A few years ago, when the rumour mill started spinning about the new SUPERMAN reboot THE MAN OF STEEL, there was word going around that General Zod would be played by Jude Law. This made me want to go and eat the set to stop this from happening. Luckily, Michael Shannon (BOARDWALK EMPIRE, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) was cast, laying everyone’s fears to rest. But as good as he is, he has an almost impossible act to follow, as Terence Stamp’s Zod in SUPERMAN 2 (1980) is truly iconic.
In an interview with INDIEWIRE.COM Shannon made clear he would not try and emulate Stamp’s performance;
“I found his performance so powerful that I would be overwhelmed by it if I tried to incorporate it into what I’m doing,” he told Christopher Schobert. “There’s no reason to try and replicate it cos it’s perfect the way it is. I’m just trying to go down a different road with it, the script’s a little bit different than the original script. It’s going to have a different look and feel to it, visually. I’m looking forward to really settling into it, and playing with it.”
His position is not unlike that of Alfred Molina (SPIDERMAN 2, AN EDUCATION) who, like Shannon, made his name and reputation as a great actor on comparitively micro budget productions. And just as Molina took on a comic book bad guy in Doctor Octopus, Shannon now finds himself playing one of the most famous supervillains ever in a major Hollywood blockbuster.
“It’s fascinating to watch, the process of making a movie like this, it’s very intricate. There’s going to be a lot of CGI and whatnot. I think anytime an actor does one of these movies for the first time, they’re a little thrown off by it. You always hear actors talking about it, like ‘I was wearing this funny suit, nothing I was supposed to be reacting to was really there.’ To me it encourages… it’s actually very childlike, it’s like being in your backyard and imagining you’re on a space station or something. It goes back to the original impulse of play, which is pretty funny to think about when you fathom all the money that’s involved, hundreds of millions of dollars to do what you did when you were a kid.
It looks very much like Michael Shannon has his head screwed on and knows exactly what he is doing. But comparisons with Terence Stamp are inevitable. So will his performance hold up? Or will he be forced to kneel before Zod?
We’ll find out when THE MAN OF STEEL is released on June 14th, 2013
