Home Entertainment Zack Snyder talks MAN OF STEEL's controversial ending

Zack Snyder talks MAN OF STEEL's controversial ending

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If the thought of crumbling skyscrapers and massive property destruction arouses you, then A) you’ve got a weird fetish and B) you probably left Man of Steel with a completely massive erection. Zack Snyder’s first Superman movie may have given the hero a rebirth and the kind of climatic action scene that fans had been wanting for many a year, but it wasn’t without consequences as the city of Metropolis was served various super-powered P-klaps along the way.

And that’s an act that had fallout not just in the DC Comics movie universe, but the real world as well.

Batman V Superman (2)

Speaking with EW, Snyder said that he was surprised at the amount of pushback that his third act had generated:

I was surprised because that’s the thesis of Superman for me, that you can’t just have superheroes knock around and have there be no consequences.

And in a not so thinly-veiled dig at Marvel’s Avengers, Snyder explained that massive action scenes such this had to have consequences. It can’t be all destruction and sunshine the next day:

There are other superhero movies where they joke about how basically no one’s getting hurt. That’s not us. What is that message? That’s it’s okay that there’s this massive destruction with zero consequence for anyone?

That’s what Watchmen was about in a lot of ways too. There was a scene, that scene where Dan and Laurie get mugged. They beat up the criminals. I was like the first guy, I want to show his arm get broken. I want a compound fracture. I don’t want it to be clean. I want you to go, ‘Oh my God, I guess you’re right. If you just beat up a guy in an alley he’s not going to just be lying on the ground. It’s going to be messy.

The massive destruction of Metropolis and the repercussions following this however, was all part of a larger plan that would then be addressed in the sequel, an idea that new Batman actor Ben Affleck said drew him into the project:

One of the things I liked was Zack’s idea of showing accountability and the consequences of violence and seeing that there are real people in those buildings. And in fact, one of those buildings was Bruce Wayne’s building so he knew people who died in that Black Zero event.

Batman V Superman: White Men Can Jump won’t just feature the world’s finest going at one another. Gal Gadot will also be on the scene as Wonder Woman, a character that Snyder says is integral to not only this movie, but the rest of the DC cinematic universe going forward:

She plays a super-important part. In a lot of ways, she’s the gateway drug to 
the rest of the 
Justice League.

batman-v-superman-trailer-screengrab-28

Superman and Batman, despite their different approaches to fighting crime, are still heroes at the end of the day. And this Man of Steel sequel will still have a very formidable villain in the form of Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, who’ll be pulling strings in the background that sets these two icons on a collision course. But the antagonist for the film was almost somebody extremely different to Luthor:

I remember talking about ‘What’s the next villain? ‘We can’t do another alien invasion.’ Brainiac was definitely down the road. Metallo, I think, was going to be the main bad guy of this movie.

In a way, I kind of get what Snyder was saying. It’s an idea that Marvel will only explore for the first time in detail, in Captain America: Civil War. But establishing a cinematic world of consequences early on? That’s kind of interesting.

Last Updated: July 6, 2015

2 Comments

  1. I think he’s kind of missing what the backlash was actually about. It’s not the lack of accountability or that there would actually be destruction if you had superpowered beings knocking about (both valid points).

    It’s that Superman, the hero, didn’t make any perceivable effort to save people caught up in the destruction, when it’s totally something Superman would do.

    Before anyone responds to this to disagree with, be warned that I can’t actually be bothered to reply as I’ve had this debate to the point of being bored and exhausted by it

    Reply

    • Skyblue

      July 20, 2015 at 12:27

      Well screw you, I will say something… You’re 100% on the money. That 3rd act was unbalanced after all the rescues earlier in the film which were awesome. ;-p

      Reply

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