The New Lois and Superman
James Gunn has made his choice for his new Man of Steel and Intrepid, Award Winning Reporter.
David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan.
Mister Corenswet (I’m done spelling his last name) is kind of below the radar. His parents were both lawyers. His primary school was the very private, K-12 “The Shipley” (student body pop, 341). Followed by the Ivy League, UPenn. Then a graduate degree at Julliard.
Not my first choice for a Midwest farm boy but then a Jerseyman from the Channel Islands wouldn’t have been high on the list either. He must have some raw talent because you can’t buy your way into Julliard. Not yet anyway.
He has 18 credits at IMDB going back to 2015 (there is also a student film from 2011 listed for now, but that will get dropped soon). He’s mostly done The Handsome Man character roles. David is also 6’4, which has probably been a limiter on his career up until now.
He’s stepping into a bad situation. His predecessor did NOT get a proper send-off and that left a shit ton of bad feelings in his wake. David is also 29, so at least Gunn was serious about wanting a younger man.
Rachel Brosnahan on the other hand is better known than her costar. She was the headliner in Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I never watched it at all; however, the series was still doing well and only got canceled because in Rachel’s words, “that many elves are kind of expensive.”
On the basis of that, I’ll give her a chance.
She’s replacing Amy Adams who at 48 has clearly aged out of the role. It was part of the reason that Cavil got the boot.
Brosnahan is 5’3 and her costar is literally a foot taller than she is.
The relationship between Superman and Lois is the fundamental problem here. In the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, Clark Kent was nothing but a frontman for Superman. Kent was a weak-man mask that concealed the superman within. Consequently, it was right for Lois to reject the phony man that was Clark Kent for the true person that was Superman.
That version of Superman’s human parents were barely an afterthought. They needed to be mentioned and hustled off stage, consequently, they were old when they found him and died when he was at college which cleared the way for Clark to sell the Kent family 40-acre plot and move to Metropolis. He only became a reporter because back then a newsroom was the closest thing there was to an internet.
Here’s the big thing; in the Bronze Age of comics Clark Kent became more than a mask. He started to have a life of his own. Then his parents stopped dying in college and became an active part of his life. They still owned the Kent family farm. There was a gradual but very firm shift in the paradigm. Clark Kent became the real man and Superman while still a real persona was simply another facet of Clark.
Then there is the problem of him being a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, “mild, mannered” or not. The newspaper was a mighty engine in the 1930s, today it’s only read by old people who are determined to not break the habit. And the fact is being a reporter was the Golden Age Clark Kent’s thing, he was never a crusading journalist. Never. Superman doesn’t expose the corrupt, he punches them halfway across the planet.
So why does he have anything to do with Lois Lane? If she is now rejecting Clark Kent for Superman she is rejecting the real man for the mask that he wears. This is fundamentally dishonest. He doesn’t really have any reason to be in Metropolis now anyway.
The modern Clark Kent is much better served by staying on the farm. We can start with there aren’t cameras all over the place. You don’t have to say, “hi” to people that often and prolonged absences are easier to explain. Although, my personal experience with rural life tells me that all of his neighbors knew Clark’s little secret anyway and were covering for him.
Gunn’s second biggest issue here will be explaining why Clark is a journalist and didn’t marry Lana.
His biggest problem will be trying to justify a $250 million dollar budget for a superhero movie in the wake of the Flash disaster.
If James Gunn doesn’t make some serious waves with the new DCU, this entire slate of projects is going to be canceled.
