I’ve been excited for Man of Steel for a while now. Although I’m still mad that DC rebooted the Routh version of Supes since he was awesome in Superman Returns. Superman has always been my favorite DC character too. There’s something inherently great about a dude that holds back all of the time lest he lose control and kill you with frickin’ laser beam eyes. Superman is best when he is at the the high point of fantasy, godlike even, but chooses to grace mortals with his vanity.
So it troubles me to hear that the new Nolan produced, Zack Snyder directed Man of Steel Supes reboot is taking Superman in a more “realistic direction.” In an interview with Italian website Bad Taste David S. Goyer, the film’s writer, says that Man of Steel is going all Dark Knight style:
What Christopher Nolan and I have done with Superman is trying to bring the same naturalistic approach that we used adopted for the Batman trilogy. We always had a naturalistic approach, we want out stories to be rooted in reality, like they could happen in the same world we live in. It’s not that easy with Superman, and actually this doesn’t necessarily mean we will make a dark movie. But working on this reboot we are thinking about what would happen if a story like this one actually happened. How would people react to this? What impact would have the presence of Superman in the real world? What I really like to do is writing “genre” stories without a cartoonish element.
I can understand where Goyer is coming from since the realistic approach worked so well with Batman, but Superman is on an entirely different scale. His whole essence is “superiority” over others. And if Supes is grounded in a universe that places limiters on his abilities, then that limits the spectacle of the hero himself. I’m probably overreacting to all of this though, I guess we’ll have to see how naturalistic the film gets when more footage is released.
[Bad Taste, via First Showing]