MAN OF STEEL: When You Kneel Before Michael Shannon, You Kneel Before Zod!

Despite numerous insistances otherwise, Zack Snyder is ready to dirty Superman’s knees with the casting of an all new General Zod. Who got the director’s (Terrence) Stamp of approval? According to Deadline Hollywood it’s not Viggo Mortensen as has been rumored for several weeks.

Get ready to kneel before Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire, Revolutionary Road).

 

Total left field choice, but a very cool one. When I first saw Michael Shannon as an unstable young man in Revolutionary Road, my immediate instinct was that he’d be a remarkable candidate to replace the late Heath Ledger as Nolan’s Joker. His unhinged inflection and mannerisms reminded me so much of that character, and the similarity has been gnawing away at me ever since. This guys needed to be a comic book villain. He’d be up there with Michael Emerson as one of the great screen sociopaths. General Zod is not one of the roles I would’ve considered for him, but it does show that Snyder is thinking well out of the box.

In terms of actors. Not characters.

Can a filmmaker please fill up the entire legal pad with ideas before falling back on Zod or Lex again? This isn’t that hard.

Man of Steel hits theaters in December, 2012.

Comments

  1. Awesomeness. To be honest, I dont know the actor very well, but I’m happy the villain is Zod. Yeah yeah I know people will say we’ve seen him before and they want Brainiac or something, but Zod really is the perfect villain for the start of a new series. He’s kryptonian so hes basically a dark mirror to Superman with their shared past and same set of powers, but its also a great way to show the audience Kryptons history without having to do ANOTHER origin. 

  2. Shannon was pretty crazy in Revolutionary Road. And rather creepy and out there on Boardwalk Empire. Paul summed it up well. Dude is meant to be a comic book villain. Get ready for one intense Zod.

  3. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    If they’re going with Zod as a villain anyway, I like that it’s a very different actor than Stamp. Not someone with a similar look and a deep voice attempting to ape what he did. 

  4. This guy is excellent. Really scary villain in Boardwalk. Approve!

  5. lets hope the script is good. A fine choice for Zod

  6. AAAHHH!!!

    (That guy is scary.)

  7. i’m already scared of the man

  8. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    Here’s the thing. Ledger was an exceptional performer. He had to go to a place to play the Joker. Michael Shannon would just need makeup. I think it might be a bigger stretch for him to go grocery shopping or to take part in a conversation on an airplane. 

    “Pretend to be like the flesh walkers. Pretend to be like the flesh walkers. Pretend to be like the flesh walkers.”  

  9. Yeah, I’ll be that guy who’s disappointed they’re going with Zod.
    Still, since they are I’m very happy with the choice of Shannon for the role.

  10. Avatar photo Kelly (@annaluna) says:

    michael shannon != michael sheen.

    related: this casting makes more sense now.

  11. I’m starting to think the filmmakers don’t know Superman is a 70+ year old comic with more villains than Zod and Lex. Why do they always go back to the stuff in the Donner films? Smallville likes to reinvent, but at least it has always used a ton of comic characters. Maybe in this movie, Zod will tell Superman to kneel. That would be novel.

  12. More Zod?!  Why is Brainaic so unfilmable?

  13. he was great in the runaways

  14. Zod in 2 Superman films then Zod in Smallville & now back to Zod in film 32 years later.  I hope they dont have a Lex Luthor.  This is coming from a Superman fan.  NEW IDEAS!!!  PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Matthew

  15. Zod is an awesome idea.

    Kneel before Zod may be a nice inside joke here.

    But a lot of people who will see the next movie have no idea who he is.

    This is a nice tactic to inject some classic but somewhat fresh(not luthor) at the same time. 

  16. @robbydzwonar I really don’t get why not one of the Superman movies ever had Brainiac, but hopefully if Man Of Steel does good enough then the sequel might have him then. Shannon as Zod is very strange yet very intriguing at the same time. Gonna have to wait until some footage is shot & teased before I make any assumptions.

  17. You can’t see it but he’s holding an ice cream cone and a balloon in both hands.

  18. Essential Michael Shannon: “The Missing Person,” “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.”

  19. they’ve already made 5 superman movies and several tv shows that all have superman!  where’s the new ideas??

  20. I am disappointed that we’re gonna get Zod….AGAIN! We need to distance ourselves away from Luthor and Zod a bit. I mean keep Luthor in the background but Sups has a lot of other villains to fight. Why not use Metallo? With CGI the big new thing in film he would fit perfectly.

  21. Thanks for finally posting this!

  22. I’d love to see Metallo or Darkseid (imagine Superman taking on a bunch of Parademons).  Still, I love Michael Shannon and he’s perfect for the part.  I think he’d make a good Batman, although fat chance of that.

  23. If it can’t be Luthor, I’ll take Zod.

  24. I’m not happy we’ll be getting Zod again. I was hoping for Brainiac. Still, at least Luthor isn’t the central villain again. I haven’t seen Michael Shannon in any film, so I don’t know how good of an actor he is. He has BIG SHOES to fill after Terence Stamp. I hope he does good.

  25. I hope they show a little restraint with the whole “Kneel before Zod” thing. Smallville handled it terribly – they turned it into a marketing slogan with swooshing graphics before the character even appeared on the show. And then, he was spouting it off like a bad sitcom catchphrase before the character was even remotely established. 

    But as far as the casting goes, I’m totally onboard. Shannon’s performance in Revolutionary Road was searingly brilliant.  

  26. I was really hoping for Darkseid. Oh well, wait and see. 🙂

  27. @clintaa  This is true.  Where are the fresh ideas for villains? We had Zod twice, and Luthor 4 times already.

  28. I *think* I only know Snannon from Boardwalk Empire, but I absolutely loved his part in that (see: the baptism scene) so this seems like a great choice!

  29. Good morning! I just hope it’s a good movie and they stop redoing the franchise it drives me nuts!! The last movie Superman Returns was not to bad except for the kid! Spacey was a good Luthor and the main characters who played Lois and Superman were great.
         All I can say of the new film and Zod being the villan is…… Oh Well. I would love to see Brianiac like everyone else and give Luthor a rest for awhile. It is true Superman has tons of villans that would make great movies:
    Parasite would be my next favorite choise after Brainiac
    A quick little Myxlpyx story could be fun in the begining of the film.
    Bizarro big fight scenes (maybe add Capt. Marvel at the end to help big blue take him down)
    Darkseid would be awesome with some Apokolips scenes
    Doomsday (a better one than Smallville’s the one from the comic books)
    I wish them luck and hopefully we get a good movie.

    K

  30. this is inspired casting! check out ‘my son, my son, what have ye done’ to see shannon personify pyschotic insanity!

  31. Good casting, but same tired ass villian we’ve all seen. BOO!

  32. Oh wow! This news gave me chills. I’m a huge fan of Shannons so I’m a little biased here but I think we have yet to see Zod in any of the past versions. He will make this part his own and redefine what Zod is on the big screen.

    Everyone should be very excited and a little scared, Zod is finally coming to the big screen!

  33. Been looking forward to a villain announcement and I was hoping it was anybody besides Luthor or Zod.  I know, he has name recognition, but since we were promised a reboot, I was hoping for something different.  Brainiac would be the obvious choice.  Parasite?  Darksied and Doomsday are prob more of a sequel villain, but we’ve seen Zod already so I assumed Goyer and Nolan would have gone in a different direction.  This guy seems like a great actor and I’m sure I will love it, but Note to Goyer, Nolan and Snyder:  Superman has other villains from the comics that the Donner movie’s didn’t explore. 
    Who knows, maybe he’ll reinvent the character like Ledger did with the Joker.  I was just hoping for something different.

  34. The casting is fine, but Zod as the primary villain is disappointing.

    Styles make fights.  For Kryptonians, powers = fighting style.

    Mirror matches aren’t as exciting, lose a lot of the narrative and characterization in the choreography, and are harder to write well tending to turn on some ambiguous and arbitrary surge to victory rather something logically based on their strengths, tactically calculated, or thoughtful.  Likely we’ll get showy displays of power, but since it’s a mirror, we’re seeing their joint power… not Superman’s.  The fighting will only convey that there are MEN of Steel not a singular powerful MAN of Steel.  Granted, there might be differentiation between a farmer’s fighting prowess and a general’s but since we know Superman will ultimately win that suggests some sort of gimmicky win- so Superman isn’t super- he’ll just squeak by.

    By diluting Superman’s uniqueness with another Kryptonian, some of the magic of Superman is lost and the powerset is less readily part of the power-fantasy that is integral to the genre.  You want kids to want to be the one and only Superman because those powers set him apart.  Excalibur wouldn’t be as compelling a sword if every villain and knight of Camelot had their own magical equivalent.  Batman versus Joker is always compelling because Joker will NEVER be a stealthy gadget oriented ninja.  Luthor- the classic brain versus brawn.  etc.

    As an example, another series framed by action sequences: The Matrix.  The most compelling fights matched the impossibly powerful meaning to kill against the agile meaning to flee, the stiff and robotic against the fluid and graceful, the one against the many, etc.  Its most boring fight was the Super Brawl, which had bland choreography (characterization was muted since they two were identically powered), but was VFX heavy, and required that trick ending to resolve.

    A strong script, of course, can save it from these cliche pitfalls but Snyder’s strength as a director is undoubtedly visuals and action as opposed to providing convincing, empathetic, human characters and storytelling, so with a hurdle set up against his main strength already, I’m concerned.

    With all the talk of how this script makes Superman more relevant, I wonder how Zod accomplishes that?  (Again, it can happen outside of the fights, but I’m addressing Snyder’s strength)  With a Kryptonian hero versus a Kryptonian threat upon resolution the conclusion the audiences reaches isn’t that Superman is relevant to our problems… it’s that we’d be better off without any Kryptonians in the first place… and given the real world doesn’t struggle with Kryptonians, it’s something of an irrelevant non-issue.  We might get some sort of ideological battle that’s quasi-relevant… but without Kryptonian powers to give such ideals force of will, they’re not relevant.

    Instead of tackling a nearly identical opponent from beyond the stars, this real world has more than enough trouble to challenge a Superman in a relevant manner or speak to some relevant issue.  Luthor can represent anything from the folly of science unchecked, corporate corruption, or disenfranchised public from the justice system… Metallo, the military-industrial complex, the real meaning of humanity, the role of information technologies / virtual / net IDs… Doomsday, Parasite, etc.  Again, a good script might do it, but superficially, what does the Kryptonian General Zod from another era and world have to say about us that’s at all relevant?

    Man of Steel was the landmark reboot of Superman seeking to make him more realistic, rationalized, grounding, and identifiable / clearly characterized.  It make Clark the primary identity to give the audience something human to grasp and made him the Last Son of Krypton in order to emphasize his special role in the story and the DCU.  By bringing Zod into the picture, I can’t help but feel they’re using the “Man of Steel” title without capturing its intentions.  As a title, it would’ve been the perfect platform for a Metallo film contrasting different takes on what it is to be man and steel, providing ideological, character, style, and power differences that play out relevantly on the screen.

    Honestly hope for the best with this film regardless, but disappointed we’re not using the title to set Superman against Metallo who can be adapted to film so many interesting ways from being, essentially a shape-shifter (just different “Mission Impossible” face masks), to T-888, to giant mecha, to a cyber-presence hacker/controller, and so on… if this film does well, hopefully in the sequel?

  35. @jmack  He’d make a great Eddy Izzard too, based on his Runaways performance.

    I also wish it would be Brainiac. I think the reason they always go to Luthor and Zod is that they are the most well known Superman villains. Sure, it’s because of the previous movies, but more people saw those than have ever read a Superman comic book. Maybe cartoon exposure puts Brainiac more out there than before, but he’s still not a household name (other than as a put-down for smart kids!).

  36. Come on Zod again, especially after the disappointment that was Superman (rehash)Returns. Brainiac, Manchester Black, Darkseid their are literally a ton of worthy villains they could have used instead of beating this tired horse again. Superman need his “Batman Begins” not his Superman 2 part 2 

    And no kennyg Brainiac is more well known then Zod. He was in Super friends the 90’s Superman cartoons smallville. Zod is pretty much known for his appearence in Superman 2.  

  37. I hope that they haven’t just chosen Zod because of Superman II. To religiously adhere to the Donner Superman series is to entirely forget its spirit.

    It’s true that when audiences think of Superman, they think of the Williams score and the crystal fortress first and a less musclebound Kal-El as defining that mythos while that’s a valid opinion these elements only exist because the production crew took the risk of trying something different than what had come before. Bashing on the new Superman movie for potentially detaching itself from what has come before would be like fans in 1978 throwing a toddler tantrum that Donner’s Superman wasn’t like George Reeves and that Krypton didn’t look like this http://images.wikia.com/marvel_dc/images/0/05/Jor-El_%28Silver_Age%29_2.JPG .

    Superman: The Movie did not leave such an impact upon the Superman mythos from which it originated because of specific aesthetic choices, but because it was bold enough to stray away from what was expected when considering these choices . For the new Superman movie to come close to the cultural impact of the Donner series, Nolan and Snyder are going to have to roll the hard six:

    Forget the Williams score, forget Crystal Krypton and forget every single interpretation that audiences and comic fans associate with and expect of the character had ever existed. If The Man of Steel is to be as successful as the Donner series, then it must also dare to be different and totally renovate the high concept and core values of ‘Superman’, of who and what ‘Superman’ would be to the world if it was a brand new creation. I feel that the many reboots of Superman have failed to stick as well as Byrne’s ‘The Man of Steel’ for the exact same reason, even Birthright and Secret Origins didn’t really re-envision the mythos (a la Ultimate Spiderman) as much as shuffle it around a little.

    Some examples: to solve the problem of why Kryptonians appear human, why can’t “the planet Krypton” simply be the Stagnant and Dystopian Earth of a different dimension or even a colony of evolved post-humanity from the distant future that upon the moment of their extinction one lone scientist sends his Last Son on a one way trip to be the shining light of our world and lead it away from the same fate? If Lex Luthor is supposed to represent a corruption of what humanity can be (renegade scientist in the golden age, corrupt corporate figure in the bronze age), then why not make him a super-intelligent terrorist who perceives himself to be a revolutionary figure within a broken society and economy, resenting this new “Superman” guy for taking what he thinks should be his rightful place as ‘The Man of Tomorrow’ i.e. accepted by humanity as their leader and protector in the bigger picture?