Exclusive Interview: Deborah Snyder Talks Man of Steel and Easter Eggs

SPOILER WARNING…

Obviously I think a lot of people are looking to this movie as a foundation hopefully for future, not just Superman movies, but Justice League movies. Everyone sort of has this in the back of their head. Beyond the sort of LexCorp building are there other Easter Eggs in there for people to find that we be looking for?

In terms of the future? I mean…

 

Even if it’s like a cute little reference and we’ll get to that another time. There was a rumor online that Harry Lennix was going to be the Martian Manhunter.

[Laughs]

 

Where at the end he was going to, like, eat an Oreo and his eyes are going to glow red. That would have been the ending.

You know what’s interesting, and I don’t know and I’m not going to say what it means or anything, but the one thing if you look closely when Henry’s going through the Fortress of Solitude there’s an empty… you know all the bodies… the pods? There’s an empty pod. I’m not going to say what, or if, it means anything but there is an empty pod there.

 

If I guessed it would you say?

No, I’m not saying anything! Spoilers!

 

Can I just get a look at your face?

No!

 

Supergirl…?

No. [Laughs] I’m not going to say anything but, it’s a thing.

 

It’s a thing though?

It’s a thing. That’s one Easter Egg that, I don’t know. Again, it might not mean anything, [but] it might mean something…

 

You’re laying the seeds.

I think it’s important when you’re doing world-building to have… I think it’s great, and I think Alex [McDowell] did a great job for us in Watchmen with the production design, and also this movie…

 

A lot of detail. A lot of little stories in the background.

.Yeah. We created a language. Wehad these linguists up in Canada that we found had done a lot of research on Klingon. Like, we brought them in and they came up with this language on the walls. This is actually a nice Easter Egg: on the walls the phrases are actually phrases, and I don’t remember what they are, right now exactly, but they are real phrases that were translated into Kryptonian. So that’s kind of a fun thing. I’m sure someone will be able to decipher that. Because I know online’s been seeding the language.

 

Okay, let me ask you a quick question here because I saw the screening last week. Is there something after the credits that they just didn’t show us, and maybe we’ll get to that later? Or are you not doing that?

We’re not doing that.

 

You’re not doing that? Really?

This is a movie! I swear to God, I feel like …

 

I’m glad. I think everyone is sort of waiting for it and that’s like, you know, Marvel does that. 

It kind of feels like it’s a commercial for another movie. This is our story and for us it needed to be its own thing. And I think that’s how everybody obviously is always asking, “What’s going on in a few…?” And what we’ve said is Superman is the pinnacle, right? And you have to get him right first. And that’s what are focus was. And we see how this all does. Obviously people talk and all that but you just have to focus on what you’re doing right now and get that right first. And this was a complete story and we’re not teasing something. It just wasn’t what we wanted to do. I feel like the film, there’s a class to it, you know.

 

Did you have a good enough experience that if this, and man I hope that it does well…

You and me both! [Laughs]

 

But if there is another Superman, would you want to tell another story of this or you feel like you’ve told this one and this one is great and we can move on and let someone else …

I’ll tell you, it’s been an amazing experience and we were lucky. We’ve been building this crew of people and bringing in new people and for a movie of this size it was really smooth. And I think its also because Zack plans everything so specifically. You know with his drawing of storyboards and pre-vis…

 

Well you have to with something this complex.

It’s all about the prep. And because also too it’s allows us to then have… He can focus on performances because he’s not worried about … I mean, there’s so much. When does he turn CG? And when is he real? And we do that hand-off back and forth, which we’ve had a little practice with Watchmen and Sucker Punch, getting the technology right. But this was way beyond. It really needs to be buttoned up. But to answer your question, I mean, listen I’ve grown to really love all these people and I love this character and I love what we created and we’ll see and, you know, fingers are crossed that it does well.

 

I will say this: the great and really difficult decision you made with Lois Lane, to have her, like the first thing she does is figure out who Clark Kent is. You just saved that character for so many people who think she’s useless. That was really daring. That was really cool. Was that part of the initial pitch or was that…?

Listen, I think Zack, in all the films he has these really strong women that… Sometimes we’re making commentary about women’s roles in society, sometimes it’s very blatant. But I think the vision for Lois was always for her to be more proactive. On the surface in the past she’s been this hard-hitting reporter but she’s still always being rescued, and also we wanted her to be smart and you wanted to see that she was smart and proactive. I always say she saves him as much as he saves [her]. She saves him emotionally.

 

And physically!

And physically! She has a big role and we’ve not seen that before. Zack built on that. It was in the script initially but I know that was something that he built on as we went along in the process.

 

When Amy auditioned, did she just resend her audition tapes from Superman Returns and the Brett Ratner one?

[Laughs] No!

 

Because she’s very vocal about that she wanted that role.

You know something, she met with Zack, I think a couple times. I met her, and then we just honestly She’s like this amazing actor. We knew it wasn’t about the acting but we wanted to see just them together because there is that chemistry. There is that… Their relationship really has to work. Really, Zack wanted to just get in a room with the two of them and see what it was going to be like and how their dynamic would be. We didn’t show it to anyone. It wasn’t like we showed it to the studio. It was more for him being able to see that with them. 


William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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