Superman I & II (1978 & 1981) vs. Man of Steel (2013): Part 1

<v Speaker 1>Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane. No,
<v Speaker 1>it's the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, everybody, welcome to our Superman versus Man of Steel episode.
<v Speaker 2>We are so glad to have John Read of the
<v Speaker 2>thirty something Movie Podcast on our episode this week. It
<v Speaker 2>actually coincides with their three hundredth episode, which they're going
<v Speaker 2>to release this week. So as soon as you get
<v Speaker 2>done listening to this podcast, go over to the thirty
<v Speaker 2>something Movie podcast page click subscribe and check out their stuff.
<v Speaker 2>They've got some great, great episodes and they're a lot
<v Speaker 2>of fun.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you, guys so much for tuning in again, or
<v Speaker 1>if this is your first time to listen to us,
<v Speaker 1>we're super glad to have you. Without further ado, Hello everybody,
<v Speaker 1>and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast,
<v Speaker 1>discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
<v Speaker 1>and nineties pop culture with your co hosts James D.
<v Speaker 3>Gray and Jason Couliban.
<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody, welcome back.
<v Speaker 2>This is the Superman one and two versus Mansteals.
<v Speaker 1>We've got our guest John Reid with us from thirty
<v Speaker 1>s the podcast. John, how you doing Man. Good?
<v Speaker 3>Have you? Oh, I'm doing great. I'm just I'm excited
<v Speaker 3>to be here with you guys, and just I'm agonizing.
<v Speaker 3>I'm agonizing over the decisions that we have to make here.
<v Speaker 3>It's going to change the course of Mighty rivers. It
<v Speaker 3>may reverse the rotation of the Earth. It may cause
<v Speaker 3>people to forget that they ever spent the night with Superman.
<v Speaker 3>I mean whatever, it's I'm just I'm ready. Let's go.
<v Speaker 3>Let's make some decisions.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that's it. We've got to have John as a
<v Speaker 1>guest on every single episode from now. That's right.
<v Speaker 3>It's been a day at work, So the fact that
<v Speaker 3>I knew that we were going to be able to
<v Speaker 3>get on and talk some Superman and all day while
<v Speaker 3>I'm supposed to be doing work stuff, I'm just walking
<v Speaker 3>around now. But I'm so glad to be with you guys.
<v Speaker 3>I'm having so much fun listening to your show, Like
<v Speaker 3>I cannot wait. Every single time your podcast comes up
<v Speaker 3>in my feet, I'm like, oh, no, skip all the
<v Speaker 3>other ones. You got to find out is it van
<v Speaker 3>Halen or van Hagar? We got to find out.
<v Speaker 2>Well, thanks for being with us, Man, Why don't tell
<v Speaker 2>us a little bit about thirty something.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, So we started about close to five years ago.
<v Speaker 3>Now we are a bunch of teachers. So we're sitting
<v Speaker 3>around talking about movies. I think it was twenty fourteen
<v Speaker 3>we were talking about We're talking about nineteen eighty four,
<v Speaker 3>and we're like, Wow, there's so many movies that just
<v Speaker 3>you know, thirty years ago, so many great movies from
<v Speaker 3>this year, and we just started rattling them off. We're
<v Speaker 3>just like, oh, and we're like, just think about from
<v Speaker 3>eighty four. You had Ghostbusters, you had The Nightmare on
<v Speaker 3>Elm Street, you had all these gremlins, all these different movies,
<v Speaker 3>and then we started jumping into eighty five and we're like, oh, man,
<v Speaker 3>then you got back to the future, you guys. So
<v Speaker 3>as we were doing all this, I had kind of
<v Speaker 3>wanting to do a podcast for a long time, back
<v Speaker 3>before like even a lot of people knew what podcasts were.
<v Speaker 3>I had listened to some different podcasts and I thought,
<v Speaker 3>you know what, it sounds like those guys have a
<v Speaker 3>lot of fun, and I would love to find a
<v Speaker 3>way to do this someday and do it completely for
<v Speaker 3>free and somehow eventually get paid for it. So, you know,
<v Speaker 3>one out of three ain't bad. So you know, we
<v Speaker 3>decided at that point, we kind of said, hey, you
<v Speaker 3>know what, let's get together and let's talk about movies.
<v Speaker 3>That'll be our theme is we're going to talk about
<v Speaker 3>movies that are thirty years old. And then that way
<v Speaker 3>we don't have an ending point where like, we can
<v Speaker 3>keep this going as long as we want to, we'll
<v Speaker 3>be able to keep going, you know, forever and ever
<v Speaker 3>and ever. And so we started it up. We made
<v Speaker 3>some mistakes with our first episode. I know there was
<v Speaker 3>another podcast at the time where the guys used to
<v Speaker 3>get together and sit in a restaurant or a diner
<v Speaker 3>and they would record while they were having their dinner.
<v Speaker 3>And I thought, it's a cool concept. Let's do that.
<v Speaker 3>So I hold all of my equipment to our local
<v Speaker 3>Mexican restaurant completely not thinking about the fact that, well,
<v Speaker 3>wait a minute, they're going to have mariachi music going
<v Speaker 3>the entire time. We're all going to be munching on chips.
<v Speaker 3>So that's our infamous lost episode, the one we're willing
<v Speaker 3>to start with this episode number two. Premise, Like I said,
<v Speaker 3>the premise of our show is whatever year we're in,
<v Speaker 3>we're going back thirty years. One of the benefits, and
<v Speaker 3>I think you guys see this too, one of benefits
<v Speaker 3>is I mean, we're we're friends in real life. You know,
<v Speaker 3>we're not just we're not just podcasting with each other.
<v Speaker 3>Because somehow we went we met online somewhere and here
<v Speaker 3>you go.
<v Speaker 1>Jason was the one that turned me onto you guys.
<v Speaker 1>He's probably been listening to you for two or three
<v Speaker 1>years now. Yeah, that's right, and I've been listening for
<v Speaker 1>the last year. So the first episode that I listened
<v Speaker 1>to though, was your two hundredth episode where you just
<v Speaker 1>you guys were It sounded like you're all in somebody's
<v Speaker 1>kitchen together and just having a great time, and I
<v Speaker 1>was like, this sounds I mean, it sounds awesome. It
<v Speaker 1>totally looked me in just all the movies that you
<v Speaker 1>guys were going through now thirty something Movie Podcast.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we're on Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, all those different places.
<v Speaker 3>If you just look for three zero podcast you're probably
<v Speaker 3>gonna find us on most of those different spots. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's the easiest way to find us. And thirty Podcasts
<v Speaker 3>dot Com is our website. You can get to all
<v Speaker 3>the episodes from there.
<v Speaker 1>And I just want to say something about your co
<v Speaker 1>host real quick. It's almost always Pat and Bow that
<v Speaker 1>I hear. I know you have other guys who come
<v Speaker 1>in from time to time. But and I can't remember
<v Speaker 1>what the the movie was that you guys were talking about,
<v Speaker 1>But at some point in the podcast Pat and Bo
<v Speaker 1>started talking about Deli sandwiches. Maybe it was when the
<v Speaker 1>Harry met Sally, is what I'm guessing.
<v Speaker 3>I think it was.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I was, I was salivating. I was just like, oh, pot,
<v Speaker 1>Pat and Bo need to just do their own let's
<v Speaker 1>talk about food podcasts, and I will. I'll guest host
<v Speaker 1>every time. All right, well you're here to join us.
<v Speaker 1>We're doing today.
<v Speaker 2>We're going to compare Superman the movie and Superman two
<v Speaker 2>kind of as one big conglomerate versus Men of Steel.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and John did an episode it was just you
<v Speaker 1>on actually two episodes, and if you want to go
<v Speaker 1>to Thirty Somethings podcast, it's episode one, one and two
<v Speaker 1>where he talks it was the it was the eightieth
<v Speaker 1>anniversary of the first Superman. He talks about in detail
<v Speaker 1>the whole origin story of Superman. And so when we
<v Speaker 1>first started talking about doing this podcast together. I was like,
<v Speaker 1>oh crap, I so much research that I've got to
<v Speaker 1>do because Superman is just this, I mean, it's volumes
<v Speaker 1>of history. And then I listened to those two podcasts
<v Speaker 1>and I was like, well, okay, I don't have to
<v Speaker 1>research anymore. I'm just gonna tell people to go done,
<v Speaker 1>go back to John's one eighty one and one eighty
<v Speaker 1>two of the thirty something podcast and you can get
<v Speaker 1>all of the backstory on Superman. And today we're just
<v Speaker 1>gonna we're going to focus on these three movies.
<v Speaker 3>You guys have caused me such turmoil since since you
<v Speaker 3>sent me a message and you were like, hey, would
<v Speaker 3>you like to be on an episode of the podcast
<v Speaker 3>in which we pit these movies against each other? You know,
<v Speaker 3>Superman one and two versus Man of Steel? And my
<v Speaker 3>initial reaction, I mean, well, I mean it would have
<v Speaker 3>been my reaction right now too, But my reaction was
<v Speaker 3>are you kidding? Yes? I would love to. And then
<v Speaker 3>when that wore off, I actually started thinking about it.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, okay, all right, let's do this Superman
<v Speaker 3>one and two versus Man of Steel. I totally know.
<v Speaker 3>Oh but wait, there's this Okay, but now there's that
<v Speaker 3>this one better that. Oh, you guys. So there have
<v Speaker 3>been several times where, over the course of the last
<v Speaker 3>couple of weeks, since we've been messaging back and forth,
<v Speaker 3>my wife will see me like furiously scribbling something on
<v Speaker 3>a piece of paper or my iPad or whatever, and
<v Speaker 3>she'll be like, all right, so, which one is it today?
<v Speaker 3>And I said, Nope, I'm not sharing. I'm gonna have
<v Speaker 3>to listen to the episode. I'm not sharing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all of our listeners, you're going to have to
<v Speaker 1>hold out till the end for final judgment on these
<v Speaker 1>once we've done our comparison. Well to John's wife though, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>thank you Ford, thank you for letting him hang out
<v Speaker 1>with us today. It's double duty for the podcasting today.
<v Speaker 1>Superman the movie came out in nineteen seventy eight and
<v Speaker 1>December fifteenth, nineteen seventy eight. Yeah, there's a big origin
<v Speaker 1>story behind it. Let's get in that because that really
<v Speaker 1>is interesting.
<v Speaker 3>I think.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, the Salcans were the producers on this movie, and
<v Speaker 1>they bought the rights for this movie back in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy four. Ilia Salkan the son went to Alexander Salkan,
<v Speaker 1>the father and said Hey, I think this is going
<v Speaker 1>to be a big hit. Now. Warner Brothers owned the
<v Speaker 1>rights to the movie at the time, and they said,
<v Speaker 1>I guess you can have it, but we're not going
<v Speaker 1>to give you any money for it. Right, So it
<v Speaker 1>was a negative, negative, negative pickup deal. Yeah, So they
<v Speaker 1>had to fund the movie themselves and then get reimbursed
<v Speaker 1>once it was finished.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, This is the part where we defend the
<v Speaker 2>Salkans for just a second, for a brief moment, we're
<v Speaker 2>going to defend the Salcans. They had to front all
<v Speaker 2>the money for two epically expensive movies being filmed at
<v Speaker 2>the same time.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Yeah. Of course it was their decision to film
<v Speaker 1>two movies at the same time, because, as it turned out,
<v Speaker 1>they had had some success with that in the past,
<v Speaker 1>except for the fact that they got sued over Back
<v Speaker 1>in the mid seventies, they had produced The Three Musketeers,
<v Speaker 1>which then, unbeknownst to anybody involved in the movie except them,
<v Speaker 1>became the Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers. So all
<v Speaker 1>of the cast and crew got paid for one movie,
<v Speaker 1>even though they ultimately ended up doing two movies, and
<v Speaker 1>so the Salcons got sued by all of those guys.
<v Speaker 1>And now there is a standard provision in all acting
<v Speaker 1>contracts called the Salcan clause that says, you got to
<v Speaker 1>tell us how many movies we're making right now?
<v Speaker 3>Do you know?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, John, If you know who the actors
<v Speaker 2>that were considered to be Superman originally, this is a
<v Speaker 2>who's whose list in the seventies.
<v Speaker 3>I know that one of the weirder ones that every
<v Speaker 3>time I hear that, I was like, how really, Dustin Hoffman,
<v Speaker 3>wasn't he.
<v Speaker 1>One of them?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Dustin Hoffman. Yeah, that's that's always one of the
<v Speaker 1>stranger is Muhammad Ali was There was an actual consideration. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean he I mean, obviously he's physically fit enough
<v Speaker 1>to be the guy. But has he been in anything
<v Speaker 1>at Oh no, No.
<v Speaker 2>But he could look like a butterfly and sting like
<v Speaker 2>a bee, and he was he was.
<v Speaker 1>He was in a Superman comic book. He was Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's right. Have you seen that, John?
<v Speaker 3>I have you know what I've read? I have a
<v Speaker 3>I don't have the actual comic book. I read a
<v Speaker 3>reprint of it one time, and it was kind of
<v Speaker 3>it was meant to be, this a gimmicky thing throughout
<v Speaker 3>the seventies and some of the comics they had, like
<v Speaker 3>you know, Superman would get matched up with like JFK
<v Speaker 3>or Bob Hope or you know, all these I don't
<v Speaker 3>know what Superman and Bob Hope were doing, but you
<v Speaker 3>know they they had all these different issues where they'd
<v Speaker 3>have like these special guest stars. Yeah. Yeah, and I
<v Speaker 3>can't remember, at the top of my head a whole
<v Speaker 3>bunch of the story. But you know, on the front
<v Speaker 3>cover it's kind of an iconic cover with the comic books.
<v Speaker 3>Is you know, Superman and Muhammad Ali in a boxing
<v Speaker 3>ring together, you know, getting ready to throw down. And
<v Speaker 3>I remember seeing that as a kid and thinking, I
<v Speaker 3>don't know who that guy is, but he's about to die.
<v Speaker 1>You don't get a boxer in the world. He's about
<v Speaker 1>to die.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Well, here's the list. Okay, I thought this
<v Speaker 2>was interesting. Now when when you say these people were considered,
<v Speaker 2>there was an approved list for Superman. The director can
<v Speaker 2>take this list and hire according to this list. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So you have Al Pacino, You've got Dustin Huff, You've
<v Speaker 2>got Bruce Jenner, You've got Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.
<v Speaker 1>You've got Clint.
<v Speaker 2>Eastwood, Muhammad Ali, James Kahan, Warren Bady, Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond,
<v Speaker 2>and then finally he wasn't approved. But so that's just
<v Speaker 2>alone really wanted this part.
<v Speaker 3>I remember hearing about that.
<v Speaker 1>No, statistically speaking, it's still the safest form of trouble Yo. Lois.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you know, I Lois. There was like these two missiles,
<v Speaker 3>you know, there was the one and I had to
<v Speaker 3>go get the I did it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he fought hard. You know who kept him from
<v Speaker 2>doing it Marlon Brando at the time. So that's just
<v Speaker 2>the Loan was considered to be the next Marlon Brando,
<v Speaker 2>and Marlon Brando said, we went to the producers like, now,
<v Speaker 2>this guy's not right. Stallan is actually out there and
<v Speaker 2>you can find this on YouTube and he is trashing
<v Speaker 2>Marlon Brando, like I have no respect him for him as.
<v Speaker 1>An actor, as a man, really put him down. Well,
<v Speaker 1>let's talk a little bit about that, since we're talking
<v Speaker 1>about getting the movie together. That was the way that
<v Speaker 1>they ultimately got them to buy in. So we we
<v Speaker 1>got Marlon Brando on board, They got Marlon Brando and
<v Speaker 1>then they got Gene Hackman.
<v Speaker 2>Well, once they got Marlon Brando, on board and Gene Hackman.
<v Speaker 2>Then Donner had some freedom to Okay, let me we
<v Speaker 2>got the stars in plays, let me get somebody who
<v Speaker 2>looks the part.
<v Speaker 1>And I'll back us up. For just a second, before
<v Speaker 1>Donner was on board, they were, I mean, this is
<v Speaker 1>this is kind of definitive sulkans. They were trying to
<v Speaker 1>find the cheapest place to make a movie, right, and
<v Speaker 1>so they said, okay, let's go to Italy. Italy is cheap.
<v Speaker 1>But then Marlon Brando had a warrant out for obscenity
<v Speaker 1>charges from the Last Tango in Paris, the rape scene,
<v Speaker 1>so they couldn't go there.
<v Speaker 2>Guy Hamilton was the director at that moment, right, who
<v Speaker 2>had done all a bunch of James Bond movies.
<v Speaker 1>Right. But then their next option was, well, let's go
<v Speaker 1>to England. But Guy Hamilton would be arrested after thirty
<v Speaker 1>days of being in England because he was.
<v Speaker 2>Taxing he was, so they chose Marlon Brando over Guy Hamilton, right,
<v Speaker 2>So then they had to find a director.
<v Speaker 1>The way Donner tells it is he was sitting in
<v Speaker 1>his bathroom. I'm sitting in the bathroom. You can imagine
<v Speaker 1>what's going on there, and he says, and I was
<v Speaker 1>really hungover and I had just woken up, and I
<v Speaker 1>get this call and it's some guy with a foreign
<v Speaker 1>accent saying, this is Alexander Salken.
<v Speaker 3>You know who I am.
<v Speaker 1>And he's like, no, what the heck do you want?
<v Speaker 1>While I'm a producer and interested in making Superman, would
<v Speaker 1>you like to direct? He's like, yeah, you know maybe,
<v Speaker 1>and he goes, we will pay you a million dollars.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, all right, You've got my attention. Where can
<v Speaker 1>I meet you? Donner at that point had only done
<v Speaker 1>The Omen and some other smaller movie that I can't recall.
<v Speaker 2>It, Gillingan's Island. He was a director on some of
<v Speaker 2>the Gilligan's Island some.
<v Speaker 1>TV stuff, and then Owen was his big one, and
<v Speaker 1>they had Jerry Goldsmith was the composer and Omen. He
<v Speaker 1>was at Donner's behest was supposed to be the composer
<v Speaker 1>for Superman, but then he wasn't available, so they got
<v Speaker 1>John Williams in. Then John Williams wasn'tvailable and Goldsmith was
<v Speaker 1>back in, and then Goldsmith was back out and John
<v Speaker 1>Williams was back in.
<v Speaker 2>The settled for John Williams. Yeah, poor guys okay, and
<v Speaker 2>Margot Kidder got the part. So Donner was in charge
<v Speaker 2>of the auditions at this point. Yeah, he's, you know,
<v Speaker 2>looking for Loewsling and she got the I don't really
<v Speaker 2>have a list of people that would consider. But when
<v Speaker 2>she came into the room to audition, she tripped, she stumbled,
<v Speaker 2>and they thought it was charming.
<v Speaker 1>He instantly said he fell in love with her. Right then.
<v Speaker 1>I gotta say, in rewatching it, she's not as unattractive
<v Speaker 1>as I remember her being when I was a kid,
<v Speaker 1>I just thought Superman could do so much better than
<v Speaker 1>this lady. But upon the rewatch, especially in Superman one,
<v Speaker 1>she's not a bad looking lady. No, no, she's not. Now.
<v Speaker 2>By the time nineteen eighty one rolled around, she had
<v Speaker 2>had some breakdowns.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, lost her teeth and yeah, it's really rough road hard.
<v Speaker 3>I think about when and I'd heard that before, about
<v Speaker 3>how she tripped, and they're like, oh, that's so charming.
<v Speaker 3>I have never been offered a movie part, and I
<v Speaker 3>feel like I have done that so many times in
<v Speaker 3>my life. I feel like, by now I should have
<v Speaker 3>an Oscar.
<v Speaker 1>I do think it's interesting when Chris Reeve was brought
<v Speaker 1>in to read for the part.
<v Speaker 2>He was six foot five, one hundred and seventy pounds,
<v Speaker 2>and he went to the guys and the like, ah,
<v Speaker 2>he's kind of skinny, you know, I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>he really could.
<v Speaker 1>Pull off Superman. And he sweat refusely. Like at the
<v Speaker 1>end of Superman two, you know, he lifts up Zod
<v Speaker 1>and in that moment you see a little pit stain
<v Speaker 1>on the Superman really yeah, okay, And so when I
<v Speaker 1>heard you know, he's okay, So he has a pit stain.
<v Speaker 1>You know, that's that's something that happens to guys. You
<v Speaker 1>can't help that. But then I saw his actual audition
<v Speaker 1>tape before they had given him the padding and the
<v Speaker 1>industrial strength deodorant, and I mean it's literally down to
<v Speaker 1>his elbows on both both arms and down down to
<v Speaker 1>his waist. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>But when he he they brought him in, he was skinny,
<v Speaker 2>tall and skinny, and he went to him and he said, listen,
<v Speaker 2>I was a jock in high school. I can put
<v Speaker 2>on the muscle, trust me, I can do it. And
<v Speaker 2>when Donner said, okay, listen, kid, you got the park
<v Speaker 2>and you got to make make sure you can do this,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so he trained with David Prowse, Darth Vader himself.
<v Speaker 1>We know you're a big Star Wars fan.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, yeah, I and and that the first time
<v Speaker 3>as a kid when I had heard that somewhere, I
<v Speaker 3>don't know if I was reading, I was reading the
<v Speaker 3>book or a magazine article or something as a kid,
<v Speaker 3>and I found that out. I'm like, whoa Superman was
<v Speaker 3>Darth Vader's apprentice? Outstanding? Outstanding.
<v Speaker 1>So then as they're putting things together, they had anally.
<v Speaker 1>The Sulcans had gotten Mario Puzo to write the script
<v Speaker 1>in this thing.
<v Speaker 2>Incredible.
<v Speaker 1>And Mario Puzo, if the listeners don't know, was the
<v Speaker 1>one who had written Godfather one and two, which, of
<v Speaker 1>course just I mean, were the record setting in their
<v Speaker 1>box office success. I'm not really sure how you decide
<v Speaker 1>to put him in charge of a Superman movie script,
<v Speaker 1>but that's what they did. He wrote a five hundred
<v Speaker 1>and fifty page script that has never seen the light
<v Speaker 1>of day. Once Donner got his hands on it, he
<v Speaker 1>was like, this destroys the biblical canon of Superman. So
<v Speaker 1>he got Tom Makowitz to come in and do the
<v Speaker 1>serious rewrites on the script.
<v Speaker 2>And once again I'm going to defend the Salkans for
<v Speaker 2>a second. So they fronted the money to get this done.
<v Speaker 2>They had the insight to realize, number one, that comic
<v Speaker 2>book movies were going to be successful in the box office.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think it's important to realize that in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy eight, the idea of a comic book movie being
<v Speaker 1>successful was redicult to me.
<v Speaker 3>That's what's amazing about this Superman movie. Yes it was.
<v Speaker 3>It was a hit when it came out. You know,
<v Speaker 3>people loved it, but even still, there were a lot
<v Speaker 3>of comic book fans that did not love this movie
<v Speaker 3>at all. It didn't fit with the Superman at the time.
<v Speaker 3>In the comics, in terms of general audiences, you had
<v Speaker 3>the Batman sixty six, you had Wonder Woman, she had
<v Speaker 3>the Incredible Hulk TV show. That's pretty much what you
<v Speaker 3>had in terms of superheroes on TV. Other than cartoons,
<v Speaker 3>and other than those you know three, there's probably other
<v Speaker 3>TV series that were out there at the time. Anything
<v Speaker 3>that was superhero, anything that was comic book related, was
<v Speaker 3>automatically also campy. Like for some reason, they always felt like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 3>comic books are for kids, so we got to make
<v Speaker 3>this show kind of for kids. We got to make
<v Speaker 3>it campy, we got to make it silly. And then
<v Speaker 3>the fact that you bring out a Superman movie and
<v Speaker 3>you're like, you know what, we're actually going to try
<v Speaker 3>to do a semi serious take on what if Superman
<v Speaker 3>was real? And some of the things I think in
<v Speaker 3>the early drafts of the script that I had read
<v Speaker 3>was they had all these crazy cameos for like the
<v Speaker 3>other actors and and you know comedians of the time,
<v Speaker 3>that we're going to just like walk in for a
<v Speaker 3>scene and say something silly and then walk off. Yep,
<v Speaker 3>And that would have totally made it, you know, just
<v Speaker 3>like the sixties Batman movie. It would have just made
<v Speaker 3>it silly. It would have made it cartoonish. And that's
<v Speaker 3>why I love that. The tagline I think on the
<v Speaker 3>poster for this movie and maybe in the trailer too,
<v Speaker 3>was you know, you'll believe a man can fly?
<v Speaker 1>And from what I understand the the Salcans co producer
<v Speaker 1>producer Sper Spindler, that's it. Yeah. He spent he spent
<v Speaker 1>two solid weeks with the DC executives developing an integrity
<v Speaker 1>of the character clause for the contract before they were
<v Speaker 1>willing to let swap them this often have it. They
<v Speaker 1>they didn't want it. They didn't want the Batman thing
<v Speaker 1>to happen to to Superman because it's too valuable a character.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's it's one of the American fables.
<v Speaker 3>Now.
<v Speaker 2>Can you imagine the pressure that the Salcans were actually
<v Speaker 2>under not only fronting this financially, but as soon as
<v Speaker 2>you get the permission to shoot this thing and let's
<v Speaker 2>go do this, you got to figure out how how
<v Speaker 2>can I make a guy fly?
<v Speaker 1>That was a huge part of things. We can talk
<v Speaker 1>about that the flight thing later on, but that was
<v Speaker 1>that was definitely like the most critical issue of the
<v Speaker 1>filming was we cannot make this look can't We can't
<v Speaker 1>make it look fake. It's got to look real.
<v Speaker 2>They toyed with lighters and cartoons until they finally got
<v Speaker 2>that complex cable thing, and I still am amazed.
<v Speaker 1>So that's that's that's our origin story for Superman one
<v Speaker 1>and then for well, yeah, I mean sort of, there's
<v Speaker 1>obviously a story there with Superman two. So as the
<v Speaker 1>filming went on, the Salcans would constantly tell Donner that
<v Speaker 1>he was over budget and over time, and he mainstains
<v Speaker 1>to this day that he was never told what the
<v Speaker 1>budget was and never told how much time he had
<v Speaker 1>to shoot. But it got to the point that he
<v Speaker 1>couldn't handle be in the same room with Eric Spinkler
<v Speaker 1>or whatever his name is, and so they had Richard
<v Speaker 1>Lester come in as kind of a go between. Now,
<v Speaker 1>Richard Lester was among those guys from the Three Musketeers
<v Speaker 1>and the Four Musketeers that was in the process of
<v Speaker 1>suing the Salkans at the time, so that you kind
<v Speaker 1>of get this idea that there was a wink wink,
<v Speaker 1>nudge nudge of you'll get your money, but we're going
<v Speaker 1>to get it to you through Superman instead of through
<v Speaker 1>this lawsuit.
<v Speaker 2>I think there's no doubt. I mean, Richard Lester may
<v Speaker 2>a deal with the devil you guys have been screwing
<v Speaker 2>over for all these years.
<v Speaker 1>I'll tell you what.
<v Speaker 2>We'll get you your money, but you've got to help
<v Speaker 2>us out with Donner.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And so even though you know that we talked
<v Speaker 1>about them filming both Superman one and Superman two at
<v Speaker 1>the same time, at some point they said, hey, this
<v Speaker 1>is getting so much publicity, we've got a chance to
<v Speaker 1>release it on the fortieth anniversary of Superman, stop working
<v Speaker 1>on part two and finish up part one. And well,
<v Speaker 1>if that's not obvious, what's about to happen to Richard Donner?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what is. So they they take the
<v Speaker 1>ending from Superman two and put it at the end
<v Speaker 1>of Superman one. The whole spending the Earth backwards to
<v Speaker 1>reverse time was originally supposed to be the end of
<v Speaker 1>Superman two. The ending of Superman one was supposed to
<v Speaker 1>be as he pushes the one of the two missiles
<v Speaker 1>that lets Lutheris and off out into space, and that
<v Speaker 1>missile is what destroys the Phantom Zone and releases the
<v Speaker 1>three criminals.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the Phantom Zone that looks like Queen two, the
<v Speaker 2>album they're all trapped in the Queen album.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah. Well, and in the Mario Pousa script there
<v Speaker 1>was actually four guys. They would have really had the
<v Speaker 1>album cover they had, so yeah. So then they fire
<v Speaker 1>after after Superman one is a huge success, they fire
<v Speaker 1>Richard Donner and they make Richard Lester the director of
<v Speaker 1>Superman two. And they have to let enough time go
<v Speaker 1>by that Marlon Brando's contract expires so that they don't
<v Speaker 1>have to pay him anymore. Sinus any York comes in
<v Speaker 1>and that spot and kind of gives the you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to start teaching you, which if you've seen
<v Speaker 1>the Richard have you seen the Richard Donner cut, John.
<v Speaker 3>I have, yeah, only once a few years ago. I
<v Speaker 3>have the DVD, but I've only watched it once. I
<v Speaker 3>enjoyed it. I liked it.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I enjoyed it as well. I mean it's
<v Speaker 1>a little rough because they're using scenes from the test
<v Speaker 1>footage that they did and auditions that they did. But
<v Speaker 1>the thing that is compelling about it is the Marlon
<v Speaker 1>Brando part. Richard Donner set out to make this analogous
<v Speaker 1>to the Christ story, and there's really when he has
<v Speaker 1>that moment where he's gone back after giving up his powers,
<v Speaker 1>and he's gone back to try to get his powers
<v Speaker 1>back even though he's been told it's not possible. It's
<v Speaker 1>ultimately Joerell's sacrifice giving him his power that causes Superman
<v Speaker 1>to become super again. That whole scene is pretty heavy
<v Speaker 1>handed in you cannot ever love you, never ever ever
<v Speaker 1>see you. Better think hard about this.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, yet you left the Crystal no problem?
<v Speaker 3>Then, Okay, I've conditioned my entire family to understand that
<v Speaker 3>if we're watching a comic book movie, nobody ever dies.
<v Speaker 3>Nobody ever, nothing's permanent. It's not going to happen. But
<v Speaker 3>no one of the things, Like I said, I don't
<v Speaker 3>remember much, you know, in terms of some of the differences.
<v Speaker 3>It details the differences between the Richard Lester versus the
<v Speaker 3>Richard Donner cut. But one of the things that really
<v Speaker 3>stuck out to me, and I think it was one
<v Speaker 3>of the scenes with Jarell. There's a part where he's
<v Speaker 3>kind of explaining some of this stuff to Superman to
<v Speaker 3>kal El and but it's almost like he shoots a
<v Speaker 3>look over at Lois and it's almost like, you know,
<v Speaker 3>this is all your fault. Like there's a moment where
<v Speaker 3>he like looks at her and be like, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>if you weren't here, I wouldn't have to be having
<v Speaker 3>this talk with my kid. And I vividly remember that.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong scene, but I vividly
<v Speaker 3>remember something like that and thinking, while this movie's a
<v Speaker 3>lot darker than it used to be.
<v Speaker 2>You know, in Defensive Low, she never asked him to
<v Speaker 2>give up her powers, his power, and I mean, come on,
<v Speaker 2>she fell in love with Superman.
<v Speaker 1>She treated Clark like crust. Why would you decide to
<v Speaker 1>be the guy that she doesn't like.
<v Speaker 3>Man, if you're ever going to make a large, life
<v Speaker 3>changing decision, please speak with the woman that you love
<v Speaker 3>before you do that. Don't buy her a car. It's
<v Speaker 3>talking about my dad's situation. One time he got a
<v Speaker 3>really good deal on a car. But it was a
<v Speaker 3>Grandma car and he got a great deal on it,
<v Speaker 3>and we were all visiting family in Missouri and he
<v Speaker 3>was coming from Chicago and he drove up in that car,
<v Speaker 3>got out and looked at my mom and said, check
<v Speaker 3>out your new car. You know, I'm not going to
<v Speaker 3>say that. I remember my parents fighting a whole lot,
<v Speaker 3>but I felt like swords were going to be drawn
<v Speaker 3>at that moment. So you know, those type of things.
<v Speaker 3>If you're going to buy a Buick Park Avenue that's
<v Speaker 3>awfully ugly for your wife, or if you're going to
<v Speaker 3>give up your Kryptonian heritage and superpowers, please at least
<v Speaker 3>have some kind of conversation with the woman before you
<v Speaker 3>do any of them.
<v Speaker 2>Hopefully your dad found his lost green crystal and regained
<v Speaker 2>his powers after that.
<v Speaker 3>Man, Yeah, like he was driving a new viewer. Hey,
<v Speaker 3>you know what, Actually, the next time around, when it
<v Speaker 3>was somebody else's turn to get a new car, that
<v Speaker 3>got passed down to the kids, and she got a
<v Speaker 3>very nice new car after that. He did make up
<v Speaker 3>for it later on.
<v Speaker 1>So then there was some you know, they've got other
<v Speaker 1>people that they're talking about bringing in whenever. Richard Lester
<v Speaker 1>is now directing Superman two, even though they've filmed seventy
<v Speaker 1>five percent of it with Donner right, and one of
<v Speaker 1>those guys is John Williams.
<v Speaker 2>So the Ilia saw Kind, John Williams and Richard Lester
<v Speaker 2>are in a room and they're watching kind of the
<v Speaker 2>early cut of Superman two to discuss the score. Ilia
<v Speaker 2>saw Kind has to leave the room to go to
<v Speaker 2>the bathroom, and when he comes back, John Williams and
<v Speaker 2>Richard Lester had gotten in such a fight that John
<v Speaker 2>Williams said, I cannot get along with this man.
<v Speaker 1>I'm out of here.
<v Speaker 2>I'm done.
<v Speaker 1>You lose the greatest composer.
<v Speaker 3>How do you do that?
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy. Gene Hackman refused to come back, Valley peren
<v Speaker 1>ned Baty. None of those guys came back. So everything
<v Speaker 1>that you see in Superman two, that's got them and
<v Speaker 1>it was filmed by Richard Donner. They brought Richard Donner
<v Speaker 1>in too to see if you know, hey, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you can have a co directing credit on this or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>and apparently they got just at the beginning of the
<v Speaker 1>Eiffel Tower scene before he got up and said, please
<v Speaker 1>do not put my name on this movie.
<v Speaker 2>Richard Donner is not the Richard Donner we know of today.
<v Speaker 2>At that time, when he was shooting Superman, he was
<v Speaker 2>just the guy who directed The Omen and Gilligan's Island.
<v Speaker 2>Now he's the guy who directed Goonies and the leth
<v Speaker 2>of Weapon movies. And Richard Lester had done Harday's Night.
<v Speaker 1>And Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers.
<v Speaker 3>But right it seems like there was just a lot
<v Speaker 3>of I mean, there's even some other stuff about how
<v Speaker 3>even like Margot Kidder and several of the other people
<v Speaker 3>just did not get along with him at all. So
<v Speaker 3>it just kind of sounds like he is not the
<v Speaker 3>guy to work with, which is probably why most of
<v Speaker 3>them didn't seem to come back for Superman three either.
<v Speaker 1>In order for him to be.
<v Speaker 2>Called the director, he had to shoot over fifty percent
<v Speaker 2>of the movie well with seventy five percent of it
<v Speaker 2>in the can. He had to reshoot scenes to get
<v Speaker 2>the credit.
<v Speaker 3>So and his and his style it was very different
<v Speaker 3>than Richard Donner's were there were a couple of things
<v Speaker 3>that I've read and just in watching the two movies,
<v Speaker 3>Richard Donn they treated it very cinematically, for lack of
<v Speaker 3>a better word, I mean, it was very much you
<v Speaker 3>have all of these kind of very long shots, I
<v Speaker 3>mean of some of it looks like it could be
<v Speaker 3>a painting. Then you've got Richard Lester, and he was
<v Speaker 3>very much like, I wanted to look like a comic book.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to cram a bunch of characters in this frame.
<v Speaker 3>We're gonna move quickly, We're going to have this kind
<v Speaker 3>of shot. We're going to do it this way. The
<v Speaker 3>camera is going to pan this direction and this fast.
<v Speaker 3>And so it sounds like he kind of wanted to
<v Speaker 3>make his own mark on it. But also he didn't
<v Speaker 3>agree with the very artistic way that Richard Donner had
<v Speaker 3>wanted to shoot this. That it was much more of
<v Speaker 3>a all right, well this is an action movie and
<v Speaker 3>it's a comic book, so let's make it look like
<v Speaker 3>a comic book.
<v Speaker 1>Well, and I'm gonna blaspheme here because I mean, let
<v Speaker 1>me just say, I grew up obsessed with Superman two.
<v Speaker 1>I literally memorized every line, watched it over and over again.
<v Speaker 1>Then as you grow older, you realize, Okay, there's a
<v Speaker 1>difference between these two movies. Stram one was a movie
<v Speaker 1>made for adults and Superman two was a movie made
<v Speaker 1>for kids. I mean, really, that's kind of the distinction.
<v Speaker 1>And because as a slightly older person, not completely mature,
<v Speaker 1>I watched Superman one again, I was like, this is
<v Speaker 1>kind of long, this is kind of dull insponse, and
<v Speaker 1>that's that kind of epic stuff that you're talking about.
<v Speaker 1>So here's the blasphemy. Richard Donner was still campy. His
<v Speaker 1>epic nous and his beautiful scenery was all in Smallville.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it was the great planes, and then you
<v Speaker 1>had a little bit up in the Arctic. But when
<v Speaker 1>when Superman comes to Metropolis, the comedy starts, and it's
<v Speaker 1>it's that same style of goofy dialogue, puns and stuff
<v Speaker 1>that continues throughout the Superman movie.
<v Speaker 3>This, friends of mine, when we've had discussions about the
<v Speaker 3>Star Trek movies, are you got Star Trek fans at all.
<v Speaker 1>I really like the new iterations Chris Pine a whole
<v Speaker 1>lot better than I do the old ones. I like
<v Speaker 1>the old ones to watch the movies, and I watched
<v Speaker 1>the series a little bit, but I'm far from what
<v Speaker 1>you were like Van Hagler over Ben Helen. Oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 1>I brought her audience. Go ahead, John, Sorry, but yeah no.
<v Speaker 3>And that's that's kind of a comparison that that I've
<v Speaker 3>made in the past two is. You know, as a
<v Speaker 3>kid growing up, I used to really like the Star
<v Speaker 3>Trek movies, and I I think some of, you know,
<v Speaker 3>some of the stuff with these movies, is that the
<v Speaker 3>age that I was when I watched these movies, I
<v Speaker 3>was always watching them with my dad, and so I
<v Speaker 3>always have just these memories of watching him with him
<v Speaker 3>ingrained in my head. And I think a lot of
<v Speaker 3>my reaction came from his reaction, and I always think
<v Speaker 3>of you know, and I love both of these movies too,
<v Speaker 3>but I will fully admit that one is very long
<v Speaker 3>and very boring. Is the first the first two Star
<v Speaker 3>Trek movies. Is I always feel like the Superman movies
<v Speaker 3>are kind of similar to the Star Trek movies. In
<v Speaker 3>that Star Trek one even I mean, if you're if
<v Speaker 3>you're a Trek fan listening to this, if you've got
<v Speaker 3>to admit that's a long movie, and it's not always
<v Speaker 3>very exciting. Star Trek two that was you know, my
<v Speaker 3>dad would watch that with us, and and and just
<v Speaker 3>to me, and some people think that one's kind of
<v Speaker 3>boring too, It's like it's like watching a submarine battle
<v Speaker 3>in space. But you know, it's to me, that movie
<v Speaker 3>is exciting. And to me that's kind of like this
<v Speaker 3>NonStop action movie. That's that's a Star Trek movie. And
<v Speaker 3>that's kind of how I think about some of these
<v Speaker 3>two Superman movies too. Is the first one, it's very
<v Speaker 3>heavy on the story. It's the origin story, so you've
<v Speaker 3>got to get that stuff in there. You gotta pack
<v Speaker 3>as much history and mythology and information into this one.
<v Speaker 3>A little light on some of the action. You know,
<v Speaker 3>when they get to it, it's awesome, but a little
<v Speaker 3>light on the action. Superman two, it's boom, We're we're
<v Speaker 3>action right away. You know, we're drop kicking people on
<v Speaker 3>the moon, we're walking on water, we're you know, all
<v Speaker 3>that stuff.
<v Speaker 1>And don't forget the montage of everything that was important
<v Speaker 1>that happened in Superman one. I think I think I'm
<v Speaker 1>rewatching Superman one. I thought to myself at one point,
<v Speaker 1>I was like, did I actually watch this movie? Or
<v Speaker 1>is everything I know about this movie from the beginning
<v Speaker 1>of Superman two. I would say, since we're talking now
<v Speaker 1>about Superman two, let's talk about nineteen eighty one and
<v Speaker 1>what was going on, because you told me what was
<v Speaker 1>what was being released in the theater at this time,
<v Speaker 1>and I was just like, holy smokes, I would have
<v Speaker 1>lived there.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So Superman two was released in the United States
<v Speaker 2>Une nineteenth, nineteen eighty one. In my estimation, this might
<v Speaker 2>be the greatest two weeks of eighties movies released during
<v Speaker 2>a week two week period anytime in the eighties. All Right,
<v Speaker 2>So June twelfth, the weekend before Superman two was released,
<v Speaker 2>you had History of the World by mel Brooks, Clash
<v Speaker 2>of the Titans Awesome, and Raiders of the Lost Arc
<v Speaker 2>all in the same weekend. Yeah, Okay, next week, June nineteenth,
<v Speaker 2>Superman two. As we've said, yeah, canniball run hilarious. Right
<v Speaker 2>the week afterwards, June twenty sixth, Okay, we're bookending this
<v Speaker 2>Dragon Slayer, forty Your Eyes Only, Great Muppet Caper and Stripes.
<v Speaker 3>So basically, if you're a kid in nineteen eighty one,
<v Speaker 3>you're broke, you're constantly asking mom and dad, Mommy, can
<v Speaker 3>I have a couple of bucks to go see a movie? Yes,
<v Speaker 3>I would have had no money at all.
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk about the beginning of Man. Let's talk about
<v Speaker 1>the origin story there. So this is an entirely different
<v Speaker 1>time in history. Of course, this is two thousand and eight.
<v Speaker 1>Warner Brothers starts to consider doing a Superman movie again.
<v Speaker 1>Two thousand and six had seen Superman Returns, which wasn't
<v Speaker 1>a big success. But in two thousand and eight, you've
<v Speaker 1>got the Dark Knight has come out, iron Man has
<v Speaker 1>come out, and so they're like, I think we can
<v Speaker 1>do Superman again. And Iron Man and Dark Knight proved
<v Speaker 1>that superhero movies can be mind blowing successes. So why
<v Speaker 1>not go back to the original Superhero At Warner Brothers,
<v Speaker 1>with the success of Dark Knight and it being a
<v Speaker 1>DC comic book movie, they were just waiting for Christopher Nolan,
<v Speaker 1>And of course David Goyer is the one who'd written
<v Speaker 1>the trilogy. The whole Dark Knight trilogy, and he comes
<v Speaker 1>to Christopher Nolan at some point and says, I have
<v Speaker 1>this idea for a Superman movie, and Christopher Nolan reads
<v Speaker 1>his script and says, I want to make this movie.
<v Speaker 3>You know, in terms of comic book movies, there's two
<v Speaker 3>kind of famous threads of the movies that never got made,
<v Speaker 3>and it's either Superman or spider Man. They always talk
<v Speaker 3>about how spider Man. They were trying to make a
<v Speaker 3>Spider Man movie all through the eighties, and you would
<v Speaker 3>hear that like every year for a decade. Never happened.
<v Speaker 3>Same thing with Superman. It was always you know, after
<v Speaker 3>Superman four, but they had plans to make a Superman five.
<v Speaker 3>The rights went back to the Sulcans because they had
<v Speaker 3>lost the rights and Cannon Films they were the ones
<v Speaker 3>that did Superman four, and so after Superman four they
<v Speaker 3>went bankrupt and they always kind of blame, you know,
<v Speaker 3>dumping a bunch of money into that movie as the
<v Speaker 3>reason for part of their bankruptcy. But then the rights
<v Speaker 3>reverted back to the Sulcans, and the Sulcans were, you know,
<v Speaker 3>we should we should do a story, you know in
<v Speaker 3>the comic books they had like this Bottle City of
<v Speaker 3>Candor that had, you know, somehow escaped Krypton's destruction and
<v Speaker 3>it was full of Kryptonians. What if we make a
<v Speaker 3>movie that brings that bottle city back and it involves
<v Speaker 3>bringing a whole bunch of Kryptonians. And so that was
<v Speaker 3>kind of the the idea behind Superman five, and then
<v Speaker 3>it just never got made. Then after that they had
<v Speaker 3>the idea behind you know, there's the Superman Reborn and
<v Speaker 3>that was around about the time that they did the
<v Speaker 3>Death of Superman comic in ninety three, I think it was.
<v Speaker 3>And that was a huge hit at the time, and
<v Speaker 3>I mean you had people that had never read a
<v Speaker 3>comic book were like, well, well, Superman's dead. I got
<v Speaker 3>to go find out what this is. And so that
<v Speaker 3>I think those guys, yeah, and I think that really
<v Speaker 3>kind of started a comic book boom. I mean, it
<v Speaker 3>was already starting to pick up in the nineties, but
<v Speaker 3>I think that's what started a lot of the heavy
<v Speaker 3>collecting of comics and where it where things as a collector,
<v Speaker 3>things got ridiculous. But when that was huge, then they
<v Speaker 3>had these other ideas. They're like, well, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>let's do a death of Superman movie, like, let's do this.
<v Speaker 3>Let's let's kill him in the movie and let's bring
<v Speaker 3>him back, and let's let's have this, you know, amazing
<v Speaker 3>movie where he's got the you know, this giant robotics
<v Speaker 3>suit he can fight in because he doesn't have his
<v Speaker 3>powers anymore. That was kind of at the time. They
<v Speaker 3>kind of were going back and forth on the script,
<v Speaker 3>and I think Kevin Smith actually ended up coming in
<v Speaker 3>at some point looking at the script and being like,
<v Speaker 3>you guys are out of your minds, Like this is
<v Speaker 3>the stupidest thing I've ever read. This does not fit
<v Speaker 3>with the character of Superman at all, And so they
<v Speaker 3>brought him in and then he started.
<v Speaker 2>To develop the Death of Superman Live, the Death.
<v Speaker 3>Of Superman Lives, and this just sounds like the most
<v Speaker 3>insane And what's funny to me is, you know that
<v Speaker 3>was the one where like Nicholas Cage was going to
<v Speaker 3>be Superman, yeah, and Tim Burton was going to direct,
<v Speaker 3>and I want to say, they were going to have
<v Speaker 3>just crazy stories. And what's funny to me is that
<v Speaker 3>John Peters was one of the producers even back then,
<v Speaker 3>and like he had this whole idea of, well, we
<v Speaker 3>got to have like these crazy creatures, and we want
<v Speaker 3>Superman fighting, yes, giant spiders. We want Superman fighting like
<v Speaker 3>giant mechanical spiders. And and Brainiac and Christopher Walken is
<v Speaker 3>going to be Brainiac and all this just crazy stuff. Well,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and and a lot of that got shot down,
<v Speaker 3>it never got made. But if you went to go
<v Speaker 3>see Wild Wild West just a few years later, you
<v Speaker 3>had giant spiders. So he clearly got his you know,
<v Speaker 3>his spider fetish, you know, got worked out through Wild
<v Speaker 3>Wild West. But so it's funny to me to look
<v Speaker 3>at Man of Steel's success. I know, yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 3>if you can go from Superman to Wild Wild West.
<v Speaker 3>But it's funny to me to see Man of Steel
<v Speaker 3>and see that list of all right, who are the
<v Speaker 3>producers for Man of Steel? John Peters, Okay, so.
<v Speaker 1>I've got a kind of origin story on Man of Steel. Now, John,
<v Speaker 1>you're from Illinois. You're in the Illinois area, I mean
<v Speaker 1>you're in the Chicago area, right, Yeah, yeah, So did
<v Speaker 1>you know that they were shooting Man of Steel in
<v Speaker 1>the various towns around that they were doing that?
<v Speaker 3>I did, and actually was I was trying at one
<v Speaker 3>point to make a trip down there because I knew
<v Speaker 3>the town that they were filming it in, and it's
<v Speaker 3>far enough way, it's a few hours away from where
<v Speaker 3>I am, and there were times where I was like,
<v Speaker 3>I just I want to get down there and I
<v Speaker 3>want to see it. Because I actually had a chance
<v Speaker 3>another teacher friend of mine and we were extras in
<v Speaker 3>the dark night, and so we got to be in
<v Speaker 3>downtown Chicago. We spent most of our day in kind
<v Speaker 3>of like one of the upper floors of some building
<v Speaker 3>that was down I think by LaSalle Street in Chicago,
<v Speaker 3>where they were filming one of the scenes, and we
<v Speaker 3>actually were extras. I think all of our scenes where
<v Speaker 3>you could actually see us got cut, but we were extras.
<v Speaker 3>You know, story of my life. They won't hire me
<v Speaker 3>after I trip over stuff. They won't leave me in
<v Speaker 3>the movie. But yeah, we got to be extras in
<v Speaker 3>the kind of funeral procession scene where the Joker is
<v Speaker 3>disguised as one of the police officers that's going to
<v Speaker 3>you know, fire the salute shots, and so we were
<v Speaker 3>there for that scene. We were extras on the sides.
<v Speaker 3>We were supposed to be people that were panicking on
<v Speaker 3>the sides as the Joker was running away and as
<v Speaker 3>he turned and ran away, he ran right in front
<v Speaker 3>of us. So that was a lot of fun. And
<v Speaker 3>being able to see, as somebody who loves movies, being
<v Speaker 3>able to be on the set and see how the
<v Speaker 3>whole thing works. I was just as enthralled with that
<v Speaker 3>in between time where they weren't shooting anything, like how
<v Speaker 3>stuff was getting set up, how they were working with
<v Speaker 3>the natural light of a cloud came by, you know,
<v Speaker 3>Christopher Nolan started swearing because he knew that his timetable
<v Speaker 3>was off, but you know, just being able to see
<v Speaker 3>that in person. So when I found out that they
<v Speaker 3>were going to be filming I think it was in Illinois.
<v Speaker 3>When I found out, I was like, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>I want to see this and I don't remember why.
<v Speaker 3>I remember having some plans to do that and it
<v Speaker 3>just never it never materialized.
<v Speaker 1>The story and by the time this episode comes out,
<v Speaker 1>we will have done the Gladiator Versus Brave Heart episodes.
<v Speaker 1>And so after Gladiator, Russell Crowe filmed a movie called
<v Speaker 1>Proof of Life and it was also filmed over in
<v Speaker 1>the UK. And he's got a son in the movie,
<v Speaker 1>and part of the movie involves a rugby game. They
<v Speaker 1>go to Stowe Boarding School to film this rugby scene
<v Speaker 1>and they're really playing rugby and there's one player out
<v Speaker 1>there that he sees that it's just lighting up the
<v Speaker 1>field and he's really impressed with him. And then once
<v Speaker 1>they're done with their filming and the game's over, Russell
<v Speaker 1>Crowe is standing by himself and this young rugby player
<v Speaker 1>comes over to him and starts talking to him and
<v Speaker 1>doesn't say anything about rugby, but just says, hey, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm considering being an actor and I just want to
<v Speaker 1>to ask you about that. And so once they finish
<v Speaker 1>filming Proof of Life, Russell Crowe is making this kind
<v Speaker 1>of care package for the kid who played his son
<v Speaker 1>in the movie and includes an autographed gladiator poster. And
<v Speaker 1>as he's doing it and he thinks, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to do one for that rugby player that
<v Speaker 1>came over and talked to me and was a nice guy.
<v Speaker 1>So he sends him something that says a journey of
<v Speaker 1>a thousand miles begins with one step. And so this
<v Speaker 1>rugby player gets this thing and for the next several
<v Speaker 1>years will work in London, bartending in London and Jersey
<v Speaker 1>and then go to La for a few months to
<v Speaker 1>try to get into movies and not be successful and
<v Speaker 1>come back and bartend some more until he earns enough
<v Speaker 1>money to go back to la again. And that's his
<v Speaker 1>life until twelve years later, and Russell Crowe is working
<v Speaker 1>out next to this guy in Naperville, Illinois, and he
<v Speaker 1>Russell keeps looking at him and says, do I know you?
<v Speaker 1>And Henry Cavill says, do you remember going to the
<v Speaker 1>stowboarding school in the UK? And Russell says, yeah, I do,
<v Speaker 1>And he goes, do you remember a kid coming to
<v Speaker 1>ask you about acting?
<v Speaker 3>He goes, I do.
<v Speaker 1>He says, what did I tell you? Henry says, well,
<v Speaker 1>you said it pays really well, but they treat you
<v Speaker 1>like poop. And Russell Crow goes, how are you, Henry?
<v Speaker 1>It's a good to see.
<v Speaker 3>Well. I remember, like one of my one of my
<v Speaker 3>favorite movies is The Counter Bandy Cristo, but Henry Cavill
<v Speaker 3>is the Sun in that movie, and I vividly remember
<v Speaker 3>at the time two thousand and two looking at that
<v Speaker 3>and going, you know, that kid could play Superboy. That
<v Speaker 3>would be a really good you know, if they could
<v Speaker 3>just get he's got the face like it's a very
<v Speaker 3>similar to a Christopher Reeve kind of face. So they
<v Speaker 3>should make a Superboy TV show movie whatever with that kid.
<v Speaker 1>Henry Cavill was in good shape, but wasn't in Superman shape,
<v Speaker 1>and so he trained with the same guys from the
<v Speaker 1>Jim Jones facility that had trained the guys from three hundred,
<v Speaker 1>Zack Snyder's other movie. You know, all of the guys
<v Speaker 1>in three hundred looked like bodybuild and show.
<v Speaker 3>He didn't want any kind of digital touch ups. He
<v Speaker 3>didn't want anything like he he was like, you know
<v Speaker 3>what part of Yeah, He's like, you know what if
<v Speaker 3>this movie is about me as a character, testing my
<v Speaker 3>limits and figuring out, well, how powerful can I become?
<v Speaker 3>Like what do I need to work at this? I
<v Speaker 3>thought that was amazing that he just said, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not going to do any of these other tricks
<v Speaker 3>that some people might do to bulk up for these kinds.
<v Speaker 3>This is going to be oh naturale I.
<v Speaker 1>Heard about mate.
<v Speaker 2>He got ripped up for this movie, obviously really really cut,
<v Speaker 2>and they shot all of the shirtless stuff first so that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, out of consideration, and then as soon as
<v Speaker 2>that was done, Zack Snyder bought him a pizza and.
<v Speaker 1>A gallon of ice cream. Okay, so this is a
<v Speaker 1>good segue. I think into the actors, and I think
<v Speaker 1>first actors that we got to talk about are Henry
<v Speaker 1>Cavill and Christopher Reeve. So Henry Cavill, I think did
<v Speaker 1>a good job at being Superman. Christopher Reeve was Superman.
<v Speaker 1>Yes he was and always will be in my heart Superman.
<v Speaker 1>I don't have anything bad to say about Henry Cavill's performance.
<v Speaker 1>And I think this may largely have to do with
<v Speaker 1>the nostalgia idea that we bring up from time to time,
<v Speaker 1>but I think that it probably even goes beyond that,
<v Speaker 1>because as they had looked at Christopher Reeve passed him
<v Speaker 1>up and started looking at bigger actors and bigger stars,
<v Speaker 1>and kept coming back to him because there's just something
<v Speaker 1>about Christopher Reeve that makes you love him like I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what it is and I can't. It's not
<v Speaker 1>a definable thing, he just Okay. So the actor himself
<v Speaker 1>put it this way. He says, when Superman says I
<v Speaker 1>fight for truth, justice and the American way, a normal
<v Speaker 1>person would snicker, but he means it right. And Christopher
<v Speaker 1>Reeve played that perfectly. You were like, yeah, yeah, the
<v Speaker 1>American Way. Yeah, that's right, which I mean you got
<v Speaker 1>to think nineteen seventy eight that, I mean, there was
<v Speaker 1>a there was a lot of upheaval in the in
<v Speaker 1>the years preceding that that the idea of saying, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Superman fights for the American Way would have gone south bad.
<v Speaker 1>But he pulled it off. He I mean, he puts
<v Speaker 1>the flag back on the White House in nineteen eighty one.
<v Speaker 1>He made people proud to be American again. I think
<v Speaker 1>that Chris Reeve is kind of like the Lagosi in Dracula.
<v Speaker 2>It's the first time you get to taste the Superman character,
<v Speaker 2>or at least it was for me, right, and so
<v Speaker 2>that just kind of semented what my Superman is. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I don't know, John, where you with Chris
<v Speaker 2>Reeve and Henry Cavick.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's I mean, there's a reason why I think
<v Speaker 3>I think the Superman, the Christopher Reeves Superman has been,
<v Speaker 3>has shown up in other places and has influenced so
<v Speaker 3>many other things. Is it's just it's the iconic portrayal
<v Speaker 3>of Superman. He kind of embodies the qualities that you
<v Speaker 3>would expect from a Superman. In all the performances I've
<v Speaker 3>ever seen him in, he's always genuine, he's always charming.
<v Speaker 3>He is I mean, he's a tall guy. So you've
<v Speaker 3>got someone who is an imposing physical figure, even if
<v Speaker 3>he's not even if he's not bulked up, he's an
<v Speaker 3>imposing physical figure. And he's kind of I don't want
<v Speaker 3>to call him a gentle giant, but at the same time,
<v Speaker 3>he's kind of. He's he's got all those qualities about him.
<v Speaker 3>And I think when you look at what makes a Superman,
<v Speaker 3>if if you're going to be Superman, and if you're
<v Speaker 3>going to be you know this this character that is
<v Speaker 3>supposed to be kind of infallible when it comes to
<v Speaker 3>your optimism and your you know, your your generosity and
<v Speaker 3>kindness towards other people. I think you get somebody that
<v Speaker 3>embodies all of those things. And I think that's what
<v Speaker 3>Christopher Reef did. I think that's why you have a
<v Speaker 3>show like Smallville. When Smallville did everything that they were
<v Speaker 3>doing for the Superman mythology, that's why they brought him in.
<v Speaker 3>I think that's why they tied so much of their
<v Speaker 3>mythology to those movies and to you know, to that
<v Speaker 3>Krypton and you know, you brought in Terrence Stamp as
<v Speaker 3>the voice of Darrell, you brought you actually brought in
<v Speaker 3>Christopher Reeve, you brought in Margot Kidder, you know, all
<v Speaker 3>those things. Because for an entire generation, that was your Superman.
<v Speaker 3>I can look at Henry Cavill and could be like, well, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that was the guy that was in Count of Money, Cristo,
<v Speaker 3>and he was in Superman, and he was Man of
<v Speaker 3>Steel and he did this, and he was in the
<v Speaker 3>Tutor's TV Show and you know, I know a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of things he's been in. But the moment I look
<v Speaker 3>at Christopher Reeve, that Superman, you know, in terms of
<v Speaker 3>Henry Cavill, his Superman is good. I really like his
<v Speaker 3>Clark Kent. In fact, I like his Clark Kent better
<v Speaker 3>I think than I liked the Christopher Reeve Clark Kent.
<v Speaker 3>Now that's that's right, and that's yeah. And that's me
<v Speaker 3>looking at it from an adult perspective, because as a kid,
<v Speaker 3>I was like, oh, Clark Kent's funny. It's hilarious. But
<v Speaker 3>over the years, as I've read more comic books, as
<v Speaker 3>I've read more stories and I've seen the TV shows
<v Speaker 3>like Smallville and some of the other iterations. Is you've
<v Speaker 3>got a Clark Kent that he doesn't have to put
<v Speaker 3>on quite as much of a show. He doesn't have
<v Speaker 3>to be nerdy, he doesn't have to be a bumbling OAF.
<v Speaker 1>He's the same guy like Clark Kent as Superman with
<v Speaker 1>Henry Cavill. They're the same. It's it is the Clark
<v Speaker 1>Kent story and Clark Kent's discovery of who he is
<v Speaker 1>without any kind of idea that I need to have
<v Speaker 1>an alterna identity. His whole life has had to keep
<v Speaker 1>his power as a secret, and it just plays into
<v Speaker 1>that whole idea.
<v Speaker 3>What's interesting is in the last couple of months in
<v Speaker 3>the Superman comics, Superman came out, had a press release
<v Speaker 3>and said, Hey, I just want to let the entire
<v Speaker 3>world know I'm Clark Kent and I'm married to Lois Lane,
<v Speaker 3>and so in the comics he has revealed that to
<v Speaker 3>the world because he spent the last couple of months
<v Speaker 3>in the comics being like, you know what, I always
<v Speaker 3>tell people, I'm fighting for truth and justice in the
<v Speaker 3>American way, but I'm lying to people all the time
<v Speaker 3>when I have this, you know, these glasses on, and
<v Speaker 3>I'm pretending to be somebody else that's not very truthful.
<v Speaker 3>So he made the decision. He's like, you know what
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. We'll see
<v Speaker 3>how it goes, but I want to embody that truth.
<v Speaker 3>And so he did that. So that'll be kind of
<v Speaker 3>interesting to see how that all plays out in the comics.
<v Speaker 3>But it kind of goes along. You've seen the progression
<v Speaker 3>for years where there's much less of a difference between
<v Speaker 3>that Clark and that Superman persona. So yeah, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>I really like Henry Cavill's Clark Kent. I do still
<v Speaker 3>like Christopher reeve Clark Kent as well, but I think
<v Speaker 3>just comparing the two, Christopher Reeve is much more of
<v Speaker 3>the Superman that I think of when I think of Superman,
<v Speaker 3>and Henry Cavill maybe did a little bit of a
<v Speaker 3>better job at the Clark Kent that I want to see.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's talk about Lewis. Okay, So in Superman movies,
<v Speaker 1>we had Margot Kidder and in Man of Steel we
<v Speaker 1>had Amy Adams. I'm gonna go to that for Margot Kidder,
<v Speaker 1>real quick.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, before okay, here's the thing with her people kind
<v Speaker 2>of I know how I feel about her sex appeal.
<v Speaker 2>It's not great.
<v Speaker 1>I feel weird you're just saying those two words in
<v Speaker 1>the same sentence. But you know what, if you go
<v Speaker 1>back to Superman one, she's kind of cute. She's she's
<v Speaker 1>a pretty lady.
<v Speaker 2>She's she's attractive. Yeah, I mean she had done Playboy.
<v Speaker 2>I mean you know, I mean, they don't put ugly
<v Speaker 2>people in Playboy.
<v Speaker 1>Really, yeah, google search.
<v Speaker 2>But she did such a good job with the character,
<v Speaker 2>particularly for me, the scene at the end of Superman
<v Speaker 2>two where she's sobbing, Yeah, and she's selling. Not only
<v Speaker 2>is she crying, but she's been crying all night.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's the great sadness realization of I can't express
<v Speaker 2>my feelings. I can't be in this relationship. It's not
<v Speaker 2>going to work. That whole scene was wonderful.
<v Speaker 1>I thought, Right, it's a little weird that it happens
<v Speaker 1>on like the morning after the first night, but yes, otherwise, yes, I.
<v Speaker 2>Can't wait to dive into the superkiss here in a
<v Speaker 2>few But for me, Margot Kitner did did a great
<v Speaker 2>job with what she had some personal circumstances caused her
<v Speaker 2>to look less appealing as the series went on, Right,
<v Speaker 2>but you know that I liked her.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she she was. She was great because right off
<v Speaker 1>the bat, she's got this kind of Catherine Hetburn asque
<v Speaker 1>tough girl reporter. You know, her interactions with Perry White.
<v Speaker 1>She she knows she's number one in the show. She
<v Speaker 1>knows she's the bomb, and so, yeah, I really dug
<v Speaker 1>that about her. And then you juxtapose that with how
<v Speaker 1>she turns into this kind of awkward high school girl
<v Speaker 1>whenever she meets Superman on the balcony for the first time.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know I like her, I don't. Okay, I'm
<v Speaker 2>just gonna say this. There are not many women in
<v Speaker 2>this world that I would give up the ability to
<v Speaker 2>fly to be with. Okay, Margot Kidder is definitely not
<v Speaker 2>on that list. No, Lois Lane is not on that list.
<v Speaker 1>No, I don't. Yeah, that's that's tough.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, every man I know would love to the ability
<v Speaker 2>to fly.
<v Speaker 1>I say, I don't even still the day, I still
<v Speaker 1>don't know why he gave it up. We still don't know.
<v Speaker 1>He didn't have to and she didn't ask him to. Yeah, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>so Amy Adams. Amy Adams kind of has the same
<v Speaker 1>type of thing as Christopher Reeve does, where she to
<v Speaker 1>me is automatically likeable, like you just it. She she
<v Speaker 1>comes in and she's tough, tough in a different kind
<v Speaker 1>of way. But I mean, we're keeping this radio clean,
<v Speaker 1>so I can't say my favorite first line. But if
<v Speaker 1>we're done measuring these, then then we can move on.
<v Speaker 1>And I loved her tough attitude and I loved how
<v Speaker 1>they played off of that of she's got some gumption,
<v Speaker 1>she's got some toughness about her, and she has that
<v Speaker 1>same attitude with Barry White of hey, I'm the number
<v Speaker 1>one around here and don't mess with me.
<v Speaker 3>I like it.
<v Speaker 1>But again, she can be vulnerable, and she's just a
<v Speaker 1>very nice looking waiting Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>I think for me between the to Lois Lane's it
<v Speaker 3>kind of comes to you. Guys have already kind of
<v Speaker 3>mentioned a little bit. Is you know as a kid,
<v Speaker 3>I wasn't thinking about a whole lot of stuff. I
<v Speaker 3>just you know, this Margot Killer. She was the lowest
<v Speaker 3>lane that was in the movie. I'm like, Okay, that's
<v Speaker 3>lowest line. But you know, having seen several iterations of
<v Speaker 3>Lois now in TV shows, comic books, cartoons, whatnot. You know.
<v Speaker 3>I think it comes down to again, when I see
<v Speaker 3>Margot Kitterer for a generation, she was Lowest Lane Amy Adams.
<v Speaker 3>Though when I look at it in terms of a character,
<v Speaker 3>Margot Kidder had that kind of that toughness, you know,
<v Speaker 3>she had some of that tenacity that you would expect
<v Speaker 3>from a female reporter. But when it really comes down
<v Speaker 3>to it in terms of a character, like you know,
<v Speaker 3>what if if somebody likes Superman, somebody who's supposed to
<v Speaker 3>have an unflappable sense of character and kindness and all
<v Speaker 3>these different things, I cannot realistically see him falling for
<v Speaker 3>the personality of the Margot Kidder Lois Lane. I could
<v Speaker 3>see him falling for the personality of the Amy Adams
<v Speaker 3>Lowest Lane. Right. Absolutely no, She's not only is she
<v Speaker 3>fiery and tenacious and all of those things that you
<v Speaker 3>would have to be, but she's also kind. She's also
<v Speaker 3>she seems smart and generous. She's smart, yeah, and I
<v Speaker 3>just don't and she doesn't treat him like crap.
<v Speaker 1>The Margot kid or Lowis Lane falls in love with
<v Speaker 1>Superman and almost in lust with Superman and treats Clark
<v Speaker 1>Kent like crap and disregards him throughout the movie like
<v Speaker 1>there's no inkling whatsoever that she has any feelings beyond
<v Speaker 1>friendship for Clark Kent and Man of Steel. Lois Lane
<v Speaker 1>falls in love with Clark Kent. She doesn't fall in
<v Speaker 1>love with Superman. I mean, she's met him and has
<v Speaker 1>seen his powers briefly. But it is his story as
<v Speaker 1>Clark Kent about why he has to remain quiet about
<v Speaker 1>his powers that moves her, and it is and it's
<v Speaker 1>his sacrifice later on, and that one is Superman that
<v Speaker 1>I think causes her to fall in love with him.
<v Speaker 1>Is this understanding of where he is. And to me,
<v Speaker 1>that's a much better romantic story then Oh, I'm enamored
<v Speaker 1>by a superhero and kind of losing control myself.
<v Speaker 3>Well, and I almost don't want to take it to
<v Speaker 3>this kind of extreme. And I'm going to say this,
<v Speaker 3>but I'm not really calling her this. It's almost like
<v Speaker 3>Margot Kidder Lewis Lane is a gold digger. You know,
<v Speaker 3>she sees somebody with power and she's like, oh my god.
<v Speaker 3>And then even when he says things like yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 3>I never lie, and she's like are you kidding? Really,
<v Speaker 3>that's ridiculous. Everybody lies. And whereas Amy Adams one of
<v Speaker 3>my favorite, I think the indication of just how she
<v Speaker 3>feels about this man is when she's sitting down across
<v Speaker 3>the table from him and he's got the handcuffs on,
<v Speaker 3>and she's like, why did you let them handcuff you?
<v Speaker 3>And he's like, well, you know, if it helps him
<v Speaker 3>feel better, And just the little smile that she gives
<v Speaker 3>him at that point, it's like she loves his humility,
<v Speaker 3>Like she knows what he's capable of, she knows the
<v Speaker 3>power that he's that he's got, but he's sitting there
<v Speaker 3>in handcuffs and she I mean like that, you can
<v Speaker 3>see the look on her face, and just that little
<v Speaker 3>hint of a smile that she gives. It's like you
<v Speaker 3>can tell she's falling in love with this guy because
<v Speaker 3>he's humble.
<v Speaker 2>All right, well, let's talk about for me, one of
<v Speaker 2>the most interesting characters is Zod. So Terrence Stamp is
<v Speaker 2>General Zod in Superman one and two. You know, and
<v Speaker 2>you compare him to Michael Shannon, who is Zodd and
<v Speaker 2>Man of Steel.
<v Speaker 1>What do you guys think on that one? So Terrence
<v Speaker 1>Stamp took some recruiting, just like many of the actors
<v Speaker 1>whenever that first movie was coming out, because the idea
<v Speaker 1>of being a superhero having a superhero movie was not
<v Speaker 1>exciting to anybody. But as it turned out, Richard Donner
<v Speaker 1>found out that Stamp had been studying transcendental meditation. Stamp
<v Speaker 1>just so that if anybody doesn't know the history, he's
<v Speaker 1>obviously an incredible actor. But he had he had gotten nominated,
<v Speaker 1>maybe won the Oscar for Billy Budd way back in
<v Speaker 1>the sixties, and then what is kind of a I
<v Speaker 1>don't know that they had People magazine back then, but
<v Speaker 1>he was kind of the guy who was always out
<v Speaker 1>on the town and doing disco and living the actor life.
<v Speaker 3>He yeah, he liked a boogey, so he must have.
<v Speaker 3>They must not have needed their wardrobe department to bring
<v Speaker 3>his zod costume. Maybe he already had that.
<v Speaker 1>For he supplied all three of the criminals with their
<v Speaker 1>nightlife costume. And so anyway they got him on. He
<v Speaker 1>said that he did not want to give layers to
<v Speaker 1>this character, like he just wanted him to be a
<v Speaker 1>straightforward evil. You know, no complexity, nothing. This is just
<v Speaker 1>a bad guy. I thought, I loved zod in one
<v Speaker 1>and two. He has some funny lines, like.
<v Speaker 2>When the police siren pulls up or the police car
<v Speaker 2>pulls up, and he's like, the red light reminds me
<v Speaker 2>of the red crypton sun. I love it, except for
<v Speaker 2>the irritating noise, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, I like him. I do think that Michael
<v Speaker 1>Shannon does a good job.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, there's one line in Man of Steel when
<v Speaker 2>they're carrying a way and they're on Krypton and he's
<v Speaker 2>looking at Superman's mom and he's like, I will find him.
<v Speaker 2>I will find him, and he starts speaking with more
<v Speaker 2>and more conviction, and that last that last thing where
<v Speaker 2>he says I will find him, and I'm like, man,
<v Speaker 2>that one.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of shook me.
<v Speaker 2>That that dude looked intense. So I think they did
<v Speaker 2>both both did a good job. I'm more partial to
<v Speaker 2>Terrence Stamp just just because, but I thought Michael Shannon
<v Speaker 2>was great.
<v Speaker 1>Where are you at?
<v Speaker 3>Well, actually the you mentioned that line that I will
<v Speaker 3>find him. There was a podcast that I used to
<v Speaker 3>listen to a lot and it was kind of actually
<v Speaker 3>what what got me started and wanting to do a podcast.
<v Speaker 3>It was called geek Out loud and the host his
<v Speaker 3>name Steve and he lives in Georgia and he used
<v Speaker 3>to have a radio show. He was actually on like
<v Speaker 3>on the air radio, and uh, he would kind of
<v Speaker 3>have some of the people that would listen to him
<v Speaker 3>would send in fake commercials sometimes kind of like what
<v Speaker 3>you'd see on Saturday Night Live, where they come up
<v Speaker 3>with a fake ad for something and so round of
<v Speaker 3>the time that Man of It might run. About the
<v Speaker 3>time that Man of Steel came out, I put together
<v Speaker 3>a fake commercial for his radio show, and it was,
<v Speaker 3>oh god. It was called like General Zod's Love Codex,
<v Speaker 3>and it was supposed to be like this, it's supposed
<v Speaker 3>to be like this dating service, and you know, I
<v Speaker 3>had you know, I had my sister like pretend like
<v Speaker 3>she was one of the people calling into the dating
<v Speaker 3>service and and all this other stuff. But the final
<v Speaker 3>line of the dating service like if there's someone out
<v Speaker 3>there for you, And then we had Zods screaming, I
<v Speaker 3>will find him. That's great man now, I and some
<v Speaker 3>of this too. I I can't, you know, say what
<v Speaker 3>I said before about having watched these movies with my dad,
<v Speaker 3>you know, Superman too. This was this was something that
<v Speaker 3>just I cannot separate the experience of watching this with
<v Speaker 3>my dad and how much my dad loved Superman too.
<v Speaker 3>And I think this was this became the vocabulary of
<v Speaker 3>our house. You know, if I did something and it
<v Speaker 3>was it was something stupid or something my dad had
<v Speaker 3>told me to do, his phrase was wrong again, Zudd,
<v Speaker 3>you know it was that was constant in our house,
<v Speaker 3>or you know, he would you know, he'd be playing
<v Speaker 3>around with us. He'd be like, no, he's like, you
<v Speaker 3>got to listen to me, Neil.
<v Speaker 2>At last, he didn't say, why do you say this
<v Speaker 2>to me when.
<v Speaker 3>You know I will kill you for it? You know
<v Speaker 3>what I think he might have the first time I
<v Speaker 3>asked to borrow the car, you know, So, I mean
<v Speaker 3>it's again, It's like it's like Christopher Reeves Superman. This
<v Speaker 3>zod Is is larger than life. Like he's he's very
<v Speaker 3>two dimensional. So yes, it's not he's your he doesn't
<v Speaker 3>you know, it's your mustache twirling villain. It's your you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's you mentioned Dracula before. It's like your old school
<v Speaker 3>nineteen thirties Dracula. Like there's no complexity to this character.
<v Speaker 3>It's just a bad guy. It's a classic bad guy
<v Speaker 3>for the sake of being a bad guy, and I
<v Speaker 3>think in a movie of this kind, that's what makes
<v Speaker 3>him great. Now having said that, Michael Shannon, that brings,
<v Speaker 3>he brings the complexity Like I when I saw that
<v Speaker 3>and I saw his take on Zod, I'm like, you
<v Speaker 3>know what a oh they're doing. Zod is the villain
<v Speaker 3>why they already did it right the first time, But
<v Speaker 3>now watching watching this one, actually I might have to
<v Speaker 3>take that back a little bit. He is a phenomenal Sod.
<v Speaker 3>There's no way around this. The fact that he brought
<v Speaker 3>to this movie a motivation that had you almost I
<v Speaker 3>mean you were you were conflicted, and I think that
<v Speaker 3>was what was great about it was they wanted kal
<v Speaker 3>El to be conflicted, like, oh, well, I've never known
<v Speaker 3>any of my people. Well now my people are here
<v Speaker 3>and they don't seem to be such great people, but
<v Speaker 3>you know, Kryptonian. We got to keep the Kryptonian thing going.
<v Speaker 3>So maybe I should be maybe I should be aligning
<v Speaker 3>with these people, maybe I shouldn't. And there's that there's
<v Speaker 3>that kind of push and pull in the movie, and
<v Speaker 3>I think that just that backstory of Zod being like, look,
<v Speaker 3>I was raised to defend my people and on Krypton,
<v Speaker 3>whatever you're raised to be, that's what you are, and
<v Speaker 3>you don't deviate. You know, that's built into the fabric
<v Speaker 3>of our culture and our society. You don't deviate from that.
<v Speaker 3>You don't change from that. And I think his Zod
<v Speaker 3>bringing that to such a desperation when it gets to
<v Speaker 3>the point at the end of the movie where you
<v Speaker 3>know a lot of his people are now gone, and
<v Speaker 3>he even says that he's like, I am here to
<v Speaker 3>defend my people, and now because of you, I have
<v Speaker 3>no people. And then I remember taking my soul right,
<v Speaker 3>You've taken my reason for being. And I remember watching
<v Speaker 3>that and just thinking, as I'm watching this in the theater, going, oh,
<v Speaker 3>dear Lord, you have left this man desperate and without
<v Speaker 3>anything else to lose. Now he's going to be like
<v Speaker 3>even worse than he ever was before because you have
<v Speaker 3>pushed him to the edge up until that point. You
<v Speaker 3>could almost watch it. He's one of those villains where
<v Speaker 3>you're like, all right, so he's a bad guy, but like,
<v Speaker 3>I get why he's doing it. I wouldn't do it,
<v Speaker 3>but I get why he's doing it. And I think
<v Speaker 3>that was just that was an amazing take on the
<v Speaker 3>character of Zod, and so I think part of that
<v Speaker 3>it's a little bit tough because it is it's a
<v Speaker 3>little bit of an apples and oranges kind of thing.
<v Speaker 3>Is there's always a good place in time for a
<v Speaker 3>good two dimensional, mustache twirling, cackling villain, but there's also
<v Speaker 3>a good time and a place for wow like this
<v Speaker 3>is a villain like this is the kind of villain
<v Speaker 3>you can sink your teeth into.
<v Speaker 1>So the you know, you look at the motivations in
<v Speaker 1>both of the stories, the Superman one and two story,
<v Speaker 1>Zod's motivation is tyranny. I mean, he wants to rain
<v Speaker 1>on high from the beginning. That's what gets him in
<v Speaker 1>trouble in the first place, is that he's he's trying
<v Speaker 1>to take over control of Krypton. And then ultimately when
<v Speaker 1>he gets to Earth and Scream two, that's his whole
<v Speaker 1>goal is to take it over. And then when he finds,
<v Speaker 1>you know, when he finds out that the son of
<v Speaker 1>Dreaul lives, then he's he's bent on having his revenge.
<v Speaker 1>But these are all very vice motives. I mean, there's
<v Speaker 1>nothing redeeming about any of the motives that he has.
<v Speaker 1>But with the way they wrote Zod and Man of Steel,
<v Speaker 1>Krypton has got this kind of brave new world type
<v Speaker 1>of system where people are no longer birthed naturally but
<v Speaker 1>created in a big chamber, and each person is created
<v Speaker 1>with a specific job in mind. And Zod's specific job
<v Speaker 1>is to protect Krypton in the Kryptonian people, and he's
<v Speaker 1>he follows the leadership until such time as he realizes, Hey,
<v Speaker 1>they're now bureaucrats and they're causing the death of the
<v Speaker 1>people that it is my duty to defend. And to
<v Speaker 1>see that kind of passion behind it, I had to go, well,
<v Speaker 1>you know, what if I was in this situation, what
<v Speaker 1>if I had no familiarity with this other race of people.
<v Speaker 1>My one job was to protect my people. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you got to think of it like your family.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>If I could bring back my family from annihilation and
<v Speaker 1>what it took was getting rid of a family that
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know, could I see myself doing that?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Maybe go.
<v Speaker 2>I read a whole article about how General Zod is
<v Speaker 2>actually the good guy in Man of Steel.
<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody that does it for part one of
<v Speaker 1>the podcast, please join us next week we will have
<v Speaker 1>John back and we will be discussing the remainder of
<v Speaker 1>Superman one and Superman two versus Man of Steel. Don't
<v Speaker 1>forget to go check out the Thirty Somethings podcast, and
<v Speaker 1>as always, thank you for joining us. All music, images
<v Speaker 1>and movie clips are used for the purposes of commentary
<v Speaker 1>and education in conjunction with the fair Use agreement under
<v Speaker 1>the US copyright law.