Clearly, there's a real onus on you to do something correctly when everybody, at least in the United States, had a really clear, specific idea of what this guy looked like - and even more so, what he looked like as Clark Kent and as Superman. You have this whole vast audience of people who would be acutely aware of any deviation whatsoever and probably holding you to a slightly higher standard as a result.
I don't like James Bond. They made him a super hero, but he is just an agent, a human being. In my movies, secret agents are more realistic, I didn't want to portray them in the most glowing colours.
You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.
I seem to have been cast several several times to do it. I think in this one, Phoenix is not purely evil. She was in the comic books at some point but the way the writers created her or we always talked about her, was that she was torn with her powers taking over and trying to control them at the same time. It was challenging to play which made it interesting for me to play this character.
I think that different actors bring different qualities to the Batman character. It's such a wonderful mantle to put on that I think it's a lot of fun for different actors to see how they play it.
I never imagined myself playing a superhero because I don't see myself the way superheroes have been portrayed or shown to me my entire life.
Marvel Studios has depicted the Marvel superheroes so beautifully that the whole world loves them.
I really kind of always wondered, if I did Superman, what I would do, and what I would be able to do, because it's a little harder for me, being kind of a realistic guy, to imagine doing a character who almost has no limits to his powers.
When you're playing a superhero, you're almost playing two different people. I separate when I'm playing Jefferson Pierce and the days when I'm playing Black Lightning.
People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don't need to see sweat patches under Superman's arms. I want to see him fly.
The fundament of a superhero is the guy in tights saving innocent people from bad things. It's amazing how infrequently that seems to happen in superhero comics these days.
I love other movies that have been made since, but I think more than any comic book movie, 'Superman' just totally seemed to capture superheroes in ways that others have not.
With Superman, there are certain limitations for an actor. You can't go past certain boundaries because then you cease to be what the character is.
