Henry Cavill Says He's Not Done Playing The Man Of Steel: "There's A Lot Of Justice To Be Done For Superman"

Over the past year and a half, there's been lots of confusion about whether or not actor Henry Cavill would return to play Superman again. But in a new interview, Cavill himself says the part is still his and that he hasn't hung up his red cape once and for all – and he laid out what he wants to do during the rest of his tenure as the character. 

The last time we saw Cavill suited up as Clark Kent/Superman, it was in 2017's Justice League. In September of 2018, The Hollywood Reporter claimed that Cavill was out, reportedly after negotiations for him to cameo in Shazam! fell apart. (We saw Superman make a brief came in that film, but we only saw the character from the chest down.) At the time, the studio was said to be focusing on a Supergirl movie instead, though that has yet to come to fruition. Responding to THR's claim, Cavill posted a bizarre video on Instagram that just seemed to confuse everyone even more...and things have been quiet since then.

But in a new interview with Men's Health (via Collider), Cavill breaks his silence and confirms that he's not done playing the part just yet:

"The cape is in the closet. It's still mine...I've not given up the role. There's a lot I have to give for Superman yet. A lot of storytelling to do. A lot of real, true depths to the honesty of the character I want to get into. I want to reflect the comic books. That's important to me. There's a lot of justice to be done for Superman. The status is: You'll see."

Looks like Jason Momoa was right.

I'm very happy about this, because I've always thought that Cavill has been a very good Superman trapped in not-so-great Superman movies. I thought he was fantastic in Man of Steel, a movie that's very good until it sort of blows all of its goodwill at the end. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is still a failure on just about every level (sorry not sorry), and though though Cavill says elsewhere in that interview that Justice League "didn't work," that was the movie that I think did right by Superman the most.

Cavill's comments here indicate (to me, anyway) that he's done with playing an overly-grim version of this character (AKA the Zack Snyder approach) and instead wants to try to capture the buoyant, inspiring version of the character from the comics. My big question now is: does the fact that he's speaking up about this now simply coincide with his press duties for Netflix's upcoming fantasy series The Witcher, or has he chosen this moment to break his silence on purpose because he knows another Superman film is in the works at DC and Warner Bros.?