Marvel Entertainment’s chief creative officer Joe Quesada went on Kevin Smith‘s Fat Man on Batman the other day, and after discussing Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the topic of conversation got around to rival DC’s Man of Steel. And Quesada did not hold back about his feelings on the film. Hoboy.
So what made Quesada say that, after seeing Man of Steel, “I was just angry”? Is it the massive amount of collateral damage director Zack Snyder put on the screen? What many fans perceive to be a mangling of the character of Pa Kent? Or maybe the controversial decision to have Superman snap Zod’s neck? Nope. (Though he may very well not like those things, too. A lot of people didn’t.) Though it does have to do with Michael Shannon‘s scenery-chewing villain, specifically the way he just wanted to get the Codex and save his people, geez:
“As a comic book fan, I wanted to love that movie so much. I wanted to love it so much, and I didn’t love it so much. Again, there are little things here and there that you could pick at and things like that, but I just think at the end of the day, Zod was the hero of the movie to me… He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him.
Zod, in this particular incarnation, struck me as not necessarily an evil man, but a man of… he had a particular… he had his orders, he had a mission. He was a zealot of sorts, but he was a zealot… again, correct me if I’m wrong… but he didn’t say, ‘I want to rebuild Krypton, and then come back and destroy this little planet. All I want is to rebuild this planet. And the only reason I’m blowing everything to bits here is because you’ve got what I want, and you’re not giving it to me. So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.’… When Superman said Krypton had its chance, I was like, ‘Will you just f***ing kill him, Zod?’””
And don’t try that “But Zod would’ve created an army and come back to destroy Earth!” stuff, either. “You probably could have written a way around it,” argued Quesada. “You could have had a better solution if you had written a better problem. So I see things like that, and I’m like, ‘Aww, man.’ It was one of some things in the movie, that I just ended up feeling disappointed in it.”
I know a lot of people who saw Man of Steel, myself included, didn’t like it, and that on the flip side there are people (our own Jill Pantozzi, for example), who defend it. I’m sure both sides have things to say about Quesada’s Man of Steel complaint. Have it out in the comments, but please, as always, keep it civil.
(Comicbook.com, via Comic Book Resources)
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