If there’s one issue fans pointed out with Man of Steel , it’s the decision to have Superman blithely destroying huge swaths of Metropolis during his epic battle with Zod. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly , star Henry Cavill shed some light on how he interpreted the character of Superman in those scenes.
“ I mean, we’re talking about a greenhorn,” Cavill says. “Let’s say now, [if] Superman has the same threat again, that’s a different story. He would, of course, bring collateral damage to an absolute minimum, but in that, he’s just trying to survive because if he doesn’t, the planet’s gone. That’s the excuse I make for Superman. He’s fresh and he’s new, and it’s very easy to point out the faults in someone after they’ve done it, but put yourself in their shoes and see what happens.”
Zack Snyder had to defend the decision to wreck half of Metropolis as well. In an interview with Famous Monsters of Filmland , Snyder said:
"I stand by it, because for me, I’ve always said when I was working on Watchmen — and maybe it’s sort of left over from a Watchmen philosophical sort of thing — that there should be consequences to superheroes’ interaction with the earth. And that was kind of the way that we approached Man Of Steel . I wanted a big consequence to Superman’s arrival on earth. Certainly, Batman v Superman sort of cashes in all its chips on the ‘why’ of that destruction.”
On reflection, Cavill suspects that the amount of destruction Snyder has shown Superman to cause was a very intentional narrative decision. “ I think that may have been part of the master plan all along. When it comes to the major story stuff I can’t really speak on that, because that was above my paygrade,” says Cavill.
But at the end of the day, Superman’s concerns are greater than one ruined city, Metropolis or not. “I think the most difficult thing for him at this stage of the story is that he has just come to terms with the fact that he is really, really quite powerful and he hasn’t found any major vulnerabilities yet, and despite this, despite the enormous power that he has, he still cannot do everything, and he really struggles with that “ says Cavill. “It’s not just a quick, ‘Okay, I get it. I can’t save everyone.’ That takes a long time to work out.”
Do you buy Cavill’s take on Superman? Looking forward to see where Batman v Superman takes both characters? Feel free to talk it out in the comments section below.
