The film establishes this new mythology with a series of captions. This is the first film that didn’t depict Superman’s origins, instead starting with an established version of the character and his world. Did you feel as if the absence of his origin story hindered or helped the film in any way?
Michael A. Burstein: Skipping the origin story doesn’t hinder the film at all. At this point, anyone going to see this movie already has an idea of the broad brushstrokes of who Superman is. And as the movie progresses, Gunn fills in enough of the origin story that we need to appreciate who Superman is, where he comes from, and what he stands for. Perhaps in 1978 we needed all of that backstory presented to the movie audience, but in today’s world it’s fine to just dive right in.
Peter Briggs: I had no problem with the story just “pitching in” without an origin, but I didn’t think the Captions were necessary either. Out of Fantastic Four and Superman, I thought Fantastic Four had the better “Here’s How It Began” setup. Much as I love Superman, I’ll have to admit to bias. I’ve worked with Stan Lee, and I’ve been a Marvel Boy since childhood. So Fantastic Four overall did far more for me than this movie did.
Robert Greenberger: The FF is far less known than Superman and the mass audience needed the background. Generation after generation has had origin story drilled into their heads.There was zero need for a recap so starting in media res worked fine.
James Ryan: In some ways, the “Work with me here “ cold open was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, yeah, we don’t need to go over the same story multiple times by now, and by extension sit through the same cinematic tropes. On the other hand, this is such a deep background trying to cover years of DC history it’s likely to intimidate and dissuade people coming in cold from trying to follow along.
Will McGuire: I think the film is greatly aided by beginning in the thick of it, given how many pieces the plot puts into motion. It would be an incredibly crowded film if it had to devote its first act to Krypton and Smallville. Also, I think given that the film’s emotional resolution is Superman recommitting to his humanity in the face of what we learn about Jor El and Lara, having Krypton be absent from the film outside of artifacts helps us go on the ride with Superman about his origins. We know (or can infer) exactly as much about Krypton as he can from what we see in the Fortress.
Alex Grand: This is like the radioactive spider. I am totally okay with not seeing another version of the same thing. I am fine if we don’t see Zod again. We’ve been there done that twice now. I don’t want story repeats.
Josh Marowitz: I agree with Peter and James about the captions. I loved being able to dive right into the action without yet another origin to eat up run time. But the prologue text does make me feel like I’m missing something that I would otherwise not have thought I was missing. I would have preferred to have the sense of the history of metahumans in this world by having longer, clearer shots of the Hall of Justice mural and by having other references or hints sprinkled throughout the film. We don’t get any text about Lois and Clark’s relationship, so we have to get ourselves up to speed with just the details in the script, but we need a few sentences about the 300 years of metahuman existence.
For that matter, I thought that saying that Clark had been Superman for three years put too firm a number on things that then had me asking questions that I know were irrelevant to the story the film was telling: Clark has been Superman for three years, but he’s never met Lex Luthor, a major player in Metropolis? We are expected to dive right into his relationship with Lois and just accept where they are now, but we can’t do the same with Lex?
The text wasn’t a deal breaker for me or anything, but I’d rather the film not have it.
Jon Bogdanove:I kinda have to disagree with Josh on this. Most comic books start with some sort of introductory caption, to quickly get new readers up to speed. Gunn’s opening captions felt just like that. We’re picking up or first issue of Superman in this universe. We’ve missed the first three years, but that’s okay, because Gunn gives us a short, effective recap—a kind of “Last issue” blurb. I kind of hope the opening caption becomes a thing in all his DC movies.
I agree with everyone who thinks it was vitally necessary to skip the origin. Everybody knows the origin, for one thing—but it is not necessary to know Superman’s origin to know Superman. More importantly, skipping the origin puts more emphasis on Superman as a naturalized Earthling—it keeps the focus on the main character.
Man of Steel put so much emphasis on the origin that it eclipsed Superman almost to insignificance, in my opinion. As a Superman movie, Man of Steel was a great Krypton movie. The Krypton sequences amounted to an interesting, little sci-fi movie about the end of a world. Almost everything after that was either boring or infuriating.
Peter Briggs: I didn’t like the Krypton prologue in Man of Steel. It looked like it came out of a cheesy fantasy movie. And the extended “liquid metal history” scene inside the Kryptonian ship later in its one was perfectly adequate at bringing everyone (including Kal-El) up to speed. We’re constantly flashing back in that movie to see scenes from his childhood anyway (and they’re great.) Overall, I prefer Man of Steel to Gunn’s Superman. Although I have niggling issues with Snyder’s movie.
Jerry Ordway: I think the opening felt too much like Star Wars’ opening scroll, but not smoothly realized. I had no trouble with skipping the Krypton origin, as it is so well known. I also wonder if some of that will be explored in the sequel? Certainly, the Jor-El and Lara stuff begs for some explanation? Anyhow, I will say that opening this film with a new Superman already defeated seemed the wrong thing. I think the movie wants to hinge on Superman breaking international law to save innocents from the Boravian military. They should have opened with that, Superman destroying tanks, and the downtrodden maybe hoisting the makeshift Superman emblem flag. Then cut to a news story with the same image of Superman with the headline about Superman not being trusted. I’d have skipped the Kaiju scenes, if need be, to make it fit.
Lenny Schwartz: I am glad we didn’t have the origin story. I even like that “controversial” spin on it. There were actual stakes at play because of it and I love that Gunn himself made NO apologies. Just “this is the story and this is how our main character deals with it.” Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but Gunn clearly was going for something more emotional and real.
Dave Jackson: I thought the opening was brilliant. The Star Wars style intro was done in a clever way with the, “Thirty years ago, three years ago, three days ago,” countdown and got us into the heart of the movie right away.
Superman’s origin wasn’t a necessity and even without it, audiences still came away with a pretty good understanding of the character’s past.
Peter Briggs: Something a bit more exciting and inventive than the equivalent of digital Letraset on a blue background might have been nice. Watching the Mark Gatiss Ted Gilbert Fantastic Four TV mini-documentary in “First Steps”…that was thrilling. That short assemblage made my heart soar and made me feel like I was eight years old again and reading those comics for the first time. That’s how you do a recap.
Vito Delsante: Jeez, I’m sure Seinfeld discussed Superman’s origin once or twice. At this point, it’s canonized into public mythology. The film lost nothing by having the information spelled out in text. If you feel the need to do the rocket crashing into Kansas at this point, I feel like, as a filmmaker, you are severely underestimating your audience to the point of insult.
Thomas Lakeman: I’m okay with not having another origin story. It was a strong choice to start in an Astro City-like world that’s already used to Superman and superheroes being everywhere (did they really have to call them “metahumans” though? Poor Batman having to get by with his puny human DNA). Rebooting the origin story always feel like a lazy filmmaker’s way to reinvent the character, and it wastes time that could be spent moving the story forward. As others have said, everybody knows who Superman is. We don’t need the introduction.
Andre Bennett: I agree with just about everyone else that another origin retelling wasn’t necessary. The opening text certainly got me up to speed and drew me into this new world, but I sort of wish Gunn had adapted the first page of All-Star Superman into a short prologue. Two minutes, eight words.
I liked what we got though.
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