As “Man Of Steel” arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week, it will be greeted by another three weeks of articles written by people willfully mis-interpreting much of what happens in the film, and I will spend those three weeks resisting the urge to get into a million pointless flame wars about the film.
What is apparent to me at this point is that the “complaints” that drive me most crazy are the ones that people simply aren’t willing to debate, not even when they hear or read something that contradicts the point they think they’re making. You can have the director and the writer specifically discuss what happened in the film, and people will still insist that they saw something else entirely happen.
I’m not talking about “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it,” either. I’m talking about looking at one scene and seeing two totally different things. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it happen to quite the extent that it happened with this film, but it amazes me. I’m doubly curious to see what happens with the sequel with this level of division in the audience.
It sounds like Warner Bros. is using the “Man Of Steel” sequel, which doesn’t have an official title yet no matter how many times the Internet insists on writing “Batman Vs. Superman,” as a sort of Hail Mary pass, cramming in as many potential seeds for a larger DC universe on film as they can. As Zack Snyder promotes the home video release of “Man Of Steel” this week, he’s been answering some questions about the film and he’s dropped a few clues about what we’ll be seeing beyond the Nightwing and Wonder Woman rumors of the last few weeks.
At one point in his conversation, Snyder mentioned Lex Luthor as he was talking about Superman and his relationship to the world. “Superman is an alien. He comes from an alien world. Lex loves to call him an alien.” Kevin Smith, who was moderating the conversation, replied “That’s a spoiler.”
Smith also discussed a pretty big element of the sequel on one of his 4792 different podcasts, where he revealed that he has actually seen Ben Affleck in the new Batsuit, and he was very coy about how he handled it, beeping one key word of his comment on the air. He said, “It seemed like it was very [BEEEEEP] influenced,” while describing it as something new. “We haven’t been down this path before,” he promised. Many fans already assume that this is basically going to be a direct adaptation of the final section of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” so many people are making the jump right away to assuming that Smith said “Miller influenced” in his self-censored comment. What I’ve heard from one source who I know is involved with the film is that Jim Lee’s Batman design was a particular favorite in early conversations about how this film. That’s not to say Lee’s approach is what we’ll see, but it would look just as radical on a movie screen at this point as the big crazy Frank Miller armor. I’d love to see a very traditional Batman next time, but it’s still going to be a little while before we know for sure.
What’s apparent is that this is going to be one of the most jam-packed busy sequels ever made. I hope they tell a real story and that this isn’t just “Prelude To Justice League: The Movie.”
We’ll see when “Man Of Steel 2” hits theaters on July 17, 2015.