Man of Steel Photo Released, Depicting Superman's Standoff With the Army

For Superman's 75th birthday, Warner Bros. have released a new still from the forthcoming Zack Snyder Superman reboot Man of Steel. The scene shows Superman standing, ringed by military hardware, in what has been one of the more baffling elements of the film's promotional campaign so far. Most assumed that Superman wouldn't actually lash out against the U.S. military, but the fact that he was being pursued so aggressively has confused many of our readers. Well, today EW gave an explanation:

We see our hero in American military custody and being interrogated by Amy Adams' Lois Lane....Couldn't he just, you know, snap those cuffs right off? Yes, he could. But his detention is voluntary. Earlier in the trailer we see a squad of A-10 Warthogs opening fire on Superman on a small town street. Entertainment Weekly watched this whole scene, and it's actually a Smallville street, where the good guy is engaged in serious fisticuffs with Zod and right-hand-sociopath Faora (Antje Traue). While they're slamming each other with parked cars and tossing each other through store walls, the military comes in to try to play referee by spraying machine gun fire everywhere. At this point, Superman's existence is still a mystery to most of the world. Lois Lane has been trying to report on the miracle man reported to be wandering the country, laying low until he springs forward to save the day in the middle of some deadly crisis. But Clark Kent has also been working to get his temper under control, and isn't above some heavy-handed vandalism when provoked. So even those aware of Superman's existence aren't certain he's a good guy. When he and a handful of other powerful aliens start laying into each other in Smallville (where Zod goes to brutalize his mother, played by Diane Lane, in the hope of drawing out Kal-El), the military operation — led by Col. Hardy (Christopher Meloni) — is just going to shoot first and sort the good from the bad later (and if they're sorted into body bags, then so be it.) Of course, the Kryptonians don't go down that easily. The one spotted in the sites of the A-10s below is not Superman, although he certainly dodges his share of rounds. The one pictured below is Faora, who doesn't get out of the way. She launches her own attack, with devastating results. It's only after this fight that Superman decides he needs to identify himself as someone who is fighting on the side of Earth, not against it. So he floats down willingly before their tanks, and goes with the authorities willingly.

So...there's some context, anyway.