Brandon Routh donning the cape in Superman Returns should have been a career rocket launch, making the actor a consistent presence on the new movie release schedule. When the movie came out, he was stepping into one of the most famous roles in pop culture, becoming the first big-screen Superman after Christopher Reeve, in a movie built to honor that legacy. Though I think there’s a lot to defend about the flick, becoming a hit wasn’t meant to be for Returns. Now, an interview where he opens up about the aftermath of his take on Big Blue is going viral, with the actor recalling that he wasn’t given what he thought he had “earned.”
A clip from Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, where Routh discussed what happened after Bryan Singer’s 2006 DC movie, is running around the interwebs again. The actor said he expected the role to lead to something much bigger, but the offers he thought would come never really arrived. He explained:
I really jumped to the front of the line when I did that movie, and then I wasn’t given what I thought I had earned. I wasn’t given offers. I was told by my, you know, representatives and everyone, they thought it was going to be a big deal, right? That didn’t happen. The only offers I was getting were horror movies. But what offers were coming in were for things I just had no interest in. But I was in denial of all this for quite a while and I had great opportunities thankfully that came along with ‘Zack and Miri’ and Kevin Smith, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ and then with ‘Chuck,’ and so had things you know thankfully, kept me afloat.
That is a pretty raw admission, especially knowing Superman Returns made nearly $400 million worldwide but still wasn’t enough to guarantee a sequel. Routh has previously said the chance to continue as Superman slowly fizzled over the next few years, leaving him stuck in a strange limbo. Eventually, the Snyderverse came along, and now we’re deep into James Gunn’s DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. We’ve even had a new Superman since Routh, which he’s seen and had an emotional response to.
The Legends of Tomorrow veteran has spoken before about how difficult that period was for him. It even led to him using World of Warcraft as a coping mechanism while he avoiding dealing with his feelings. He has also credited his wife, Courtney Ford, with helping him face what the end of that Superman chapter had done to him.
The roles Routh mentioned are interesting because none of them were the obvious “next Superman” move. Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Chuck let him be funny, odd and more relaxed than the Man of Steel role ever could. They also helped keep his career moving while he figured out what came next.
The Out of Order actor has also been honest about needing to get better at the craft and the business. He has said he had to surrender to the process after realizing he was not always doing the audition work he needed to do. That kind of self-awareness is not glamorous, but it is probably more useful than pretending the cape fixed everything.
Eventually, he did find his way back into the world of new superhero movies and TV shows through The CW’s Arrowverse, playing Ray Palmer, also known as The Atom. Later, he returned as Superman in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, a moment that felt like a course correction for fans who always thought he deserved more time in the role.
That is what makes Brandon Routh’s comments so compelling to me years later. His Superman story was not the clean Hollywood rise people might assume it would have been. It was confusing, painful and full of career detours. But he kept going, and in its own quiet way, that feels pretty Superman, too.
