Almost flying colours
director: Zack Snyder Cast: Henry Cavill, amy adams, Michael Shannon, diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne and russell Crowe delightfully feisty Amy Adams) and finally dons that iconic skin-tight suit (which handily mends itself whenever it gets damaged … no more exposed super-chests!), General Zod conveniently shows up in search of the aforementioned Codex, and rains destruction down on Earth. Guess who comes to save the day then? (Hint: it’s not Batman.)
Now, Superman has never been the easiest superhero to write or make a film about. I mean look at the guy – he can fly, he’s super strong, his eyes can shoot heat rays, he can see through things, and his hair doesn’t get messy even after getting smacked through several hundred tons of concrete. And that’s without even mentioning the ridiculous-looking suit and cape.
That costume was fine back in 1978 when Christopher Reeve (bless his supersoul) donned it – it was a much more innocent time then, Star Wars was just a year old, and people back then wanted to believe that a man can fly.
Today, flying men in movies are a dime a dozen, and in a world where movie audiences take giant transforming robots, Asgardian gods of thunder, and genius billionaire playboy philanthropist superheroes for granted, where does that leave poor old Superman?
How do you make a flying Superman believable? Reeve managed it by making the character more about Clark Kent than it was about Superman. Reeve made us root for mild-mannered Clark Kent so much that we felt a certain sense of joy and satisfaction for him when he changed into Superman. We loved Reeve because of his Clark Kent, and Richard Donner’s Superman worked so well because of that.
Man Of Steel manages the handy trick of avoiding comparisons between Cavill and Reeve (sorry, Brandon Routh) by making the story more about Superman than it is about Clark Kent.
You see, Clark Kent doesn’t need to fit into our world. Superman does. By focusing more on his progression from confused young superlad to morally upright superhero, writers David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan (who also produces) paint a clearer picture of how a Superman would fit in with the real world (it also neatly sidesteps the problem of making people believe that such a public superhero figure could hide his identity simply by don-