The hunt is on for a new Superman. As of this week, Superman Returns' Brandon Routh is officially out of contract to play the Man of Steel. So, should the long-fabled Superman reboot ever happen, who should be chosen to don the iconic cape? Well, I've looked at this from every possible angle, and there appears to be only one true candidate. Nicolas Cage. No, wait, I'm being serious. Nicolas Cage should play Superman. Stop it. Where are you going? Come back!
Listen to the internet and you'll be told that Brandon Routh should be replaced in the next Superman movie by Smallville's Tom Welling. This is poppycock for two reasons. First, if you listen to the internet you'll also be told that 9/11 was an inside job masterminded by a shadowy cabal of 12ft tall lizard men. And second, a Tom Welling Superman movie would be a terrible idea.
The Smallville universe is all over the place. In it, Lex Luthor and Clark Kent are old school buddies, Lois Lane starts showing up when Clark is about four years old and Kelly Brook is a credible villain. Any Superman film starring Tom Welling would have to reflect all of this, leaving everyone other than the six people who still regularly watch Smallville utterly perplexed.
No – when Superman gets rebooted, the people should get what the people want. And since it's perfectly clear that the people didn't want handsome, bland Brandon Routh turning Superman into a soppy Jesus figure, they should get the exact opposite – a twitchy, balding, mad-eyed, 45-year-old Superman who can barely go more than a couple of minutes without indiscriminately bellowing his lines at the sky like a biblical maniac. In short, Nicolas Cage should be the new Superman. He definitely should.
It's not such a weird thought – back before the days of Routh and Singer, Nicolas Cage was all lined up to play Superman in a Tim Burton movie written by Kevin Smith. Surely he'd jump at the chance to take another pop at the character. He does love Superman enough to name his own son Kal-El, remember.
What's more, Nicolas Cage has precisely the right skill-set to play Superman at this moment in time. We don't want to see a show-off who can defeat baddies by throwing the Eiffel tower at the moon anymore. We want a hero who, when confronted with danger, will dress up as a bear, run up a hill and punch that danger square in the face.
Similarly, we don't want a Superman who disguises himself as a boring old newspaper journalist – we want Superman to be disguised as a shrieking, boggle-eyed lunatic with a British accent so terrible that it borders on the offensive. Nicolas Cage can do anguish. Nicolas Cage can do Kryptonite-addled hysteria. Nicolas Cage can do anything.
In fact, no. I've changed my mind. I no longer want Nicolas Cage to be the new Superman. I want Nicolas Cage to be my dad.
