The film began, but not as he remembered it. The Warner Bros. logo melted into grainy, handheld static. Then, a shot of a city—not Metropolis, but a real one. Cleveland. A familiar intersection near his old job. A figure in a red-and-blue blur landed on a parked Chevrolet. It was Brandon Routh, but younger, sweatier, the cape not billowing majestically but hanging limp with humidity. He looked lost.
The director—his voice now recognizable as someone famous, someone who’d burned out after a massive superhero flop—said, “No, Kevin. You’re the guy who can’t separate the part from the person. We’re done.”
The camera swung to Superman. Routh was removing the suit. He unzipped the back, peeled off the emblem, and underneath he wore a stained grey t-shirt. He sat on a milk crate and rubbed his eyes. Superman.Returns.2006.1080p.BluRay.x264-HANGOVER
He double-clicked.
The next scene was a warehouse. A man in a cheap Lex Luthor bald cap—Kevin Spacey, but hollow-eyed, chain-smoking—was arguing with the director. The film began, but not as he remembered it
“The point,” he said, “is you keep walking anyway.”
“Okay, take one hundred and four,” the voice said. “Superman returns to Krypton. Action.” Then, a shot of a city—not Metropolis, but a real one
He unpaused.
“I don’t know why I came back,” Routh said to the camera. Not as Clark. As himself. “They said this would be my big return. But I feel like a man wearing a costume of a man who never existed.”