Man of Steel Trailer: Five Similarities to the Existing Superman Films

Even above and beyond the fact that Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman reboot, Man of Steel, will feature Jor-El and Lara more heavily than most comic books in the last 80 years have, or that General Zod and his Kryptonian cohorts are the film’s villains (just like in Superman II), there are quite a few visual cues in place in the trailer released this week that suggest, despite all the posturing the contrary, the film won’t be tonally all that much different from what’s come before it.”The more I watch this Man of Steel trailer, the more it looks very similar to Superman Returns. Grittier, but not tonally different,” tweeted Entertainment Weekly‘s Darren Franich the day the trailer debuted. “I liked Superman Returns. But even I find it weird that, after all the complaints, we’re right back to a sad-eyed messiah.”He’s not wrong; the question, of course, becomes how much of this is reality and how much of it comes out of editing for the trailer that can sometimes make a shot, line or even a scene seem different from the way it will eventually actually play on the big screen.So check these out and, if the trailer got you as excited as it did the rest of us, give ol’ Bryan Singer a little break.Space ships on the Kent Farm/Ma Kent hugging SupermanI can probably count the number of times I’ve seen a simple, quiet moment between Clark’s parents and Superman in costume in the comic book source material on one hand. Most of the time, if you see them interacting with the Man of Steel, it’s because something bad is going down.In both this and Superman Returns, though, we’ve had versions of “Superman and Martha Kent hugging on the porch” appear in the film. The last time it came on the heels of Superman’s return trip to Smallville in his rocket, after having explored the ruins of Krypton.This time it does look as though it’s in the aftermath of something ugly, though, although it’ shard to say whether that’s because of the space ships that serve as prelude to this shot in the trailer, or the tornado we briefly get a glimpse of. Either one could have wrecked the Kent farmhouse.