Michael Shannon Still “Proud” Of Zack Snyder’s ‘Man Of Steel’, Says General Zod Role Meant More To Him Than Just A “Big Payday”
Despite the many criticisms leveled towards Zack Snyder’s take on Superman, Man of Steel star Michael Shannon not only feels “proud” to have starred as General Zod, but also strongly disagrees with the notion that the film was little more than pure slop.
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The storied actor, who in the years since laying waste to Metropolis has starred in such films as The Shape of Water, KKnives Out, and Nuremberg – as well as an unfortunate return to General Zod in The Flash – spoke to his brief time in the DCEU during a recent appearance on Scene Selection, a webseries hosted by Vanity Fair wherein actors are invited to review clips from their past films.
Presented with the final moments of Man of Steel’s climax, in which Superman and Zod slug it out in a Metropolis train station, Shannon began, “The first thing I think when I see this scene is, ‘Oh, there’s Union Station’, because I lived in Chicago for a long time.”
“I’d been in there, I’d taken trains out of there, and never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be shooting this in Union Station.”
Coming to the infamous ‘Superman neck snap’, Shannon offered his take on said controversy, wincing “Oh gosh, I just wish people didn’t kill people, period. I mean, whether or not they’re aliens from outer space or just regular joes.
Turning to the overall discourse, the actor asserted, “I guess one of the controversies with this film, and Zach engineered this really, is that Superman is not supposed to kill anybody, so I put him in a situation where if he wants to save these people, he has to kill me, and he does, and that obviously led to a lot of ‘sturm und drang‘, or whatever you say.”
“I think a lot of people say, ‘Oh, you know, this isn’t what he usually does. He just went for the big payday or something.’ But I’m proud of this movie. I think it’s actually about something.”
Closing out his thoughts on Man of Steel, Shannon proudly beamed, “I really loved working with Zach, and I really loved making this movie.”
Interestingly, despite his positive feelings towards his initial outing as General Zod, Shannon did not offer such enthusiasm about the villain’s aforementioned in The Flash.
Speaking to his role reprisal during a 2023 interview with Looper‘s Tim Lammers, the actor recalled how, upon being asked by director Andy Muschietti to face-off against the Scarlet Speedster, he “was a little confused. I said, ‘As memory serves me, I think I died in Man of Steel. Are they sure they got the right guy?'”
“But then they explained to me the whole multiverse phenomenon, which … I was a little behind the times on that. I can’t say that I’m a huge consumer of this genre of films — not that I have anything against them. If I’m going to watch a movie, the odds are it’s not going to be one of those, but I sure love making them.
“I loved making Man of Steel, and I love working with Zack [Snyder], and I felt like it was actually, in a way, a fairly important film. It was nice to revisit the character. I wasn’t there for a terribly long time. I was in and out in a couple of weeks, so it was a nice way to spend a bit of my summer in England. Andy’s a lovely guy and a great artist, visually, and I had a blast.”
“I tried to get back into his skin. He’s a little different in this film. He’s a little more … I don’t know how to put it. You don’t spend as much time with him, so you don’t really get to know as much about what he’s thinking. It’s not necessarily his movie. That’s the thing with these multiverse movies — you get a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But it’s really Ezra [Miller’s] movie.”
