Man Of Steel: 5 Ways Zack Snyder (Hopefully) Has Grounded It In Reality
Keep it real. That's been the simple and somewhat paradoxical guiding principle of the WB/DC ship ever since Christopher Nolan had the idea for the greatest comic book movie trilogy in history inceptioned into his brain. Back in 2005, Batman Begins went out of its way to put light years of gritty, reality-based miles between itself and the neon nightmare of Batman & Robin. By building a plausible Batman from the ground up, Nolan and company created a Dark Knight that was more relatable to the wider audience. And maybe more importantly, a caped crusader that was simply much easier to wrap our heads around. It was a character whose emotional journey we could more easily track and empathize with, whose motivations and means we understood, and who we ended up caring about.
This is a simple idea, because reality is where you start making anything. Even in Hollywood. To create a superhero film from there you have to carefully construct a necessarily absurd world within and around that reality. If you're a good filmmaker you lead the audience from the ordinary to the extraordinary and back, and you never let them notice how flimsy the bridges are. And somewhere in that lies the paradox. We start our love affairs with these spandex-clad, superpowered uberpeople because of how amazingly unreal they are, but we stay for the pathos and the mundane. We want to be amazed, but we don't want to feel too distanced or disconnected. We stay, ultimately, for the humanity.
Man of Steel has a genuine shot at being a great superhero movie. Maybe just a great movie, of any kind. Based on the trailers, TV spots and featurettes, the Snyder/Nolan team appears to have nailed the required and much called for action. Surprisingly to some, they've also nailed an emotional and hopeful tone to their film. People seem genuinely inspired by what they've seen so far. By grounding their Superman and his powers in the real world, they could go all the way and win over the general audience and the built-in audience alike. If this movie wants to succeed, it needs to convince us of the super, and of the man.
Now, some of these ideas have been hinted at in the footage to date and even specifically talked about by the creators, but here are five ways to make the Man of Steel soar with his feet firmly on the ground.