JuicyTalk
When Henry Cavill was cast as Superman in early 2011, the hierarchy of power shifted in DC… Wait, sorry, wrong movie; his career trajectory was fundamentally rewritten. It is, as for many actors who take on iconic actors, still the role he’s most associated with.
Things move on, however, and Cavill has major projects that might redefine his brand, with both the Highlander reboot and his Warhammer franchise incoming. But until then, Superman is still both his greatest achievement and a huge missed opportunity. It instantly turned him into a household name, and even the most cynical of commenters cannot deny that he brought incredible aura to the role.
Obviously, we should have had a lot more of Cavill’s Superman. Even when DC brought Superman into his sequel and killed off his chance to lead true solo project, he remained the heart of Zack Snyder’s DCEU into the Justice League sequels we didn’t get to see. The chance to see more of that scrapped expanded universe is precisely the reward the Restore the Snyderverse movement has continued to campaign for.
Sadly, the closest we came to a true future for Henry Cavill’s Superman was the chaotic mistruth sold by Dwayne Johnson, that brought him back for a cameo intended to set up something more substantial. Then the new DCU was launched and Cavill fell back into the void. And what makes that premature farewell so tragic is not just the promise of what could have been but the quality of Cavill’s performance in what actually was.
5
Justice League (2017)
The fact that the theatrical cut of Justice League, as curated by Joss Whedon, is even remotely watchable is actually quite remarkable now that we know the full production story. Because the crossover event movie is now best considered one of the most famously compromised artistic endeavors in the history of art, let alone cinema.
It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie, cobbled together from the footage Snyder shot to his original vision, before he had to step back, and from Whedon’s reshoots. The stitches show a little too much in the tonal dissonance: Whedon clearly wanted (or was told to make) a lighter ensemble, and the story never quite manages to survive its troubled genesis. It also doesn’t help that there are some criminally bad digital choices, and the resulting mangling of Superman’s story in particular is close to criminal. The mustache was the least of the issues.
Around the unignorable issues, Cavill tries his best to channel a classic, bright-eyed version of Clark Kent once he’s resurrected but like everyone else, he’s just too thinly written. The plot is messy, the villain’s edge is blunted unforgivably, and nothing feels particularly earned.
4
Black Adam (2022)
It might feel slightly unfair to include Black Adam, given it features roughly twenty-seconds of Henry Cavill’s Superman in an ill-judged post-credits scene, but there’s just too much baggage here to ignore. Marketed – rather cynically, it has to be said – as the new founding stone of the DCEU reshaped in Dwayne Johnson’s image, Black Adam was supposed to be the first step in Cavill’s triumphant return as Superman. It did not work out.
Annoyingly, of course, the sight of Cavill stepping out of the shadows in his classic blue-and-red suit to John Williams’ iconic score was an undeniably thrilling moment. As he always had, he looked the part, and there was genuine promise in the idea of him facing off with Black Adam. Unfortunately, Black Adam as a movie was already starting from a losing position as a genuine ignition point for the franchise, and it simply wasn’t good enough to fight the inertia of the DCEU. Johnson is actually very good as the antihero, and the rest of the Black Adam cast tends to be badly underrated, but the movie is too formulaic and too over-burdened with hollow CGI to be genuinely great. Still, it’s fun and certainly has its moments, even if it occasionally takes itself a little too seriously. Pierce Brosnan’s Dr Fate is the stand-out, by some distance.
3
Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
If you were to measure cinematic greatness by weight of discourse, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice would probably rank just behind its sequel and The Last Jedi as the best ever. It got very tiresome, very quickly, and the actual substance of the movie was swallowed up entirely, which was a shame, because there are genuinely lots of things to like about Dawn of Justice.
Zack Snyder’s director’s cut is famously an improvement on the theatrical version, but the original is still better than the tide of negatively around it would suggest. The movie attempts to deconstruct the idea of superheroism, which is both its most interesting idea and the most obvious thing it would be hated for, despite the MCU playing with the same idea for the best part of two decades.
The story does, rather unfortunately, get bogged down by too many sideplots, and a wide-eyed fascination with non-existent movies just over the distant horizon, but the core is strong. It’s also too grim for some sensibilities, and it was clear Snyder was never interested in making the expected version of a Superman and Batman crossover.
Cavill was at the center of a lot of the movie’s hottest criticism, because of the way Superman and Clark Kent were written, and it’s hard not to wish he was allowed a little more space to perform without the obvious burden of Clark’s existential crisis. Then again, you can’t criticize Cavill’s commitment to Snyder’s vision, whether you agree with it or not.
2
Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
Precisely nobody needs yet another recap of how Zack Snyder’s Justice League came to be, or how unprecedented it was as a release, but it’s unwise not to acknowledge that those circumstances set expectations ridiculously high for Snyder’s reclamation project. And make no mistake, he pulled it off.
His version and Whedon’s Justice League are night and day, despite having most of the same skeleton. Snyder did, of course, shoot a fair amount of new footage, and added in entire storylines, but the weird fetishism around criticizing that as if it wasn’t entirely his right to do so was always one of the strangest talking points pre-release. The result was a restoration that made amends for basically every error of the mutant original.
If Batman v Superman was about breaking down superheroism to understand it, Snyder’s epic Justice League was about reestablishing the famous DC group’s mythology. It’s theatrically grand, visually impressive, and Cavill’s Superman is restored at the heart of it, complete with the iconic black suit.
1
Man of Steel (2013)
More than a decade after its release, there is no compelling argument against Man of Steel being both a great Superman movie and the perfect advertisement for how well Henry Cavill’s casting turned out. Uninterested in paying homage to Christopher Reeves’ iteration of the character, Snyder told a grounded version of the origin story that sought to explain the idea of a god living among occasionally very hostile humans, and his almost reluctant heroism. And despite the sweeping sci-fi concept and high-concept moments, Man of Steel successfully plays as the story of an outsider finding his place.
Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score is a stunning achievement, and so too is Snyder’s eye for action spectacle. Some visual choices have aged a touch worse than others, but it’s a bold vision that remains incredibly entertaining. It’s just a shame we never got to see its true sequel.
Like Reeves before him – and David Corenswet since – Cavill managed to utterly convince as Superman in the movie, even as it transformed him from thoughtful loner carrying the weight of the world to its protector. In that first flight sequence, accompanied by Zimmer’s soaring music, we saw everything we needed to be completely captivated by both sides of the character. And yes, Man of Steel’s ending was controversial – and remains so – but what great art doesn’t piss some people off?
