I’ll say this for the new “Man Of Steel” poster… it’s a very different image than I would expect to see on a Superman poster, and that’s a good thing.
Zack Snyder recently said that the trailer that is arriving in theaters in front of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is going to be “crazy,” and I believe him. More than anything, I want “Man Of Steel” to shake up the very idea of what a Superman film has been in the past.
Considering just how significant “Superman: The Movie” was to the history of superhero films, you have to acknowledge the bad influence it had as well as the good. Yes, there is a lovely lead performance by Reeve. Yes, the second one had very menacing villain characters. Yes, the John Williams score is one of the best of the genre. There are things Donner did right that are still being mimicked by directors now. But the campy tone with the villains, the nonsensical nature of the plots… those things are also still resonating through the new superhero films being made.
Last night, someone on Twitter took issue with me slagging “Superman III,” calling it the best of the films. I was going to laugh at him, but his points were fair ones. He prefers Lana Lang to Lois, and he likes the works Reeves does in it. And even now, even after the run of Marvel movies and even after Nolan’s Batman films and even after deconstructionist films like “Kick-Ass” and “Watchmen” and “Hancock,” we’re still picking and choosing favorite parts of these movies and overlooking things that don’t work and accepting it as the nature of the genre.
With “Man Of Steel,” Snyder has a chance to do something special, something that shatters the mold of Superman movies. He also has a chance to show us god-scaled superhero battles like we’ve never seen on film before. It’s going to be interesting to see how he handles this, and I suspect the new trailer is going to make the case that this is not Donner’s Superman anymore. When I see how many people had trouble accepting that Zimmer’s scoring the film and not using the Williams theme, it makes me wonder if fans can accept a new take on the character. A poster that introduces Superman in handcuffs surrounded by soldiers is certainly not the iconography we’re used to, and that is, as I said, a good thing. We need to shake up the way we handle these movies, and this may be the single most recognizable character in all of superhero fiction.
Evidently, this was revealed as part of a Facebook countdown viral game thing tied to the release of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Cool treat for the fans.
“Man Of Steel” flies into theaters June 14, 2013.