If Superman and Batman duked it out, who would win? The question put Man of Steel director Zack Snyder in a tough spot, since The Dark Knight Rises auteur Christopher Nolan is the guy who hired him to make the new Superman movie.
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Snyder and new Superman actor Henry Cavill showed off new Man of Steel footage Saturday that operates on the premise that “this is the first Superman movie,” Snyder said. “We respect the canon and we knew the comic book exists; the movies are their own thing. When we started, we had to act as if no film had been made. We approached it in our head as if we’re making a Superman movie for the first time.”
The clip teased an earnest origins story rooted in the heartland, where young Clark Kent grows up on an American-as-apple-pie farm and displays heroic powers as a child that makes him feel like an outcast. Later, the classic red cape waves heroically in the breeze and Superman soars into the heavens per standard iconography, but there’s also contemporary inflections when Superman mixes it up with military troops that look like they could have been airlifted straight out of Iraq or Afghanistan.
“A lot of times in the past, Superman has been this big blue Boy Scout up on a throne that nobody can really touch.”
