The release of several minutes of footage from James Gunn’s “Superman” on Wednesday has yielded some varied reactions on social media.
The clip shows off several minutes of footage in which a massively injured Superman crash lands in the Arctic. His playful and energetic dog Krypto jumps all over him at first before realising he’s hurt and then helps drag him to the Fortress of Solitude.
There, the fortress’ robots get him into a chair and proceed to magnify the sun’s rays multiple times in an effort to heal Kal-El, who screams and has to be held down as the high-powered light rapidly repairs his damaged organs and tissue at an accelerated rate.
It’s never revealed what injured the normally impervious Superman or what made him so susceptible to injury, though a throwaway “he’s back” line from Nic Hoult’s Lex Luthor has generated obvious speculation that he had a hand in it.
Much of the division in post-release discussion seems to be about the clip’s tone which shies away from the darker and more serious aesthetics of Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” towards something lighter and more family-friendly.
Some are taking issue with a Man of Steel that can be injured, and more than a few are laced with macho bravado saying “Superman whined like a little b—” or complaining about the dog’s lack of discipline compared to their own seemingly always behaved pooches.
Many of the reactions, though, are positive. Some say they appreciate a return to the more idealistic, sincere, and kind version of the character and the overall Silver Age Superman tone. Others claim they like seeing a dog behaving so believably on screen.
The varied response to this clip goes a long way to explaining the reports of varied reactions to the film out of test screenings with some gushing and others not so enamoured. Gunn appears to be trying for something quite different to the Snyder-verse interpretation of Superman, for better or worse, and we’ll see how this experiment turns out when the film opens July 11th.
Source: THR
