WONDERCON: SUPERMAN RETURNS PANEL

SAN FRANCISCO -- Brandon Routh, star of Superman Returns, joined director Bryan Singer for the Warner Bros. presentation at WonderCon on Saturday.

Following are highlights:

* Who will be the villain of the next movie? "Oh God, I don't know," Singer said. "The video game is quite elaborate and involves a number of famous villains from the world so we'll see which one plays the best."

* Singer said the flying scenes will incorporate stunt work, wire work, Routh doing his own work, computer rendering and incorporating CGI. "The key was to merge all the current techologies," Singer said.

* Regarding X-Men: The Last Stand, Singer said, "If I could have split myself in half, I would have done both films."

Singer said he's friends with the new director Brett Ratner, and from the trailer, he think it's a film that he could go to at midnight with a bunch of friends.

* Singer on Lois Lane: "She gets into trouble, y'know," he said. "And this time she's got other people in her life, so she drags them into trouble."

"I think she's very tenacious, as she was before," Routh said. "And she gets in a little bit in over her head, as we see in the film. Because she has other people in her life now, that brings complications into what she's going to do about it. She can't just run away."

Singer said that actress Kate Bosworth plays Lois "quite mature" for such a young actress.

* Routh on the codpiece: "Well, to my knowledge, I was not in the room when there was a discussion on the codpiece. and frankly I don't understand the uproar about it. Technically, I suppose you can file under good news as opposed to bad news."

Routh said it's a lot like a baseball player's cup, only softer.

* Singer said Superman is more "daunting" than either of the X-Men movies. "It's a bigger film than either of those and it was a longer shoot," Singer said. "And it was in Australia, just from the standpoint I had never worked that far from home before."

* Routh dismissed "the curse" of playing Superman. "To me, it means nothing," he said. "There are a lot of things that have happened to people, but I don't think it's a curse."

* On a sequel, Singer said, "I take these movies one-by-one, but there's definitely potential in the back of my mind to move it forward. I think it's the nature of comics in general. The first issue's not meant to be just the first issue."

* Routh said that playing Superman is "a very, very, very big deal."

"I'm very honored to be the guy that had the opportunity to do this," he said. "To me, it always made sense. It worked out. It always felt like the right thing, and Bryan made it very easy for me not to get scared out of my mind that I'm going to be Superman.

* Routh was asked about the inevitable comparisons to Christopher Reeve.

"I'll say this about Chris and what he means to this film and how he's a part of this film," Routh said. "In my opinion as me as an actor portraying this role -- and I get asked questions like this a lot -- Superman is a really good character and here are these different people, not only actors, but artists who have drawn him and writers who have written for him in all these different incarnations, he's grown and he grows.

"Each artist puts their own twist on it, but they take what everybody else did. They go, 'Ok, that's what Superman is, but there's this that I want to add to.' So, it's people slapping on layers of paint, right?

"Chris, to me, is my biggest influence. So, of course, there's that presence there because he did it so well and he was the guy. I guess he is part of, because my portrayal is based on him as much as his was based on everybody else's."

* Asked about the smaller 'S' on the costume, Routh said: "If you make the 'S' too large, the 'S' sort of takes over the chest and the whole front of the suit. The shape of the 'S' is to maximize the shape of my chest. With the suit restricting and not showing definition the way we would love it do, this is another way to show that sense of strength back to the suit."

Singer said many sizes were tested. "When you see the movie, it fits his body, it fits his chest size," he said.

Singer said the decision was not made lightly. "I don't like to mess with history, although it has gone through many changes over the years," he said.

* What will Lex Luthor be like in Superman Returns?

"Lex in this film is more villainous," Routh said. "It's a darker sense of him and all that he is, so that brings a lot and makes a different sense of danger, which is cool, which is new. He still has his sly humor, but he's definitely darker."

"He's been in prison for a number of years, which will take a toll," Singer said. "So he's a bit more sadistic in this picture."