Justin Bruening
A simple image search reveals no nude cowboy photo shoot, so I am rather disappointed.
Still, he's pretty cute at least. I haven't seen him on All My Children or Knight Rider, but I'm getting used to his appearance. He's a bit bulkier than I'd expected. I do have some worries, though.
One is that the first picture I saw of him, on DCWKA, was this:
My second reaction was that he resembles David Boreanez. As we all know, Boreanez voiced Hal Jordan in New Frontier and I have this horrible nightmare that the 21st Century Steve Trevor concept is "Wonder Woman dates a blonde Hal Jordan."
I know it seems irrational, but... the animated movie guy was basically Hal Jordan, and it's not unheard of for writers to consider careers part of the characterization. Steve's a pilot to get him onto the island, so it's not a stretch for them to just characterize him as a pilot and use Top Gun as their reference again.
Never mind that his character concept is actually "soldier", and he's an intel officer who only ever uses his piloting skills for the purposes of the plot. (It wouldn't be farfetched if he was grounded because of his injuries when he crashed on the island, and--unlike Hal--wasn't bothered by not getitng to fly again because being in love is a hundred times greater thrill for him than flying a jet--but that's just a dream characterization.) Never mind that he'd work much better as the Anti-Hal, because there's no way in the deeper coldest chasm of Tartarus that Wonder Woman would date someone like Hal Jordan. Never mind that, personality-wise, he should be someone that it makes sense she like.
But I digress, that's just me panicking. On the bright side, many of the commenters on DCWKA have stated that he can't act so it's possible he won't be able to get "asshole" across, or they're just going for the easy combo of big, sweet and dumb from the Golden Age.
And anyway in the TV show his job isn't military pilot. It's... civilian lawyer, which brings me to my second problem and my first thought which was "He's a baby!"
Now, the rumor is that Steve in this is an Army vet who crashed on the island, had an affair with Diana, and later became a lawyer working for the Department of Justice. The assumption is that he's basically the same as we've seen, just after he got out he becomes a lawyer.
This means that he had to go through pilot's training and college in order to be an officer. THEN he had to serve out his commitment to the military. THEN he had to do law school and become a lawyer.
That's... That's a lot of years between High School and the present there. A lot more than this Justin Breuning guy looks like he has.
I can see them pulling it... maybe... if they decide he was JAG (more on why a JAG officer might actually be a suitable love interest for post-Crisis Diana later) and make up some contrived reason he was on a plane going over Themiscyra and was the only one to wash up. That gives us just law school and a service commitment that might've gotten cut short for injuries he got in combat, in the crash, or in the dangerous occupation of "Love Interest."
But... I know how old military officers tend to be, and he's pretty boyish looking for someone in the Major rank range. That's a Lt. face if I ever saw one.
This age thing might be a bit much for my suspension of disbelief.
I hear where you are coming from. It bothers me when producers on the one hand cast actors too young to have all the experience they are implying, as they are in this case, and then at the other end of the spectrum cast actors who are obviously too old to be playing young characters (i.e. Tom Welling as sixteen year old Clark Kent, when he was 23 and did not look remotely like a teenager).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not anything to go by, I've seen this guy on All My Children and he was bad (most soap opera actors are). I can't see this guy as beneficial to convincing the public to take Steve Trevor seriously. That's too bad because I like Steve.
ReplyDeleteI saw some episodes of Knight Rider. The guy's okay for the part, I think.
ReplyDeleteTom -- I was talking with Jesse last night and he pointed out they did this with Lois in Superman Returns. It's ridiculous, you can't tell me no one of a believable age range fit this part. (Especially since it took so damned long for them to narrow Steve down.)
ReplyDeleteAnon -- Well, I see acting ability as kind of like the script. It's something that can seem terrible going in but be redeemed by a good director, setup, or surrounding cast. So I might check out his earlier stuff, but since I'm going to watch ANYWAY I might as well reserve judgment. He has one thing going for him in that it took so long to cast this part, so obviously he beat out a number of other people. He's great looking but not the best looking guy in Hollywood and he's not super-famous so there's gotta be SOMETHING there.
CBG -- I wasn't even aware until now they'd done a new Knight Rider.
Big, sweet and dumb I can live with. For the love of God, you don't want this guy to be another Hal!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, they did do a remake of Knight Rider. It was hilariously bad. He played the son of the original Michael Knight, but I just called him Lance Studly through the whole thing.
And also yes, he looks a tad on the young side to have gone through some twelve years or more of college and...and stuff.
Ragnell, I agree completely. In retrospect Superman was too young for Superman Returns as they had to add five years to Clark Kent. By all rights if Superman was thirty in the first film (and even older, if memory serves) then they needed someone with more mileage on them in both roles.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, there was a new Knight Rider. Worse than the first one with their transforming car.