Latest news with #Earthly
Chicago Tribune
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Did you read your horoscope today?
Good Monday morning, Georgia Nicols, what have you got to say about me? 'Because the moon is sitting in the sign opposite yours, you'll have to go more than halfway when dealing with others. This is no big deal. It simply means you have to make an effort to be accommodating and cooperative. Smile.' Well, seems OK, but Magi Helena, what about you? 'Morning doubts should fade, replaced by a surge of optimism and confidence. Use this momentum for presentations to decision-makers.' These two women are astrologers who write daily columns for, respectively, the Sun-Times and Tribune. Helena comes to you via the Tribune Content Agency, which syndicates her columns to many papers and touts her as 'An astrology pioneer (and) author of two books: 'Build Your Dream Life,' and 'How To Sing the Uni-Verse,' and is currently at work on her third book, 'Astro-Goddesses.'' Newspaper horoscopes are read by more people than you might imagine, millions of you. Even as the number of newspapers has diminished, horoscopes remain a popular offering, much like such non-news items as games, crosswords and comics. There are also, it should come as no surprise, dozens of magazines and websites in the horoscope and astrology business. Horoscopes are based on the ancient practice of astrology, positing that information about human affairs and Earthly events may be discerned by studying the positions of celestial objects. This study of celestial bodies and their alignment with human behavior has intrigued civilizations for centuries. Based on that, horoscopes outline opportunities and challenges one may face based on one's zodiac sign, which is determined by one's date of birth. I'm a Virgo, and one website tells me that means, among many things, I am loyal, analytical, kind, hardworking, practical, shy and overly critical of myself and others, and that I like animals and books. I can live with that. Though astrology has ancient roots, horoscopes did not enter wide public consciousness until about 100 years ago. Some experts point to a 1916 horoscope of then-President Woodrow Wilson that appeared in the Boston Sunday Post for sparking the popularity. Soon, daily horoscopes began to appear in papers across the country, offering information to people born on a specific day, often with additional reading directed toward the general public. Many other experts credit the widespread popularity to a man named R.H. Naylor, a London astrologer who wrote a 1930 column headlined 'What the Stars Foretell for the New Princess' in London's Sunday Express for the newborn Princess Margaret's birth horoscope. He soon began writing a recurring feature called 'What the Stars Foretell.' In the United States, a daily horoscope began running in the Washington Post in the 1920s and into the 1940s. During those decades of deprivation and war, newspaper horoscopes offered for many some words of hope. Hundreds of newspapers ran daily columns and so did many women's magazines. As the newspaper industry has been battered over the last decades, still horoscopes remain popular, and polls consistently show that. A 2024 report by the Pew Research Center showed that younger adults, in particular younger women, are more likely to consult astrology or horoscopes. Some 43% of women and 20% of men ages 18 to 49 say they believe in astrology, compared with 27% of women and 16% of men ages 50 and older. It's possible that has got something to do with the proliferation of social media platforms, some of which have created communities of individuals interested in discussing astrological topics. No question, horoscopes are here to stay. As to why, theories abound. Here are some: that reading horoscopes are useful for meditating on your day; that they appear to be so personal that it is as if someone is talking directly to a reader about their life; they allow people a moment of self-reflection; act as a kind of mirror, reflecting back to readers their hopes, wishes and fears; engaging with daily horoscopes can become a source of inspiration, fostering greater awareness and proactive strategies for navigating the complexities of daily life. I have a friend who tells me he started consulting horoscopes — he's a Cancer — when sports gambling was legalized in Illinois. My attitude? It's his money. To me, horoscopes seem pretty harmless. Still, there have always been skeptics. When it was learned that then first lady Nancy Reagan and her astrologer helped shape her husband's schedule based on the location of various planets and constellations, a Tribune editorial at the time described her reliance on astrology as an 'ignorant superstition.' Still, each day in the paper, there was a syndicated horoscope column. And it remains to this day. So, yesterday I read what Georgia Nicols and Magi Helena had to say. I may do that again this morning, but after that I'll stick with another person. He wasn't an astrologer, and I'm sure he had no idea what a horoscope was. But he had this to say, 'The fault … is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' William Shakespeare was his name. He was born in April 1564, precise date uncertain, which means he could have been an Aries or a Taurus, for what that's worth.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
At 54 pounds, this Mars rock is largest on Earth. It could sell at auction for $4 million
A chunk of the Martian surface that made an unlikely interplanetary voyage to Earth will soon be available to the highest bidder. And for a few million dollars, it could be yours. Sotheby's, a British-founded broker based in New York City, will soon auction off a cosmic item it's billing as the largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth. Of course, such a distinction is expected to also fetch a high price tag. Here's everything to know about the large, valuable Mars rock. The large space rock, which has the scientific name of NWA 16788, had its Martian origins validated by the Meteoritical Society, which included it in its Meteoritical Bulletin, the global journal of record for meteor-related science. Sotheby's, one of the oldest and largest fine auctioneers of art and collectibles in the world, will auction off the meteorite, along with more than 100 other items, Wednesday, July 16, at its New York City headquarters. Marketed by Sotheby's as "the largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth," the cosmic object could sell for up to $4 million, making it the most valuable meteorite ever offered at auction. "NWA 16788 is a discovery of extraordinary significance," Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman of science and natural history for Sotheby's, said in a statement. "Weathered by its journey through space and time, its immense size and unmistakable red color sets it apart as a once-in-a-generation find." Rocks in space are known as meteoroids. If those space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere, they become meteors that streak across the sky in events colloquially referred to as "shooting stars." Meteors – or fragments of them – that survive their atmospheric trip and land on the surface without burning up become meteorites, according to NASA. The Martian meteorite is 54 pounds, or about the weight of a standard bag of cement. Measuring nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches, the space rock is approximately 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth. In fact, it is so large that it represents approximately 6.5% of all Martian material ever found on Earth. NWA 16788 was discovered Nov. 16, 2023, by a meteorite hunter in Niger's remote Agadez region in the Sahara Desert. Featuring an unmistakable reddish Martian hue, NWA 16788's internal composition suggests it was blasted from the surface of Mars by a powerful asteroid strike. Intense enough to turn some of the meteorite's minerals into glass, the asteroid strike sent the rock hurtling through space, where it miraculously made it through Earth's atmosphere without burning up, Sotheby's said in an auction house video. Because the meteorite shows signs of minimal Earthly weathering, and its chemical makeup has not significantly changed, experts believe it reached our planet in recent years. On a planet mostly covered in water, discovering meteorites on land is incredibly rare. And Mars meteorites are even more elusive on Earth. Of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites, only 400 are Martian meteorites, according to Sotheby's. The meteorite was previously on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome and at a private gallery in Arezzo, Italy, in Tuscany, before it landed in Sotheby's auction. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Giant Mars rock at auction: $4 million, red meteorite could be yours
Scientific American
11-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Mars ‘Water' Streaks Could Just Be Dust
For years, scientists have been looking for signs of liquid water just beneath the surface of Mars. The problem, though, is that the observations from various orbiting probes have been maddeningly ambiguous, sparking a lot of debate. New research recently published in Nature Communications may have dried up one of the most intriguing lines of evidence for subsurface water: it found that long streaks of material on the sides of slopes and crater walls is likely not from seeping liquid but from disturbed dry dust. Does it even make sense to look for liquid water anywhere on Mars? When we look to Mars today, we see a desiccated, frozen world. No liquid water exists aboveground, and what water we do find is frozen solid, mostly at the poles. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. There's tantalizing evidence of liquid water in the Red Planet's distant past, however. Scientists have spied the sinuous courses of long-lost rivers, as well as the ancient shorelines of vanished lakes and seas carved in the world's rocks, and minerals formed in aqueous environments are relatively commonplace on the surface. That wet phase of Martian history was billions of years ago, however, and all that water has since evaporated away into space or seeped deep underground. But here and there on modern-day Mars, we still see what might be evidence for liquid water lurking just beneath the Martian surface. One of the most perplexing hints of hydration are a handful of slope streaks: narrow, long and sometimes bright but usually dark features that are commonly located near the tops of crater walls and scarps. Many are straight, and some wind a bit, but they do very much look like what you'd expect if water leaked out from behind the slope and caused a small flow downhill. These streaks were first discovered in Viking data from the 1970s. The images were low-resolution and fuzzy by today's standards, but the advent of more advanced orbiters provided sharper views of these features. The streaks tend to be only a few dozen to a couple of hundred meters wide, but they can be a kilometer long. They're seen in dusty equatorial regions and relatively persistent: once formed, they fade over years and decades. In the late 2000s similar markings were discovered. Called recurring slope lineae (or RSLs), they look much like slope streaks but are usually found in rocky southern areas. They tend to fade over the course of a Martian year (which is about twice as long as our Earthly year) and recur annually in the same spots during summer in Mars's southern hemisphere. RSLs are narrower than slope streaks, only a few meters wide, but also look very much like flow features. Is this evidence of liquid water on Mars today? I remember, when these were first found, watching an associated NASA press conference and speculating with some colleagues that these could be from water frozen all winter but thawed by the spring and summer sun sending cascades of material downslope. It's cold on Mars, well below water's standard freezing point, but if the water were briny, it might stay liquid even in those frigid temperatures. (Salts are nature's antifreeze.) And we do have plenty of evidence for water ice frozen just beneath the surface in many locations on Mars, even down to midlatitudes. If RSLs really are triggered by water, they could be the best places to search for extant Martian life (and potential oases for any future human explorers as well). That's exciting! But is it true? A problem with previous studies was the lack of a consistent, global database of streaks to investigate. To alleviate that issue, the authors of the new study examined more than 86,000 images from the Context Camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This instrument takes images of the Red Planet's surface in long swaths about 30 kilometers wide. In the new study, the researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to find streaks in the images. The algorithm identified about half a million streaks: roughly 13,000 bright and 484,000 dark. After accounting for streaks missed by the algorithm and other factors such as branching or overlapping streaks, the scientists estimate there could be as many as 140,000 bright and nearly two million dark streaks in the dataset. This is the first global, consistent database of Martian streaks, inviting deeper—and easier—analysis. Next, the authors cross-referenced their streak database to others that instead track things such as temperature, wind and hydration across the surface of Mars. What they found supports a dry formation for RSLs and slope streaks alike. For example, if the slope streaks are caused by sunlight-warmed water ice, you'd expect to find them forming overwhelmingly in slopes that face the sun. The researchers found only a weak tie to sunward-facing slopes, however. Another water-based expectation would be to find streaks where the temperature fluctuations are high, but instead they're typically found in locations where temperatures are relatively stable. And although Mars isn't exactly humid, there is some water vapor in the air, so streaks formed by wet cascades should occur mostly in slopes with higher humidity. But the study found them mostly in drier areas instead. Interestingly, the more ephemeral RSLs do tend to favor sunward-facing slopes but, like the more longer-lived streaks, aren't found in areas with high temperature fluctuations or levels of humidity, again implying they aren't caused by water. The scientists did find high correlations of slope streaks with regions that have higher wind speeds and lots of dust deposition—Mars is largely covered with a very fine-grained dust that's high in iron oxide (rust), giving it its characteristic ochre coloring. These results point more toward a dry origin for the streaks. They are also found streaks near younger craters, where the ground is more disturbed and can trigger dust flows more easily. For instance, the researchers cataloged some streaks next to a fresh 140-meter crater that formed when a relatively small meteorite hit the surface of Mars just a few years ago. That location has steep slopes and quite a bit of dust; other craters with flatter slopes and less dust exhibit fewer streaks. Interestingly, some fossae (Latin for 'trenches'), locations where there may be ongoing underground volcanic activity, had streaks. The scientists didn't find a correlation with marsquake activity, but in their paper they note that the data there are limited because of a lack of long-term seismometers on the planet. Still, this implies streaks may be caused when a sharp energetic event happens on or near the surface, such as a quake or an impact that dislodges dust that then cascades down slopes. While all this isn't necessarily conclusive, a dry origin for the streaks does currently seem like the better bet. While that's disappointing from the standpoint of looking for native life or supporting our own when we visit, it's still an interesting result. The total estimated annual flux of dust from slope streaks suggests that they may move an amount of material equivalent to several global dust storms on Mars per year! (Actual global dust storms occur every few years on Mars.) These streaks are important geological features of the planet—and we should understand more about them before setting up shop there. As for life on Mars, whether extant or eons dead, we'll keep looking. Mars is dry now, but it was very likely once very wet, so hope springs eternal.
Sydney Morning Herald
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Look, up in the sky: it's a Superman who wants to be just like us
When director James Gunn was offered the chance to direct the next Superman movie, he said no. It's a surprising admission, but one that requires a little additional context. The offer was made back in 2018, and came with a second option, directing what would become the 2021 sequel to Suicide Squad. Gunn took the latter. 'I thought about Superman, but it just didn't really speak to me,' Gunn explains of his initial decision to say no to the most famous superhero in comic-book history. 'They wanted a new Superman, at a time that was much closer to Zack Snyder's [2013] movie, and Suicide Squad was an R-rated Guardians of the Galaxy. It was a little bit more familiar and easier for me to sink my teeth into. 'But the idea of Superman stuck with me and I kept thinking about it,' Gunn adds. 'It was always there, and it was something like a thought experiment, trying to figure out how would I do it. And eventually it was offered to me again, and then I said yes.' The result is titled simply Superman, and stars 31-year-old American actor David Corenswet as Superman, known by day as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. The film also stars Rachel Brosnahan as reporter Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as super-villain Lex Luthor, plus Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific and Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho. The many adaptations of Superman for both the cinema and television screen have told the Man of Steel's 'origin' story from a specific prism: that the last infant son of the distant planet Krypton was dispatched into space as his home planet disintegrated, and was brought safely to Earth and raised by a childless couple, Smallville farmer Jonathan Kent and his wife, Martha. Gunn's film does not change the origin story, but perhaps gently reshapes the emphasis. The 1978 Richard Donner film, which is remembered by many as the definitive Superman film, for example, makes more of Superman's Kryptonian parents, played by Marlon Brando and Susannah York, than it does Ma and Pa Kent. Gunn seems as interested in the Kents as he is in Jor-El and Lara, perhaps more. 'This is a story about a father's relationship to his son, and a son's relationship to his father,' Gunn says. 'And I think that Pa Kent's incredibly important in all of that. Superman comes to Earth, he was not born to Earth but he has an Earthly father. A lot of this is about Pa and Clark and their relationship, and I think it's a really beautiful thing.' Because Clark Kent, as he is known, is raised on Earth, Gunn also wants to take time to explore Superman's humanity, rather than, perhaps, Clark's relationship with the distant echo of Krypton. 'Superman is an alien, but he doesn't feel like an alien,' Gunn says. 'I think he feels like we do, but he knows on some elemental level he's completely different from everybody else. And I think that's the thing he really doesn't like. I think he hates that. He wants to belong, he wants to be like us. 'And the irony of it all is that [his nemesis] Lex Luthor hates him because he's different, which is what Lex wants to be,' Gunn adds. 'Lex wants to be better than everyone else. Lex wants to be put up on a pedestal. So we've got the alien who wants to be human, and the human that wants to be superhuman, and that's the conflict in the story, at least on the physical level.' Which brings us to Gunn's father, James F. Gunn. Gunn senior and his wife, Lee, raised a family in Manchester, Missouri, a suburb on the western outskirts of St Louis. Like Pa Kent, Gunn senior, who died in 2019, never wanted much that he didn't have already in Manchester, but like Pa Kent he taught his son to look beyond the stars. Loading 'I owe my dad a lot,' Gunn says. 'I think I owe both my parents a lot, but my dad, I went through a hard time as a kid where I didn't quite fit in. I guess I was having a really hard time, my dad went and talked to a psychologist and the psychologist said, 'what does your son like? Try and bond with him over things that he likes'. 'So my dad took me to a comic book convention in Chicago, and to this day, it was the greatest weekend of my life,' Gunn says. 'I don't think I'll ever beat that weekend in terms of how much fun I had, both being with my dad, watching my dad be amazed, buying tons of comic books. 'It was a real validation by my father that what I was interested in was OK,' Gunn adds. 'And very different, I think, from other parents who probably thought comic books were stupid stuff and they should be reading something else.' In fact, the Superman story itself is deeply knitted to the story of fathers and sons, both in the narrative – Jor-El sending his son Kal-El to Earth as Krypton disintegrates – and also behind the scenes. According to creator Jerry Siegel's daughter, Joanne, the death of her grandfather in a bungled robbery contributed to the blueprint for a bullet-proof hero. How much losing his own dad reshaped Gunn's approach to the Superman story is difficult to discern, he says. 'I really don't know. The only way in which I've really changed since my dad died, which is sad, is that my dad was the first person I would show everything to that I did. 'That was the reason I kind of did stuff,' Gunn adds. 'The reason I wanted to be successful was so I could say, hey dad, look at all this money I made. The whole reason I wanted to make movies was like, dad, look at this. He loved what I did and it was the best reason to make stuff.' Central to Gunn's mission was the search for Superman himself, a quest which brought Corenswet, whose credits include We Own This City (2022, for HBO) and Lady in the Lake (2024, for Apple TV+), into the room. 'It's not so much that he's a role I've always wanted to play, it was that when somebody brought it up as a possibility, I thought, well, sure,' Corenswet says. 'I mean, who wouldn't want to play that? The most iconic, the original superhero. 'If you pass somebody wearing a Superman t-shirt, or you see a Superman flag or somebody has a Superman tattoo, everybody knows that symbol. Even if they've never read a comic book and never seen a movie, they know that symbol, and it means something unifying and exciting and hopeful.' Boot camp for Corenswet, aside from the enormous physical demands of the role, was a reading list that included Superman for All Seasons and All-Star Superman. The former is a four-issue comic book limited series written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale, published in 1998. It is significant because it is split into four chapters, exploring Superman's childhood in Smallville, but also his work in Metropolist on the Daily Planet and his rivalry with Lex Luthor. The latter is a 12-issue comic book series written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely, published between 2005 and 2008, which borrows from Greek mythology. In the series, a dying Superman embarks on a series of final tasks for the people of Earth, dubbed the Twelve Labours of Superman. Equally intriguing to Corenswet was Christopher Reeve's performance in the 1978 film adaptation of the comic book, which remains a cultural touchstone. 'There's a sort of meta-performance that lifts off of the performances that we've seen on the big and small screen, great portrayals in television shows throughout the decades ... a sort of amalgam, a platonic Superman that exists in the public consciousness that everybody sort of holds a piece of, and doesn't really exist anywhere firm,' Corenswet says. Loading 'But I think the great thing about Superman is that his spirit is so much one of the good and the hopeful that it tends to be that the great contributions … rise up into the firmament and join that canonical ideal of Superman.' Any missteps along the way, or things that didn't really resonate with people, tend to be forgiven, he says. 'Even the great Christopher Reeve had moments where you go like, oh, well, that's kind of silly, or that was … more for kids than it was for adults … it's not that they're forgotten, but they're allowed to fall away and only the good remains,' Corenswet says.
The Age
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Look, up in the sky: it's a Superman who wants to be just like us
When director James Gunn was offered the chance to direct the next Superman movie, he said no. It's a surprising admission, but one that requires a little additional context. The offer was made back in 2018, and came with a second option, directing what would become the 2021 sequel to Suicide Squad. Gunn took the latter. 'I thought about Superman, but it just didn't really speak to me,' Gunn explains of his initial decision to say no to the most famous superhero in comic-book history. 'They wanted a new Superman, at a time that was much closer to Zack Snyder's [2013] movie, and Suicide Squad was an R-rated Guardians of the Galaxy. It was a little bit more familiar and easier for me to sink my teeth into. 'But the idea of Superman stuck with me and I kept thinking about it,' Gunn adds. 'It was always there, and it was something like a thought experiment, trying to figure out how would I do it. And eventually it was offered to me again, and then I said yes.' The result is titled simply Superman, and stars 31-year-old American actor David Corenswet as Superman, known by day as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. The film also stars Rachel Brosnahan as reporter Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as super-villain Lex Luthor, plus Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific and Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho. The many adaptations of Superman for both the cinema and television screen have told the Man of Steel's 'origin' story from a specific prism: that the last infant son of the distant planet Krypton was dispatched into space as his home planet disintegrated, and was brought safely to Earth and raised by a childless couple, Smallville farmer Jonathan Kent and his wife, Martha. Gunn's film does not change the origin story, but perhaps gently reshapes the emphasis. The 1978 Richard Donner film, which is remembered by many as the definitive Superman film, for example, makes more of Superman's Kryptonian parents, played by Marlon Brando and Susannah York, than it does Ma and Pa Kent. Gunn seems as interested in the Kents as he is in Jor-El and Lara, perhaps more. 'This is a story about a father's relationship to his son, and a son's relationship to his father,' Gunn says. 'And I think that Pa Kent's incredibly important in all of that. Superman comes to Earth, he was not born to Earth but he has an Earthly father. A lot of this is about Pa and Clark and their relationship, and I think it's a really beautiful thing.' Because Clark Kent, as he is known, is raised on Earth, Gunn also wants to take time to explore Superman's humanity, rather than, perhaps, Clark's relationship with the distant echo of Krypton. 'Superman is an alien, but he doesn't feel like an alien,' Gunn says. 'I think he feels like we do, but he knows on some elemental level he's completely different from everybody else. And I think that's the thing he really doesn't like. I think he hates that. He wants to belong, he wants to be like us. 'And the irony of it all is that [his nemesis] Lex Luthor hates him because he's different, which is what Lex wants to be,' Gunn adds. 'Lex wants to be better than everyone else. Lex wants to be put up on a pedestal. So we've got the alien who wants to be human, and the human that wants to be superhuman, and that's the conflict in the story, at least on the physical level.' Which brings us to Gunn's father, James F. Gunn. Gunn senior and his wife, Lee, raised a family in Manchester, Missouri, a suburb on the western outskirts of St Louis. Like Pa Kent, Gunn senior, who died in 2019, never wanted much that he didn't have already in Manchester, but like Pa Kent he taught his son to look beyond the stars. Loading 'I owe my dad a lot,' Gunn says. 'I think I owe both my parents a lot, but my dad, I went through a hard time as a kid where I didn't quite fit in. I guess I was having a really hard time, my dad went and talked to a psychologist and the psychologist said, 'what does your son like? Try and bond with him over things that he likes'. 'So my dad took me to a comic book convention in Chicago, and to this day, it was the greatest weekend of my life,' Gunn says. 'I don't think I'll ever beat that weekend in terms of how much fun I had, both being with my dad, watching my dad be amazed, buying tons of comic books. 'It was a real validation by my father that what I was interested in was OK,' Gunn adds. 'And very different, I think, from other parents who probably thought comic books were stupid stuff and they should be reading something else.' In fact, the Superman story itself is deeply knitted to the story of fathers and sons, both in the narrative – Jor-El sending his son Kal-El to Earth as Krypton disintegrates – and also behind the scenes. According to creator Jerry Siegel's daughter, Joanne, the death of her grandfather in a bungled robbery contributed to the blueprint for a bullet-proof hero. How much losing his own dad reshaped Gunn's approach to the Superman story is difficult to discern, he says. 'I really don't know. The only way in which I've really changed since my dad died, which is sad, is that my dad was the first person I would show everything to that I did. 'That was the reason I kind of did stuff,' Gunn adds. 'The reason I wanted to be successful was so I could say, hey dad, look at all this money I made. The whole reason I wanted to make movies was like, dad, look at this. He loved what I did and it was the best reason to make stuff.' Central to Gunn's mission was the search for Superman himself, a quest which brought Corenswet, whose credits include We Own This City (2022, for HBO) and Lady in the Lake (2024, for Apple TV+), into the room. 'It's not so much that he's a role I've always wanted to play, it was that when somebody brought it up as a possibility, I thought, well, sure,' Corenswet says. 'I mean, who wouldn't want to play that? The most iconic, the original superhero. 'If you pass somebody wearing a Superman t-shirt, or you see a Superman flag or somebody has a Superman tattoo, everybody knows that symbol. Even if they've never read a comic book and never seen a movie, they know that symbol, and it means something unifying and exciting and hopeful.' Boot camp for Corenswet, aside from the enormous physical demands of the role, was a reading list that included Superman for All Seasons and All-Star Superman. The former is a four-issue comic book limited series written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale, published in 1998. It is significant because it is split into four chapters, exploring Superman's childhood in Smallville, but also his work in Metropolist on the Daily Planet and his rivalry with Lex Luthor. The latter is a 12-issue comic book series written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely, published between 2005 and 2008, which borrows from Greek mythology. In the series, a dying Superman embarks on a series of final tasks for the people of Earth, dubbed the Twelve Labours of Superman. Equally intriguing to Corenswet was Christopher Reeve's performance in the 1978 film adaptation of the comic book, which remains a cultural touchstone. 'There's a sort of meta-performance that lifts off of the performances that we've seen on the big and small screen, great portrayals in television shows throughout the decades ... a sort of amalgam, a platonic Superman that exists in the public consciousness that everybody sort of holds a piece of, and doesn't really exist anywhere firm,' Corenswet says. Loading 'But I think the great thing about Superman is that his spirit is so much one of the good and the hopeful that it tends to be that the great contributions … rise up into the firmament and join that canonical ideal of Superman.' Any missteps along the way, or things that didn't really resonate with people, tend to be forgiven, he says. 'Even the great Christopher Reeve had moments where you go like, oh, well, that's kind of silly, or that was … more for kids than it was for adults … it's not that they're forgotten, but they're allowed to fall away and only the good remains,' Corenswet says.
