Henry Cavill stars in Man of Steel, Zack Snyder’s cinematic reboot of Superman’s origin story.
Image courtesy Warner Bros.
SAN DIEGO — If Superman and Batman duked it out, who would win? The question put Man of Steel director Zack Snyder in a tough spot, since The Dark Knight Rises auteur Christopher Nolan is the guy who hired him to make the new Superman movie.
“I love Batman,” Snyder tactfully mused Saturday at Comic-Con International during the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures panel. “He’s awesome, really awesome, but … really?” Snyder shrugged, implying there’s no question that Clark Kent would whip Bruce Wayne to shreds.
Snyder and new Superman actor Henry Cavill showed off new Man of Steel footage Saturday that operates on the premise that “this is the first Superman movie,” Snyder said. “We respect the canon and we knew the comic book exists; the movies are their own thing. When we started, we had to act as if no film had been made. We approached it in our head as if we’re making a Superman movie for the first time.”
The clip teased an earnest origins story rooted in the heartland, where young Clark Kent grows up on an American-as-apple-pie farm and displays heroic powers as a child that makes him feel like an outcast. Later, the classic red cape waves heroically in the breeze and Superman soars into the heavens per standard iconography, but there’s also contemporary inflections when Superman mixes it up with military troops that look like they could have been airlifted straight out of Iraq or Afghanistan.
“The big challenge is, if you can make people feel, ‘What would you do if you were Superman?,’ that’s what we went after,” Synder said. “A lot of times in the past, Superman has been this big blue Boy Scout up on a throne that nobody can really touch.”
Of course the square-jawed Cavill is not exactly an everyman, judging from female audience members’ fondness for shouting “whooo!” every time the British actor’s name came up. Shrugging off the adulation, Cavill said he “wanted to bring as much of the modern Superman into the world as I could. This is for everybody else who hasn’t gone through the comic books. With this movie, hopefully I bring a modern version that everybody can associate with.”
For Snyder, doing a relatively straightforward superhero flick represented a departure from the post-modern hero demolition job he did in Watchmen. “Having taken the mask so far off superheroes in Watchmen, I wanted to then do something like this where it’s all about being awesome and making Superman cool,” he said.
And what about the prospects for a Justice League movie? Snyder hinted that Man of Steel might set the table for an ensemble effort featuring DC Comics’ classic crime-fighting team.
“We know Superman is the jewel in the DC crown,” Snyder said. “We’re trying to get his house in order and then, who knows what can happen?”
