Former Warner Bros. executive Greg Silverman has taken to social media to defend Man of Steel’s version of Superman. The film, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, debuted in the summer of 2013 and kicked off the current DCEU slate. It introduced the world to Cavill’s iteration of Superman with a much darker tone and straightforward take on the morality of the character.
Man of Steel was an origin story for Superman not unlike Richard Donner’s Superman from 1978. Opening with the character’s origins on Krypton, the film then examined his childhood on Earth and his first experiences getting the Superman suit – before General Zod (Michael Shannon) and a surviving band of Kryptonians arrive on Earth to terraform the planet and turn it into a new Krypton. Ultimately, Man of Steel was moderately successful at the box office, but it also divided fans for a number of reasons. These included the fact that Superman wins by killing Zod at the end of the movie, the bizarre death of Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) inside of a tornado, and the mere fact that Cavill’s version of Superman leaned into the character’s feelings as an outsider more than previous iterations, with some calling the Cavill Superman "boring."
Now, it's unclear if Cavill will be returning to the role of Superman in the future regardless of the fact that he really wants to. That said, insiders are continuing to defend the Snyder version of Superman from online criticism. Specifically, former Warner Bros. executive Greg Silverman took to Twitter to explain how Snyder and the team behind Man of Steel captured the character’s struggle to fit between two worlds. Silverman wrote:
This defense comes against some criticisms that the Man of Steel version of Superman was “boring.” In response to those allegations, Silverman’s defense seems to draw from the fact that Man of Steel is very much rooted in Superman’s roots in the earliest comics penned by Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster. At its core, Superman is a loose adaptation of the Moses story and adds in layers of loneliness and the angst of trying to fit in between two worlds. Silverman seems to think that Man of Steel excelled in those areas.
With all of that said, as divisive as the Zack Snyder era of Superman was, it’s clear that this version of the classic DC superhero has a strong fanbase. The pro-Snyder DC fans were able to get enough support for Zack Snyder’s Justice League to get a release on HBO Max earlier this year, and that version of the film largely improved the depiction of Superman that had been heavily modified in the Joss Whedon of Justice League. At this point, nobody can say for sure if Snyder will ever direct another Superman movie for DC, but there clearly is still an adamant fanbase for the Man of Steel version of the hero.
Source: Greg Silverman
