Yeah, these days I tend to see a lot more The Witcher referenced as Henry Cavill's major role a lot more than Superman
Which is surprising to me, since the Witcher is the one Cavill role I've seen that I didn't think he was good in. Although I lost interest in that show after an episode and a half, so I don't know if he got better.
To the general public and the media, Cavill is most recognized for portraying one of the most famous fiction characters ever created...and it has nothing to do with The Witcher.
Source, please. Because literally one of Netflix's most watched shows of all time can easily be argued to be more popular than a movie that couldn't make enough money to get a true sequel (DC throws Batman at everything they feel can't survive on its own... heck, The Flash even has two of them!)
You are reaching to the point of tearing your arms out of their sockets. If you walk down the streets of many nations (Western or not), you will never run out of people who know "Superman", no matter the interpretation, or their level of interest. Over the decades, there's not a country I've traveled to / worked in where Superman is unknown to even non-fans. He's one of the few works of fiction that has a cultural global footprint across generations. No one is saying that about the Witcher. Cavill's recent history rumors about/return to/booting from Superman was news because of the character and the mark he so obviously made as the character, whether some desperately attempt to rewrite history.
I don't disagree with you regarding the fictional character of Superman. Read my post, join the world of reality and allow my arms to remain where they are, please. I'm disagreeing on the popularity you give of Cavill the actor as Superman. When your attempt at a movie is overshadowed by Aquaman (getting a sequel, by the way), some realizations have to be somewhat apparent I would have thought. Go back in time and peruse the internet again. Variety, EW, CBR, CNN, everything I was reading online were all about The Witcher. Even news of the new X-Men cartoon, because of the showrunner, was under that shadow. No need to rewrite history. Again. It's just a matter of not being scared of reality.
I am totally with @M'rk son of Mogh on this. Without a doubt, @TREK_GOD_1 , Superman the character is super popular/well known. But Cavill himself? I would say (with no empiric evidence) that for the general public, it is evenly split tat they know/love him as Superman OR his character from the Witcher. As M'rk said, Witcher has dominated Henry Cavill news , certainly in between Justice League and His Black Adam appearance. Andi would say, for many who don't like the Snyderverse, Cavill was not the problem. Something that people keep forgetting -- this is really Zaslav's doing. Zaslav is the one, and i believe had said so in interviews pre-Gunn, believes that Superman ought to be a billion dollar property. (ANd really, i think we all agree on that potential). If Aquaman, who was previously considered a joke by many since Super Friends days,can make a Billion, why couldn't Superman (and to be fair to Snyder, most of his casting was indeed great). As for Gunn, and the keeping of HIS intepretations... I would imagine when he negotiated his deal, made keeping Peacekeeper, etc. part of the deal. Since Gunn's movie that featured a living Tree and a talking racoon outperformed SUperman, that was one factor in agreeing to this. Also, i would imagine that Peacekeeper was much cheaper/cost efficient to make, than other productions (such as Batgirl). i understand people thinking it is unfair... but i can certainly understand why it's happening. I strongly disagree with Zaslav's thoughts that since Cavill is the literal face of the Snyderverse, the actor needed to be cut in order to"fix" Superman. In my view, it was really just a few scenes which really ruined Superman (or at least sabotaged that billion dollar success). Flashpoint could have fixed that (and as we saw, they could have re-edited Man of Steel to correct a few things, and it would have helped a lot).
Please forgive the double post -- i wanted to respond to these too... COIE was a masterclass of how to do a company-wide epic, that connected characters from different properties into one story, and have an effect that would reverberate for years. The story itself, along with the epic art, was great in and of itself, as @theenglish noted. But the aftermath is a masterclass in how NOT to do that -- that you need to have a gameplan for AFTERWARDS, before you start that epic (kinda like how i have heard people say that the US should have had that mind before we invaded Iraq). The part about the CW Crisis that "worked was merging at least SOME worlds into one Earth, to streamline (as opposed to ALL Earths)... we saw later that the multiverse was indeed needed (like having Earth -3 / Evil Superheroes universe), and Crisis in the comics had to be undone in order to fix that. i think unifying mediums (movies, film, and now games) really does make sense. I know Christopher will argue about how we can have muliple versions at the same time. but in order to get the most momentum, you need one version at a time. The Flash CW TV series has shown how that works -- especially if you show respect to previous versions, which will bring older fans into starting positive momentum for the new.... ALso, Spiderman No Way Home did that as well... both of those give us different versions that result in success for the "current" version, while sparking interest in the old.
I was thinking the other day that instead of using Supergirl in the upcoming Flash movie they should have used Brandon Routh. That way you could have had a classic pair up with Keaton's Batman since Routh is supposed to be Reeve's Superman.
Not really. People often assume that, but SR was meant more as an homage to the Reeve/Donner films than a literal continuation, given that its corresponding events would've had to happen a quarter-century later and had some differences in detail. It's more sort of an alternate version of the same events.
Anyway, we already had Routh's Superman in a multiversal crossover in Crisis on Infinite Earths. I'm fine with letting someone else have a go, especially when she looks so good in a supersuit.
Well, I'm a big Supergirl fan (as well as, obviously, a big Superman fan). I'm always going to be excited for any new portrayal of her. Of course, Calle's an unknown quantity in the role at this point, but I choose to be optimistic.
I think if you ask 10 people on the street if they heard of Superman, 10 will say yes. If you ask them who played him in a movie, maybe 2 or 3 will name an actor.