With "Superman Returns" looming on the horizon, moviegoers are bracing for one of the great American heroes to again fly into view -- and hoping that the film will take the comic book movie to a whole new level. In an exclusive interview with MTV News' Gideon Yago, director Bryan Singer talked at length about his vision for the film, the surreal feeling of working with a dead Marlon Brando and his own geek cred.

Gideon Yago: How did you get involved with this project in the first place?

Bryan Singer: I've been a fan of Superman since seeing re-runs of the George Reeves television series as a kid, and then the Christopher Reeve film. The Superman films kind of paved the way for the notion of making large-scale comic book adaptations that are taken seriously, and they were a big inspiration for the first two "X-Men" films. I always had a vague idea of what kind of Superman story I would tell, and when the opportunity came to make the movie I seized it.

Yago: What kind of Superman story did you want to tell?

Singer: I always regarded Richard Donner's 1978 film as a classic, and I knew I didn't want to retell that origin story, simply with bigger and better visual effects. I thought that everyone under the age of 25 knows the show "Smallville," and anyone over 25 has an awareness or a memory of the first film, so I thought I would tell a return story, that Superman would return to a world that had somewhat moved on from the world of the Donner movie.

Yago: It seems the trend in comics is to make things darker, more visceral. Is that your approach in this film?

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Singer: No, this is a very different character. The "X-Men" films, for example, have more cynical heroes, but Superman is an incredibly idealistic hero -- raised in the heartland of America, and he comes with this noble heritage from Krypton. What I've done is brought him to a world that's become a bit more cynical. The people in his relationships, particularly Lois Lane, have moved on; she has a child, a fiancé -- the world is a more modern place, so that provides kind of an interesting conflict.

The film takes place five years after Superman has departed the Earth in a kind of futile attempt to search for, or take a look at, the old neighborhood -- the destroyed remains of Krypton -- and it chronicles his return to Earth. Lex Luther has wormed his way out of prison, and Lois Lane's fiancé is the nephew of Perry White -- a good looking, wealthy guy. And he's a pilot, so he flies. He's kind of a temporary replacement for true love, and the movie addresses what happens when old boyfriends come back into your life.

Yago: Why did you choose Brandon Routh to play Superman when there were scores of actors who wanted the role?

Singer: I always knew I was going to cast an unknown. There was never any question about that. Superman has to feel, look and sound as though he stepped out of your collective memory of who that character is. Whether it's from the George Reeves television series, the comic book, or Christopher Reeve. He has to be able to channel all of your inner memories of who Superman is. So I had to find someone who could embody that -- someone who had the physical attributes, the talent and also Superman and Clark Kent in his innate personality, and I found that in Brandon.

Yago: What is it about the theme of 'otherness' that you seem to be attracted to?

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Singer:I think I've always felt like an outcast. I was an only child. I was adopted. I was the only Jewish kid in my neighborhood. I was picked on a lot. I was a terrible student. And the fact that characters in science fiction and fantasy rose above their stations in life by virtue of these supernatural means, I found inspiring.

Even as a film director, you feel like a bit of an outcast. It's lonely at the top [He laughs.] I'm fortunate. I get to work with a lot of my good friends and I've worked for years with a lot of the same people, but sometimes when it's all over, or even in the middle of it, you do feel a bit alone and burdened, and some of that translates in the picture.

Yago: There's footage of Marlon Brando in this film, from the first Superman movie. Isn't that weird, using someone who's dead?

Singer: You know, even in the movie he did with Matthew Broderick ["The Freshman"], Brando was playing a very similar character to his role in "The Godfather," so while I've never met him, he seemed to have a great sense of humor about the iconography that he put forth over the years. I went back and found the original footage, and found images and things he said, and reassembled them for sequences in the Fortress of Solitude and other parts of the movie as kind of the patriarchal figure. And to have Marlon Brando's presence in the movie is not only nostalgic, it also carries great power.

Kevin Spacey has a scene where he interacts with Brando and it was quite odd because Kevin is not entirely but kind of half-playing the scene. And now, as the scenes are coming together, it's kind of surreal and it does kind of start to trespass into that other world where filmmaking is going, where one day actors will be crafted in a computer. There's a lot of character in the video games and animated pictures that are coming out now -- sometimes a lot more character than you see in movies.

Yago: What is it about working in the sci-fi, comic medium that you enjoy?

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Singer: It's amazing what you can achieve with all the resources and the toys at your disposal. You can see an image of a plane falling out of the sky and Superman chasing after it, and you can see that in your head, and then you can actually see it in as close to real life as you can get. I think it's about being able to take moments that you see in your head that are larger than life, and put them on the screen. And you can also tell very intimate, human stories from a completely different perspective.

"X-Men" films, for instance, are about tolerance, and this film is about isolation and relationships, but you reach such a larger audience because you're accompanying those human stories with such grand elements and fantasy. I think that's the magic of science fiction and fantasy films. I was the guy who would wait around the block for hours and hours in the summer to see "Empire Strikes Back" or "Raiders."

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