-screen counterpart. “It was nothing but exciting. We were opening up the whole DC Extended Universe.”
Happy to praise his co-star, Gal Godot, who brings the superhero, Wonder Woman, to the big screen for first time (“Gal cuts a fine figure as Wonder Woman. She’s so statuesque, and she brings something otherworldly to the character”) in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Cavill is also more than happy to indulge in a little fan-boy silliness when asked what he thinks Superman’s alter-ego, newspaper reporter, Clark Kent, would ask both he and Ben Affleck if he was interviewing them. “I’m presuming that we exist in the same fictitious reality that we’ve set up in Batman V Superman?” Cavill smiles. “I believe that Clark would ask something along the lines of, ‘What do you think the value of Batman is, and what do you think the value of Superman is?’ Oooh, that’s a good question…I didn’t think that I had to answer my own question though! In the fictitious reality of the movie, it’s explained very clearly, and I agree with it,” Cavill laughs.
How has Superman changed in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice? “For me, this felt very much like the development of Superman, and the development of the character that we know and love from the comic book,” Cavill replies. “We’re still not there yet. We’re looking at the guy growing up. He’s become this super man after discovering that he was Kal-El in the first movie, and now he’s facing off against this second guy. It’s a tough outing for him, because it’s against a psychological enemy, as opposed to a physical enemy like General Zod was. We see him make mistakes, and we see him grow from those mistakes.”
Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is released in cinemas on March 24.
