In an extensive interview with Mark Hughes at Forbes, Zack Snyder touches on a number of subjects including the creative process behind the Man of Steel sequel, as well as the demands of fandom, the influence of Watchmen and his under appreciated Sucker Punch movie.
One of the most revealing parts of the interview was the fact that Wonder Woman will indeed appear in costume. It's been unclear until now just how big of a role Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/WW would play in the sequel unofficially titled Batman vs Superman. Previously assumed to be a cameo and it could still be but one that involves her in action. Snyder was fully aware of the cinematic importance of these characters together on screen for the first time in live-action.
"The thing also that’s really fascinating for me is that, even just in the tests we’ve been doing, the costumes, right? You basically have Batman and Superman...in the costumes, but just like the stand-ins, just testing to see what the costumes look like. And you have them standing there and they’re standing in the same shot — and then we have Wonder Woman, you know, all three of them in the same shot. Even just for a test, you really have to go, “Wow, that’s crazy!” Not only is it the first time that I’m seeing them, it’s the first time they’ve ever existed together on screen in a movie. And that’s kind of a huge deal. Even just Batman and Superman standing next to each other… [I]t’s kind of epic. You do sort of sense the weight of the pop culture iconography jumping out of its skin..."
Don't expect to see any official costume photos anytime soon as Snyder doesn't even know this early in the process when that will be. With filming beginning in Detroit soon there is always a possibility of fuzzy cameraphone snapshots leaking online but he doesn't seemed too worried. "The schedule is designed carefully so that I don’t know that that’ll be [a problem]– but who knows, these cats are pretty good at getting the drop on us with these photos," he said.
He went on to describe the influence of seminal books of the '80s like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns had in shaping his view of storytelling using real world themes, sometimes political ones, through the mythology of comic books. "Watchmen, of course...this comic that’s able to shed light on what I would say is our reality, but do it through the sort of metaphor and mythology of comic books, right?," he said. He felt fortunate to bring the book to film but didn't want to sanitize the adaptation. "I really wanted to show the violence is real, people get killed or get hurt, and it’s not fun or funny," Snyder made clear.
That type of gritty realism informed his approach to Superman but some of the backlash to Man of Steel may have been unwittingly misplaced criticism. "If you really analyze the comic book version of Superman, he’s killed, he’s done all the things," he said, "I guess the rules that people associate with Superman in the movie world are not the rules that really apply to him in the comic book world, because those rules are different." When it came time to find a counterpart to Superman in a sequel the natural thought that came to Snyder might have been seeded years ago by Frank Miller's work. "After Man of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman," he told Hughes and from a fan's perspective it certainly would be "cool."
Despite the lukewarm response of Snyder's 2011 film, Sucker Punch, about a young girl who is institutionalized and retreats to an alternative reality as a coping method it still has a cult following for its many positives - female empowerment, visual effects and action. Snyder doesn't understand the misconceptions about the movie which he describes as,"...an incredibly girl-power movie, not like girl-power in the comic book way but in the sort of psychological way." He'd like to to release “uninfluenced by the studio”version of the film that more closely reflects the original script.
Snyder also talks about the Terry Gilliam kerfuffle, 300 and the success of Marvel movies. Please follow the link above to read the interview in its entirety. A great exclusive from Hughes so early in the making of the Batman vs Superman.
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