“There’s no way you can do this”: the controversial 2013 scene Christopher Nolan was dead against
If Christopher Nolan voices his opposition to something in a movie that he’s involved with, then common sense would dictate that the offending article in question wouldn’t make it past the discussion stage.
After all, he’s Christopher Nolan, one of the most popular filmmakers in the business, and one who only got more powerful when he claimed a pair of Academy Awards for directing and producing Oppenheimer, and subsequently became the president of the Directors Guild of America.
That said, it would be nice if people had a word in his ear sometimes, too. As popular as he is, and as bankable an entity as he’s become, his sound mixes can often be a near-impenetrable pain in the arse. He knows it, and people have told him as much, but he doesn’t give a fuck, and he won’t change his ways.
However, when he discovered that a 2013 picture he was producing and helped develop for the big screen was planning to do something that was guaranteed to split opinion right down the middle, his first thought was that it was a terrible idea, and if you fall into the camp who also thought it was a bad idea, then there’s a chance you’re still not over it to this day.
During the climax of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, Henry Cavill’s Superman breaks from tradition and decides the only way to guarantee the world’s safety from Michael Shannon’s General Zod is to snap his neck like a twig. Generally speaking, the superhero doesn’t murder people, so many fans were up in arms.
Since the film also hailed from a filmmaker who inspires an almost fanatical devotion from his most ardent supporters, the pros and cons of Metropolis’ resident alien resorting to killing another living being continues to inspire debate, with Nolan taking some winning over to find himself on Snyder’s wavelength.
“Killing Zod was a big thing,” screenwriter and Dark Knight trilogy veteran David S Goyer explained. “And that was something that Chris Nolan originally said, ‘There’s no way you can do this’. Originally, Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone along with the others.” A bit Superman II, to be honest, but it wasn’t murder, at least.
“We talked to some of the people at DC Comics and said, ‘Do you think there’s ever a way that Superman would kill someone?'” the scribe elaborated. “At first, they said, ‘No way. No way.'” Despite the opposition, Goyer and Snyder went ahead and did it anyway, eventually earning Nolan’s approval for having the Kryptonian with a preference for wearing his underpants on the outside kill a guy.
Although he confessed that “Chris didn’t even want to let us try to write it,” once Nolan was pitched the specifics of the scene, he eventually changed his mind, saying, “OK, you convinced me. I buy it.” If he’d put his foot down, he’d have spared the internet from over a decade of arguments and whining, so perhaps he should have stuck to his guns.
