Henry Cavill, the new Superman in the upcoming Christopher Nolan/Zack Snyder reboot of the film franchise, told Empire Magazine (as reported over at ScreenRant.com) that “there is more action in Man of Steel than any of the Dark Knight Films.” Isn’t that adorable? Seeing Cavill lie straight to our faces (well, not really straight to our faces since we weren’t there doing the interview). Anyone who has seen the first full length trailer for Man of Steel knows to expect a particular ponderous, Nolan-esque approach to the material, a post-modern treatise on the nature of superheroes in a modern society. Sure, things will go boom, but it’s going to make us think. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – just don’t pretend it’s something it isn’t.
Well, Cavill may pretend for a living (even “belonging to a league of pretenders,” as per James Van Der Beek’s description of the Screen Actors Guild on Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23), but it seems he wasn’t lying about the action in this film. The newly arrived, Nokia-sponsored (who also sponsored the final trailer last year for The Dark Knight Rises) trailer for Man of Steel adopts the philosophy of showing rather than telling. In the film’s final trailer before release (we promise), there is precious little dialogue in the whole thing. It is almost entirely straight-ahead action. Heck, from the looks of it they even squeezed in a big action set-piece in the usually brief sequence involving Jor-El sending Kal-El to Earth moments before Krypton goes to pieces (literally).
Of course, you don’t cast The Gladiator and have him simply stand around collecting a paycheck, Marlon Brando-style.
If we ignore the various TV spots and focus on only the major theatrical trailers, the first one was the Superman trailer, the second one was the General Zod trailer, and this new one is where we see the two meet and generally go medieval on each other’s asses. Oy, with the punching and the flying and the kicking and the…holy crap, are General Zod’s eyes glowing?
Am I the only who thinks he is supposed to look menacing there but instead kind of looks like he has the worst red-eyed hangover ever?
But where are my manners. Check out the full trailer below:
At some point, in the near future action movies may simply just be like this trailer – almost no dialogue and just rapidly cut action sequences with no explanation. That would be a bad thing. As a strategy for trailer, though, it’s incredibly effective. Plus, they do manage to work in probably the most footage we’ve seen of Amy Adams as Lois Lane yet. Wouldn’t you know it? Superman has to save her, multiple times from the looks of it. Plus, there’s this:
“Um, geeze, Lois, you’ve been holding my face and staring at me for a full minute now, and people are dying all around us. Are we going to kiss or not?”
Also, the original General Zod Trio (again, not the name of a jazz group) villains from Superman II called, and they will gladly kneel in front of Michael Shannon’s Zod and his army.
Superman II had this:
Sarah Douglas, Terence Stamp, and Jack O’Halloran as Ursa, Zod, and Non in Superman II.
Whereas Man of Steel has this:
Michael Shannon, wearing his football player-sized armor and leading his army in Man of Steel.
Advantage? Man of Steel. BTW, if you didn’t notice and can’t quite tell from the absolute left side of the above photo, Zod appears to have some sort of freakin’ giant with him. You can see him in the trailer at the 25 second mark. Of course, in this trailer they have cut it together to make it appear as if Zod and his army are descending upon Jor-El at the time that Krypton is about to explode as a result of a planet-wide civil war. As such, Zod may not actually have his army anymore by the time he makes it to Earth for a cup of tea and side of whoop-ass with Kal-El. In fact, if the Star Trek Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 trailers taught us anything it is to not trust anything the big summer movie trailers are telling us because they might be purposefully misleading.
The most important part is that this movie looks pretty awesome when it kind of has no right to due to the inherent creative difficulties of a story centered around an invincible protagonist, especially one who hasn’t sniffed a genuinely good movie since 1982.
Man of Steel is scheduled to be released in the US, UK, Canada and other territories on June 14. Most areas of the world other than Japan are scheduled to get the film by the end of June.
What do you think?
