When you observe the smoking wreckage that is all that is left of what Warner Bros. eventually did with the Snyderverse, it is easy to look favourably at where it all started, Man Of Steel. Perhaps also to overlook that, at the time, there was a lot of noise around that entry as well.
Among the many complaints was that it all felt a bit dour, that the lead character was too grim, and, biggest of all, that Superman (gasp) killed a bad guy!
Let’s just ignore the fact that, in Superman #22, Zod has massacred 5 billion people, and Superman kills him to prevent more.
At the climax of the 2013 film, General Zod is on his way to barbecuing an innocent family with his heat vision, and Superman has to stop him. DC fans went kinda wild. Crazy theories about a multitude of ways in which Superman could have / should have handled the situation were shared online.
Apparently, Producer Christopher Nolan was against Zod being killed, but Snyder persuaded him. There was also a deleted scene that was meant to tee up the moment, where a young Clark Kent and his adoptive father, played by Kevin Costner, are hunting a deer. After Clark shoots the deer but fails to kill it outright, Jonathan finishes the job and uses the moment to teach Clark a life lesson about the responsibility of taking a life.
None of this was included in the final movie, and the franchise became marked by purists. Then we all saw what happened next.
Now, in a feature interview with Vanity Fair as part of the Scene Selection series, Shannon talked about many of his career roles, and this included the role of Zod in Man Of Steel. Shannon said:
“I guess one of the controversies with this film — and Zack engineered this really — is that Superman is not supposed to kill anybody, so I put him in a situation where if he wants to save these people, he has to kill me, and he does, and that obviously led to a lot of sturm and drang, or whatever you say.
I really loved working with Zack, and I really loved making this movie. I think a lot of people say, ‘Oh, you know, this isn’t what he usually does. He just went for the big payday or something.’ But I’m proud of this movie. I think it’s actually about something.”
Shannon would return to the role after ten years for Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, an ignoble end for that iteration of the franchise.
