Man Of Steel: First Look at Cavill as Superman

Just as it was when Bryan Singer was working to reboot the character with SUPERMAN RETURNS, there’s plenty of interest into the upcoming MAN OF STEEL. All we had to go on so far was that Christopher Nolan and David Goyer were teaming up to help guide the reboot into something DC Comics and Warner Bros could be as proud of as they were with the Batman Begins films, that Zack Snyder (300) was taking the director’s helm and that the cast featured quite a few Oscar-nominated actors to go with the rising-star in Henry Cavill.

That is, that’s all we had to go on until now.

Yesterday a first glimpse at Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL was released by Warner Bros / Legendary Pictures. Our perspective after the pic.

Henry Cavill as The Man Of Steel

At first glance, you should be more excited for MAN OF STEEL than you were years ago upon seeing the first glimpse at SUPERMAN RETURNS.

No offense to Brandon Routh, whom I supported in returning for the reboot as Superman, but the promotional shot for that film was not awe inspiring.

What Bryan Singer’s folks gave us was a guy standing in a heroic pose looking milk-toast in a sub-par costume. Having waited decades for a good Superman film to follow up the Richard Donner films, we get a Superman crest which looks like the plastic one my mom put on top of my birthday cake as a child, the logo also gets the belt-buckle treatment, and his cape was a dark shade of red which I’ve never seen used before for the character.   The movie ended up being a lot better than I had expected, but it still fell short of what it could’ve been. In the opinion of most people I’ve talked to, whether they liked SUPERMAN RETURNS or not, they all felt like the movie needed more action. Sure, Superman saves a airplane from crashing into a baseball stadium and pulls a sinking ship out of the ocean, but the only fighting he did was to hold back emotional tears when dealing with his “situation” with Lois Lane and her son.

Sure, Bryan Singer did a good job of paying homage to the first Christopher Reeve / Richard Donner Superman movie, but he should’ve sought to follow-up Donner’s second Superman film.

Now Zack Snyder is taking the action-packed Superman II and bringing it forward 30 years, and this first look is optimism-inspiring.

MAN OF STEEL is going to be action-packed, and things are going to be destroyed.

In the picture above, Superman isn’t likely investigating a natural disaster, looking tired from trying to figure out what happened to the door of the bank vault. He looks to be halfway through a battle, holding back some collateral damage, and that’s exactly the tone this film NEEDS.

Bryan Singer explored the “Daddy Issues” aspect of Superman, and while there’s plenty of opportunity to touch on that concept in Zack Snyder’s film, audiences deserve to see some Kryptonian battling, and that looks to be exactly what we’re going to get.