Actor Justin Hartley played versions of both Green Arrow and Aquaman in TV’s Smallville-verse and an attempted spinoff pilot. With the animated Injustice, debuting next week, he finally gets a shot at the big guy himself…Superman. But it’s not the Superman most people think of. In conversation with EW, he reveals that that’s the main appeal.
“Everybody always says it’s tough [to] play a character that is considered perfect. He’s got no flaws, and there’s nothing wrong with him. I was lucky to have been blessed with a script where it’s actually the opposite,” says Hartley. “You see him a completely different way where he obviously is not perfect and making rash, draconian decisions about things that are going on. I think it was very interesting where they put him and how he got himself into and how he got himself out of it.”
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Indeed, in Injustice a grief-stricken Superman decides to become a heavy-handed world’s policeman, with devastating consequences. This allowed Hartley to play more emotions than a typical Superman tale might contain. “I thought it was a cool idea to [not] sound like a deep baritone guy because he’s doing things are a little bit out of control, and everything that he’s doing is driven by emotion. So I thought, well if we humanize him in that way, there can be a lot of emotion in his voice, and he can sound a little confused,” Hartley says. “Then, there are times where I would choose to make him sound a little more sinister. At the very beginning of the movie, you want him to be sort of giddy and in love. I got a lot to play with.”
Injustice will arrive on 4K, Blu-ray, and digital platforms on October 19.
What do you think of Hartley’s interpretation of Superman? Let us know in comments.
Recommended Reading: Injustice: Gods Among Us Year One: The Complete Collection
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