‘Avengers: Endgame’ Directors on the Difficulty of Making a Superman Movie

Despite the first film with Christopher Reeves being one of the most revered superhero movies of all time, it’s challenging to effectively make a good Superman movie. Reboots and revivals have all been met with mixed reactions from fans, with Superman Returns and Man of Steel both receiving positive and negative responses.

Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo recognized the challenges inherent to a movie featuring Superman, and spoke about those difficulties in an interview with Business Insider.

“The more powerful a character is, the more difficult to deal with that character on a narrative level,” Anthony said to the outlet. “As storytellers, and the way we explore characters, we always look for vulnerabilities in characters because that’s where characters become interesting. They’re superficially interesting in their strength, but they get much more depth when you find where they don’t have that kind of strength. In general, the more powerful a character is, the more tricky that is.”

Joe spoke about Superman specifically as an example and how difficult it is to create challenges for that character.

“He’s a very difficult character,” Joe said. “You have to find an emotional flaw or weakness in the character in order to make them vulnerable.”

Man of Steel director Zack Snyder understood that challenge all too well, which is why he told a story about how Clark Kent begins his journey toward becoming the Superman fans know and love.

While many viewers took umbrage with Superman’s decision to kill Zod, Snyder said it was necessary for the character’s development, as he then adopts his “no kill” policy when dealing with potentially world-ending crises in the future.

“I guess for me—and in the original version of the script he just got zapped into the Phantom Zone—David and I had long talks about it and Chris and I talked long about it and it was like, ‘I really think we should kill Zod and I really think Superman should kill him,’” Snyder explained to Empire. “And the why of it was, for me, that if it’s truly an origin story, his aversion to killing is unexplained. It’s just in his DNA. I felt like we needed him to do something, just like him putting on the glasses or going to the Daily Planet or any of the other things that you’re sort of seeing for the first time that you realize will then become his thing.

“I felt like, if we can find a way of making it impossible for him—like Kobayashi Maru, totally no way out—I felt like that could also make you go, ‘Okay, this is the why of him not killing ever again, right?’ He’s basically obliterated his entire people and his culture and he is responsible for it and he’s just like, ‘How could I kill ever again?’”