Kal-El may have stayed on Earth, but if Paramount has its way,
Man of Steel‘s star will be making it back to the stars. Our
trusted and proven sources tell us the studio wants Henry Cavill for the long-delayed
Star Trek 4. We don’t yet know exactly who the former
DC Studios star would play in the Kelvinverse flick, but we have at least one very intriguing thought on that score.
Henry Cavill’s time as Superman and as
The Witcher‘s Geralt of Rivia has most of us thinking of him as a good guy, but for
Star Trek 4 we’re thinking
Paramount wants him as the bad guy. Trek has a long history of actors delivering stand-out performances in their films, even in the not quite as well regarded movie entries; e.g. F. Murray Abraham in
Star Trek: Insurrection, Tom Hardy in
Star Trek: Nemesis, and Malcolm McDowell in
Star Trek: Generations. Not to mention that, assuming the Kelvinverse flicks mean to stick to the same crew as the original series, there’s really no one left for him to play in the Enterprise’s senior crew.
The
Man from U.N.C.L.E. star has proven he can give good bad guy after all.
Tom Cruise may be the Mission: Impossible franchise lead, but if you claim Cavill’s antagonist wasn’t one of the best parts of 2018’s
Mission: Impossible — Fallout, then you’re either lying or you just didn’t see the movie.
If a villain is what
Paramount wants Henry Cavill to play in
Star Trek 4, we’d guess it will either be a human or an alien whose species would require a minimum of makeup and/or prosthetics. Perhaps a Romulan like Eric Bana’s Nero, as remembered by
Memory Alpha, or even a Vulcan. Cavill’s good looks are a big part of his appeal, and if they know what they’re doing, the producers aren’t going to want to bury those looks under a mountain of ridged foreheads and noses (i.e. he won’t be a Klingon).
There’s another possibility we don’t really want to consider but, with the history of this long-delayed sequel, it’s impossible not to. Rather than playing a new character, Henry Cavill could be replacing one of the stars of the previous
Kelvinverse films for
Star Trek 4. Paramount infamously announced a production start of 2022 on the film before bothering to consult with any of its stars and at
least one of them — Karl Urban — straight up said there was no way he’d be able to make those dates since he would be filming Season 4 of
The Boys for the rest of 2022.
We do think a villain role is the most likely one Cavill is being considered for. It’s difficult imagining Henry Cavill in any of the leading heroic roles in
Star Trek 4 beyond perhaps Spock, and at the risk of sounding insulting; out of all the stars of the previous films, Zachary Quinto doesn’t seem like the one who would have the most trouble returning. Those actors who have since become attached to much larger film and TV
franchises — e.g. Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, and Chris Pine — would seem more likely to need replacing
Not to mention that while Cavill could certainly be a believable Spock from the neck up, it would be tough to imagine the Vulcan appearing quite so … swole. Sure, Spock is superhumanly strong, but he generally isn’t portrayed as being built like a linebacker.
