While Batman has already been successfully rebooted, Superman still has a ways to go, hence Man of Steel, which hits theaters on June 14, 2013.
The most recent Superman reboot, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men), didn’t exactly fly, and Man of Steel director Zack Snyder also has to redeem himself a bit after making the ridiculous Sucker Punch.
So not only will nine minutes of footage from Star Trek Into Darkness play before The Hobbit in Imax 3-D showings, the new trailer for Man of Steel will also play before the latest big screen Tolkien epic. As Snyder told MTV News, “I can’t wait for The Hobbit, so it will be fun to see our crazy Man of Steel trailer and then enjoy The Hobbit because that’s going to be great.” (Both the Hobbit and Man of Steel are Warner Brothers releases).
While I’m still a Christopher Reeve Superman loyalist, what I’m especially looking forward to is Michael Shannon as General Zod. Shannon is a tremendous actor, and he’s especially great at playing bad guys. Snyder also told MTV, “Shannon is great, he has such great enthusiasm and dedication constantly. You can imagine that you could get actors who go, ‘Oh right, it’s Zod, it’s not 100 percent serious,’ or [you can play it] slight with a wink, there is none of that with him.”
And indeed, these days you have to take a comic character with respect, because the days when Hollywood treated comics as beneath them are long past us now. Snyder said his approach was, “This is important and fun and needs to be given the respect that it deserves…”
Snyder also told the L.A. Times Man of Steel is definitely “a more serious version of Superman. It’s not like a heart attack. We took the mythology seriously We take him as a character seriously. I believe the movie would appeal to anyone. I think that you’re going to see a Superman you’ve never seen before. I’m interested in Superman because he’s the father of all superheroes. He’s this amazing ambassador for all superheroes. I wanted to be sure the movie treated it respectfully.”
