Batman v Superman's Henry Cavill Gets Superheroes, at Least

Batman v Superman’s Henry Cavill Gets Superheroes, at Least

Famously, Jesse Eisenberg – who is DC’s new onscreen Lex Luthor – doesn’t get comics, superheroes or popular culture. At all. If you want the story on that, check out his comments from last summer’s Comic-Con appearance.

Henry Cavill, however, seems to understand the layered complexity of characters like Superman and Batman. He recently spoke to Cineplex about just that.

"I think maybe people may look down on some popular-culture stuff, but they’re actually very complicated and interesting characters. Superman especially, he’s just wonderfully rich and one of those things, for me, that’s just enjoyable to play. There’s so far you can go with it; if you really, really delve deep into the character, there’s so much you can do. It’s just about exploring it within the vehicles and finding what you want to do. He’s going to have some very interesting character development in this one."

Superheroes – Superman in particular – was intentionally created as a secular proxy for Moses by 2 Jewish guys living in New York. The genre eventually became mythology in a modern world, new versions of old archetypes. (Spider-Man is Job, Hulk is Jekyll and Hyde, etc.) That’s why characters like this are so enduring.

Unfortunately, audiences can only appreciate characters that are presented to them correctly, so there are a lot of people who hate Superman. Often times people just haven’t read the right comics or seen the right movies. Partially because there aren’t a lot of good movies.

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Man of Steel caught a lot of flack. Most of the outward criticism was about tone and themes, and Cavill also addresses that.

"The reception of my first Superman movie, from what I’ve read, was fairly mixed. Everyone I’ve spoken to enjoyed the movie, but [not] unlike if you’re going to meet a stranger in the street, they’re not going to badmouth you to your face. There’s no intentional move, I don’t think, in Batman v. Superman to address any issues that people had with Man of Steel. It’s just a continuation of that storyline and they continue to develop that world and introduce new characters."

Thematically, Man of Steel is decent. The real problem is with the sloppy narrative and Zack Snyder’s inability to pace scenes organically. The film just ended up clunky.

Next: Batman v Superman Cereals Now Hitting Shelves

With a rewrite by Argo‘s Chris Terrio (at Ben Affleck’s urging) Batman v Superman will hopefully be a better installment of the shared universe. Otherwise there won’t be much of one going forward.

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