No matter how many reboots of DC’s most popular characters there are, there is still a substantial portion of the movies’ fans who point to the first take on their favorite character as the best take. And, quite frankly, they’re not wrong at all. When it comes to some of DC’s biggest heroes and their cinematic counterparts, there have been more successes than failures right out the gate. Both in terms of the actor’s work and the script’s focuses, the character was pretty much nailed from top to bottom. It’s rare that there’s a Green Lantern, which made him more comedic than his page and panel origination, even if it did include his impulsive nature.
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What follows are the three DC heroes that were cast as well as they could have for the characters’ big screen debut. Not counting lower-budgeted fare or movie continuations of TV series, that is.
1) Superman
Henry Cavill and David Corenswet have put particularly memorable stamps on Superman, but at the end of the day the actor who will always most inextricably be linked to the character is the late Christopher Reeve. He sold Clark Kent’s dorkiness just as well as he sold Superman’s aura of hope, compassion, and determination.
Reeve also just stone-cold looked the part. There’s a reason why filmmakers since the ’70s and ’80s have looked to Reeve’s face as the visual template of what a cinematic Superman should look like. This was most notably seen in the casting of Brandon Routh, whose Superman Returns was a continuation of threads set up in the Reeve-starring Superman and Superman II.
2) Batman
Between Bruce Wayne and Batman it’s hard to say which is more difficult to play. With Batman you have to coat your voice in some gravel (which some performers have done more of than others) and wear a suit that seems to be about 400 degrees. With Bruce Wayne, however, you have to play someone who is almost going out of his way to be a face in the crowd. A very rich face, but just a face, nonetheless.
Between Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, and Michael Keaton, there really hasn’t been a poor performance as the two halves of Batman. Clooney’s comes the closest to that, but it wasn’t his fault as much as it was the fault of the script of the movie he was in. When it comes to the character’s detective skills, Pattinson and The Batman‘s script did it the best, but that element of the character was present in Keaton’s take, too, and the actor convinced the audience of his interest in the cases (be it Joker’s true identity or Penguin’s true motive) just as much as he convinced the audience he could unravel the whole mystery. The physicality, the charm, the look in the cape and cowl, the altruism, everything that needed to be in Keaton’s Batman was there. The only real complaint is that there just wasn’t enough of him in Batman or Batman Returns.
3) Harley Quinn
Suicide Squad may not be a very good movie, but those in the casting department could not have done any better than getting Margot Robbie on board for the role of Harley Quinn. Robbie convinces the audience that Quinn isn’t just a raving individual wearing skimpy shorts but rather someone who has had her mind twisted and feels a compulsive attraction to someone that she can’t fully explain, be it why she’s attracted to him in particular or just who the man is she’s attracted to. He’s a volatile enigma, and somewhere deep down inside of her she’s always wanted to be just the same.
Quinn was then put to even better use in Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad. In the former project we got to see her display in inkling of maternalism qualities, and, in the latter, we got to see just where she draws the line when it comes to violence (in other words, don’t threaten to hurt children and I won’t deal with you myself). The DCU is likely going to recast Harley, which is a true shame.
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