Superman is evolving with the times in a new motion poster released on Thursday. It shows Clark Kent changing into Superman in a flash — an iconic change that has been a staple of Superman movies since the 1970s. There’s no phone booth, revolving door, or cheeky pay phone this time around — instead, the new ad leans on the prevalence of short-form videos and animated GIFs to get the point across. It already has fans speculating about how we might see David Corenswet change his outfit in this new movie. Superman hits theaters on Friday, July 11th, rebooting the character once again while kicking off the new DC Universe continuity.
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It’s no surprise that DC Studios has been pulling out all the stops to advertise its first DCU movie, and its hotly-anticipated reboot of the Superman character on the big screen. We’ve already seen two trailers, some teaser images, and a lot of other promotion for this movie, and it’s still over a month away. “Motion posters” have been used quite a lot in this ad campaign, bringing the epic feel of Superman into the modern era of mobile screens and social media.
Superman’s outfit change has been a central feature of his stories from the comics to cartoons to the big screen, and every other medium in between. In part, this is likely due to the sharp contrast between his two personas, as audiences need to see the unassuming Clark Kent turn into the unstoppable Superman to really feel the impact of the transformation.
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On a more pragmatic level, the transformation has left creators a lot of room to have some fun. Nearly a century ago, it was perfectly natural for Superman to find a phonebooth nearby any crime scene and change in a hurry. These public spaces were already more common in Metropolis than in real-life U.S. cities, and they continued to appear conveniently in comics throughout the 1970s.
This culminated in a meta joke in Superman: The Movie in 1978, when Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) takes a lingering look at an open-design pay phone, realizing it won’t help him change at all. Instead, he rushes into a revolving door as Clark and comes out as Superman. Since then, other creators have had fun with this reference, finding unique ways for Superman to change and leaning heavily on his superspeed to get it done.
It seems pretty likely that this year’s new movie will have its own take on this bit, but we’ll probably have to wait and see it in theaters. Superman premieres on Friday, July 11th.
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