When Kevin Smith took a meeting with Jon Peters about making a Superman movie years ago, according to Smith, Peters had three stipulations: I don’t wanna see him fly, he doesn’t wear that f*cking suit, and he has to fight a giant spider in the third act. Two movies later, the world has a Superman movie that actually looks potentially good. But still the problem persists, what elements of the character do you keep, and which are just too silly? There’s a new featurette online with Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer talking about trying to make Superman “exist in the real world,” and they make the point often that you kind of get sick of it. But the part about how they could make the cape and the S and the boots all work (the S doesn’t stand for “super” anymore, it’s a Kryptonian symbol of hope), but not the red speedo is kind of interesting.
SAVE THE RED UNDERPANTS!
“You look at Superman and the cape has to be there, but you know what, I think the underwear outside of the pants is something maybe that can go.”-Deborah Snyder
“The reason that the underwear is on the outside of his pants is that it’s a leftover from Victorian-era strongmen. I probably looked at hundreds of versions with underwear, but it fell by the boards because I just couldn’t make it consistent with the world that we were creating.” -Zack Snyder
“We had to create a world where that kind of outfit was commonplace, to make it feel natural.” -Producer Charles Roven
One of my favorite parts of the filmmaking process is how much justification and mental gymnastics they have to go through in order to decide “Underpants on the outside? Eh, a little too gay.”
But it gives me hope that their thought process on this all seems to make sense. As much as I enjoyed The Avengers, I really wish someone would’ve taken Joss Whedon aside and said “Hey, you know the part where you have characters fighting an incoming army with a bow and arrow and a handgun? That’s kinda stupid.”
Because it was, yo. When I watch Iron Man and the Hulk and Thor fight a giant snake that jizzes flying aliens, I want to believe, you know?
[hat tip: AtlanticWire]
A lot of people like the General Zod trailer the best, which is decent, but I think this one flicks my boner the hardest: