Superman, The World's Most Recognizable Superhero, Has Been Reduced To Cameos

Henry Cavill will once again be as good as Superman as his weak scripts will let him be now that Deadline reports that he's signed on to continue playing the Man of Steel in the DC cinematic universe. But there's a catch. We won't be getting any standalone Superman movies out of him, just a lot of cameos in other DCU movies. It's like having Michael Jordan coming off the bench. Yeah, he'll give the second unit players a boost, but he's better suited leading the team, just Superman won't psychologically ruin fellow Justice League members whenever possible.

Cavill's got The Witcher on his plate, the kind of big, sprawling project you take on as a way of telling all the other big projects out there that your schedule is a little too jam-packed with werewolf stabbings, so they're going to have to back up a dump truck of cash to pique interest. A contract negation impasse is what drove Cavill away from the role late last year. Warner Bros. isn't dumb. They want as many Superman movies as possible, but they also wanted to keep Cavill since he's a big young star rather than recast. A deal to have him appear in a smaller capacity is probably the closest they could get.

If Warner Bros. had made better DC movies, maybe Cavill is signing a new five-movie deal now instead of reducing the role of Superman, one of the most recognizable characters in the history of the human race, to a special guest star. Superman is superheroes. He's the platonic ideal of men in tights and capes fighting crime extrajudicially because good luck trying to stop a guy who can flick you to the moon. But now he's to the DCU what the Hulk is to the MCU -- a major player who should be front-and-center and now he's the wacky neighbor who pops into the adventures of some other B and C-list superhero's story to wild studio audience applause and then leaves before anyone starts wondering why they don't give that guy his own movie.

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Top image: Warner Bros./ DC Comics