We've been hearing a lot about Man of Steel and what kind of movie it might be (actually, now that I think about it, we haven't). One aspect of it no one has touched on yet is its historical accuracy. That's probably because no one thought to care about such a thing. Writer David Goyer intends to change that.
Now, the story of Superman never happened. It is a piece of fiction, enduring but untrue. Man of Steel will pretend that's not the case.
Goyer, co-writer of good movies like The Dark Knight and sole writer of such atrocities as Blade Trinity and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., told Empire that regarding Man of Steel, "We're approaching Superman as if it weren't a comic book movie, as if it were real."
What this means exactly is up to speculation. Goyer does specify that Superman's status as an alien plays a big role in the film, indicating that first contact between humans and Superman will occupy much of the film's focus.
Off the record, Goyer then went on to describe how Man of Steel's Superman would not possess the power of flight, super strength, x-ray vision, heat vision or freeze breath because they were not realistic enough for him. Though he did indicate he would be keeping Superman's movie-only abilities to reverse time by spinning the Earth backwards and put a broken Great Wall of China back together just by looking at it, since science has long proven such things are within the realm of believability... OK, maybe he didn't say all that. But maybe he did.
In the name of realism, Goyer's especially extraterrestrial Superman may be more terrestrial than we're all used to. But this is not going to be just a dumb comic book film. It will be a serious record of what happened when Superman visited Earth, regardless of the fact that Superman never once visited Earth. This ground-level approach worked well for Goyer when it came to Batman, so there's no reason it should not also work for a character who is absolutely nothing like Batman.
So that's that. Man of Steel, the comic book movie
you're all looking forward to, is going to try as hard as it can to be a
historical document of something that never happened. Does this affect your
excitement for the film? How about if we told you Dustin Hoffman is being
approached to replace Henry Cavill as Superman and it will now be directed by
PBS documentarian Ken Burns? You might even be able to get your mom to watch it
with you!
But nah, we kid. It's probably gonna be an insanely awesome movie. Go see it. Right now!
