[FILM INTERVIEW] SUPERMAN – James Gunn Interview

What do you want people to know at this early stage of the process?

I want people to get a sense of what to expect from the film that comes out in July. I wanted to create a teaser trailer that gave people an essence of this movie without giving away too much of the plot.

What can we expect from the new Superman?

I think we can expect a Superman who is about compassion of the human spirit. A Superman who is about kindness, love and compassion while also being a very strong character. So I think he is the best of humanity even though he is an alien from out of space.

We see in the trailer that yes it is action packed but there is also humour, there is heart, there is heartbreak, there is romance. There is just that little bit of everything.

Yeah, I think that just all came naturally as the story evolved. This story is a little bit different because it is about Superman’s external struggle but it also about his internal struggle. It is about who he is a person, where he comes from. It is about his parents – both his Kryptonian parents and his human parents. We get to know who this guy is on a really elemental level and I think that brings in all those other elements to.

In your perspective how does David Corenswet’s Superman differ from the previous versions of Superman?

I really loved working with David Corenswet and I think of him as the person that I have worked with and the results that I have got from him. David has that optimistic boy scout quality that Superman has – both on screen and in real life frankly. He also has this real down to earthiness despite the fact that he is an incredibly good looking guy – he doesn’t have any kind of arrogance or ego in that way.

Also he is a very phenomenally trained actor who went to Guillard to train as an actor and he is one of the best actors that I have ever been able to work with. He is incredibly nuanced and he is trying to question all the time. He is always trying to find how he can give his best performance and there is never a take where I sit down to watch the dailies where I go “he isn’t authentically Superman”. To me he is Superman every single minute that he is in the movie. When I sit down to cut together the best performances I find that even his worst is still great.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of what David Corenswet has brought to this role?

I think the extreme dedication. I think he was willing to do anything for this role in terms of preparation – learning, reading the comics, working out. When David I got hired I said to him, and he went through a very long and arduous audition process because we had hundreds of people audition for the role of Clark Kent/Superman – David won it and I said to David “you have to work on two things – you have to work on your shoulders and you have to work on your vulnerability.”

They were then two things that he spent the next six months working on. He got bigger and he worked on elements of getting vulnerable on screen – which was difficult for him as is difficult for Superman.

Speaking of vulnerable – the opening scene of the teaser trailer. We have never really seen a comic book trailer start that way before – with the character at its most vulnerable.

It shows us what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with Superman – this symbol of old fashioned values and hope – Mom and apple pie. It is an idea that has been a bit battered over the years – both that concept of Superman and that concept of kindness in general. And I think this is about letting this be what it is and allowing those traditional values to manifest themselves in a completely new way.

How will you explore Clark Kent’s humanity in this film?

I think that is all that this movie is about. This movie is all about Clark Kent’s humanity. Yes, he is an alien from another planet who is super powerful but he is also deeply, deeply human. He has emotions and every day he wakes up and tries to make the best choices that he can and sometimes he fails – and that is what this movie is about. This movie is about a complex character and I think that is something that audiences are going to be really surprised by. You can’t really see it in this trailer but there are complex relationships between Clark and Lois and Lex Luthor and Clark.

They interact and all have different values and we look at how they stregenthen each other and how they make each other weaker.

One thing people will notice in the trailer is that the iconic score is there. Tell us a little bit about your approach to bringing back that iconic score but putting your own flair on it.

I knew from the beginning that John Murphy, who composed the score, is an amazing talented guy that I love working with – he has a great spirit. As soon as I finished the script he was one of the first people I gave the script to and he started to think of the music for it straightaway.

I said to him that I wanted to use the classic Williams’ score but that I wanted him to turn it and to mutate it into his own thing that would represent this film and this story. So, there is this quite powerful thing to it but there is also a melancholy thing about it and I think they are both things that are important in this very emotional story that we are telling throughout the movie and John not only did that but he put together so much music that we could bring to set and shoot to so we knew exactly what the score is. Now that score is baked into this movie.

This is a very different movies as well because music is always very important to me but a lot of times I had used a lot of different pop songs throughout movies but that is not the case for Superman – this was all about the score so that has an important role in this film.

I can’t wait for people to hear the whole thing because it does go into that whole Williams thing and then it transforms into something else and then that becomes something else again and it is a stunning piece of music.

With your distinct style as a filmmaker how do you balance the darker elements of the DCU with the hopeful and optimistic tone that is often linked in Superman? What tone can fans expect from the DCU under your leadership?

Well the one thing that they can expect from the DCU is that every film and television project will have its own vision. Some of them will be family orientated like Superman and others will be a little bit more adult orientated like Creature Commandos.

They are all going to be very different but I do think in Superman it is interesting because it is not like there is not a lot of darkness in the film because I think to be totally optimistic and to be truly hopeful if everything is going great it is a lot easier and if everything is perfect than Superman is a weaker character. This isn’t him dealing with optimism and hope in light times this is him dealing with optimism and hope in difficult and dark times and that is what the movies is facing.

You have great succsess by bringing little known and down right obscure comic book characters to the screen. How does approaching Superman differ for you given that he is one of the most recognisable superheroes?

I think that it is different. I think that it is different because there are some core values to who Superman is and I think that perhaps I didn’t feel that same way with character like Rocket Racoon who was a character that I took and  took some elements from the comics but also created him in a different way in the MCU.

I think with Superman there is this sense of goodness and of hope and there is also almost this sense of naivety with that optimism. I think there is a sense of this hope with Superman and towards the human spirit that I think is unique to the character, plus there are other values there that the creators have had there since the very beginning.

By the way there is a very interesting Easter Egg with the trailer as well. You can actually see Jerry and Joe’s grandkids who are in the offices of the Daily Planet. They shot with us the whole time in the Daily Planet so they are two of the reporters that you see there in the background of the Dailey Planet.

Now I want to mention Krypto for a moment. Tell us a little about Kypto and his relationship with Superman here.

I think you see a very simple version of his relationship with Krypto in the teaser. When you see the movie you will see that his relationship with Krypto is much more complicated.

Krypto is based on my dog – who is the world’s worst dog. He has destroyed my entire house. We rescued him – he was raised in this woman’s backyard – she was raising 60 dogs in this small backyard and he had never known humans so he was just scared of me, but he would follow my other dog around and then he would destroy all my stuff.

But yes, he was one of the inspirations because I was thinking well thank goodness I don’t have a super dog like Krypto. What if Krypto was a bad as my dog is you would have a pretty difficult situation. So that is one of the inspirations – that is where I really started to see this version of Superman in a much different way – it was terribly invigorating to get my terrible dog.

Your cinematic resume spans two Comic Book Universes and this is your first time delving into the DC film universe. How do you feel your work here differs from your other superhero films?

I think it is very different. I don’t really think as Guardians or The Suicide Squad primarily as comedies but certainly comedy was a big part of it. There is plenty of humour in Superman but at the core of it there really is something different. It is a different kind of story and it is vulnerable of me to make it because when you make a movie and you show it to an audience you have to sit with the audience and watch the movie. The easiest way that you know people are liking your movie is when they are laughing or if it is a horror movie if they are screaming and then of course if they are crying… which a lot of people did with the last Guardians movie. I like those external things but with this one I kind of had to be strict with myself when I was writing it and when I was filming it because this is all about the character and the action.

I had to find a way to film flying in a different way and so you will find that is totally tonally different to the other movies that I have made in the past.

You are used to making movies about outsiders which a lot of people may say Superman is not. What made you want to tackle the Clark Kent/Superman character.

See I would actually say that in a lot of ways Superman is an outsider. He is an alien from another planet and there was a time when I was developing the costume, the outfit so to say although uniform is the macho way to say it, with David Cornswet and our costume designer and I came in and it was coming together and we had a lot of it and we had the red trunks. And we had a lot of discussions about the red trunks – I even spoke to Zack Snyder about it and he said they tried a million versions of the red trunks and never got there… and I can see that now.

Anyway I wasn’t sure about the trunks – I wanted the trunks but I kept taking them off and I came in and it was all very colourful – the trunks were on and I turned to David and I said “Everything is so colourful – how do you feel?” and he said “I love it!” And I said “Really, it is so colouful?” and then he said. “I am an alien from out of space who can fly and lift buildings and I shoot laser beams out of my eyes that can dissolve things but I want kids to not be afraid of me so what am I going to wear?”

And I think really that is where the costume came from and it showed me the character in a whole new way. It also showed me that David Cornswet was somebody that was going to take every moment very seriously especially with his choices and what he would do – and he didn’t want to be scary to kids and I thought that was something that I should, and did, keep in mind for the character from that moment on.

Writers and filmmakers often talk about having to ‘kill their darlings’. Was there a particular darling that you had to sacrifice in the making of Superman?

That is such a good question and I am right in the middle of editing right now. Of course there are lines and moments that I think “I guess I have to cut that to make this move more elegantly” because at the heart of what I am about as a filmmaker I am always foremost trying to be, and I know a lot of people will laugh because they think I am outlandish, is to be elegant. That is what I want beyond everything else and that means that everything has to be fluent and smooth. And whether you are making something crazily outlandish, something ridiculously grounded, something dark or something light there needs to be an elegance to it.

So, for me cutting stuff – I don’t have emotions over those things. I have been doing this for thirty years so I don’t have many emotions about killing my darlings but at one point here I had a very different ending that I wrote in the script. I even told my wife the ending after I had written the first draft but then I was like “what if this happens” and that was very different and perhaps one day I will be able to share that with people. I’m sure people will remind me to do that one day but yeah it was a very different ending… well a little bit different… well actually a lot little different.

In Superman we see Superman fight against Lex Luthor. What kind of conflict structure will we see with this battle and relationship in general? What difficulties will Superman face and overcome without spoiling anything?

One of the things that was very important to me was to make Lex Luthor Superman’s equal. I wanted this Lex to be scary – and that is not just because he is a bad guy and he is a bad, bad guy but he has his reasons for thinking what he thinks. We do get into that, and it is a lot of ideological things and it comes down to what Superman represents versus what he represents as the world’s most intelligent man.

So, I really do think that it becomes a battle of ideologies between the two of them and how they look at the world. One of them is very generous with his point of view, which to me is Superman, and one of them is not very generous , which to me is Lex, but there also has to be an intelligence with the way he deals with the henchmen that Lex has around him. Those are the things that make him incredibly dangerous to Superman and when you are willing to fight and there are no rules you have a bit of an upper hand against the person that you are going to fight who has a lot of rules.

Nicholas Hoult looks great as well – he is doing tremendous stuff right now.

When we were on set and Nick walked in there he is every ounce of the big time movie star that you could imagine – and the woman were swooning over Lex Luthor. And I just thought ‘yep – everybody loves a bad boy.’

What are some of the challenges that you have faced with re-booting a character that nearly everybody in the world knows?

I think the biggest challenge is that because everybody in the world knows who Superman is and where he came from then some of that is a benefit. Like we don’t go into origin stories here – this is not about that. Just about everybody knows that Clark Kent came here in a rocket as a baby because he was sent here by his Kryptonian parents and a farm couple adopted here and brought him up… so we didn’t have to go through all that.

But we also realised that there are so many people out there that are intimately attached to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman… the big three… they have specific ideas what the character is to them. Most people come up to me and say “I never really related to Superman because he is just too powerful but I relate to Batman because he is the underdog.” So I took that notion – I never really related to Superman because he is just too powerful – and went into from the beginning. Then there are other people who love Superman because he can punch planets in half so you have to deal with all of these different people and they all have different ideas of what Superman is supposed to be and hopefully people will go away and think ‘well I like what my idea of what Superman is let’s see what this idea of Superman is, let’s sit down for two hours and see what this idea of Superman is.’

I think that is what you have to do with the DCU because things are going to keep changing and things are going to keep evolving. Characters will be what people think they are going to be and they will be like ‘wow you made this trailer just for me’ but there are going to be other people that are going to think differently about it but they will still enjoy the story and hopefully enjoy what our view of Superman is or whatever other DC character it is.

So tell us about your version of Lois Lane. Who is she? What is she about?

I think that Lois is a journalist of the highest order. She believes in the truth at almost any price and that makes her a real force to be reckoned with.

I love the romance between Lois and Superman in the first original film and I think it was really beautiful but it was also very much Lois going goo-ga over Superman because he can fly around and pick up planets. But what I wanted to see is why does Superman love Lois so much and so from the very beginning we did chemistry reads with Superman and Lois, David and Rachel – and that is how they got these roles because not only were they individually great but together as a couple – they bounced off each other in a truly dynamic way.

And I think from the very start here you get to see why she is as much as a force as Superman is, just in a different way. You also get to see why someone as cool, as good looking and as powerful as Superman would be in love with her. And at the end of the day he is the lucky one.

Many believe the first Superman movie is still the best superhero movie of all time. Superman is also one of the most adapted superheroes on the screen so did you feel an enormous amount of pressure taking on this story? Did you also pull inspiration from past movies or television series or did you feel like you needed to come at it from a whole new angle?

Definitely there were a whole bunch of things from the past movies that I was impressed by. Seeing the first movies as a kid was very cool and I loved it. I also think that Zack did a lot of amazing things with action and I took some things from that.

I think I took a lot of different things from a lot of different time periods, but I think really I went back to the comic books because I am first and foremost a comic book fan. And so I really took more inspiration from the comics than I did the film adaptions.

Everybody has just watched the teaser trailer – what are you personally most excited about for people to discover when they watch the teaser trailer?

I am excited for people to see all the different elements of the teaser trailer. I want them to see the big silver-age science fiction stuff, the romance, the action beats, Krypto and the one really potent line in the trailer for me, the line that really moves me, is when he says “Krypto take me home!” Then Krypto starts dragging Superman home and that at the end of the day what this is all about for me – this is about bringing the innate goodness of Superman and bringing it home. I want to bring this character home. I want to bring this battered world to a brighter place – bringing the healing home. Hopefully Superman can be a symbol of that. I think this is the right time for this movie and I am excited about people seeing the trailer but I am also excited about people seeing this as a true representation of the film. Because it is a true representation of the film and I can’t wait for people to see the film in July.