At this point you’ve probably heard that CGI and slow motion enthusiast Zack Snyder will be directing the next Superman film.
If not, congratulation, you have a life and are not a hopeless comic book dork like myself.
As tends to be the case when films make as much money as The Dark Knight did, the folks over at Warner Bros decided to hop on the “let’s not feature the name of the title character in the title” bandwagon, and went ahead and called the film The Man of Steel.
Far be it from me to say that there’s anything wrong with a movie called The Man of Steel, but to me the logic behind that decision seems more than a little transparent.
*ANYWAY* The photo at the top of this post is the first promotional image to be released featuring Henry Cavil donning the iconic Superman costume.
Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you, nor give a fuck to learn, just who Henry Cavil is, or what he’s done; but oh well, I’m just here to talk about the costume.
Strangely enough, the first thing I noticed about this image, was the post-processing and color correction that went into manufacturing it.
Simply put, Zack Snyder’s films have a “look” to them.
In fact, with the exception of the Guardians of Ga’Who-Gives-A-Fuck, an animated children’s film; they all have the same damn “look” to them.
Even though it’s not at all achieved through the use of a filter, I like to call it the “Zack Snyder Filter”:
Zack Snyder: The Unreal Engine of Hollywood
Oh well, I suppose consistency like this is easy to achieve, and mostly forgiveable; when the man’s only made about 5 movies…
Anyway, in looking at the Superman image above, it’s pretty clear that The Man of Steel is going to embody the same aesthetic that Zack Snyder has utilized in virtually all of his films.
That is to say, everything will be grainy and metallic/bronzed, and there will be much slow motion fighting for the sake of… Well, slow motion fighting.
Replace Goku and Frieza with Superman and General Zod and you have Zack Snyder's Superman.
Moving on to the actual costume, in all honesty; I don’t hate it.
Superman’s costume is iconic to the point of being one of, if not the best superhero designs of all time.
To attempt any sort of radical change to the traditional costume is betray the fanbase, shit on the character, and ultimately throw away one of the most perfect distillations of the archetypal golden age caped superhero design.
In other words, when it comes to Superman, you just plain DON’T fuck with the costume.
Otherwise you end up with shit like the “blue” Superman of the 90’s:
May we never speak of this again...
Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the similarly muted Superman Returns costume, The Man of Steel costume seems to keep everything you’d expect in a Superman costume, while bringing very little new to the table.
Oddly enough, the one notable unique quality of the new costume, is the almost chain mail like texture to it.
Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the various Spider-Man movie costumes, as well as some of the redesigns for the Watchmen movie, I find this texture to be distracting and excessively gaudy.
Then again, Zack Snyder films have a tendency to be excessively gaudy as a whole, which would probably result in said extraneous details to be more consistent with the aesthetic of the film, rather than overly extravagant.
In case you couldn’t tell, Zack Snyder would not have been my first choice as director for a Superman film.
Then again, I haven’t really liked a Superman movie since the second one; so it’s hard to say if I’d have confidence in anyone to do justice to the Man of Steel.
Anyway, the costume is kind of “meh,” Henry Cavil has failed to generate enough interest for me to even take a peek at his Imdb page; and in general, I really see no reason to be excited about The Man of Steel at this point.
The Dark Knight Rises on the other hand, now that’s a movie to flip out about and irrationally anticipate despite it’s release date being WAY the fuck out there…
Filed under: Comics, Movies, 300, anime, Batman, Comics, DC, Dragonball Z, films, Frieza, Goku, Japanese, Legend of the Guardians, manga, Marvel, Movies, Spider-Man, Sucker Punch, Superman, Superman Returns, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, The Man of Steel, The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Warner Bros., Watchmen, Zack Snyder
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