Zack Snyder Had A Hard Time Solving The 'Puzzle' Of Man Of Steel's Smallville Battle

Zack Snyder's blueprint for the DC Universe may not have come to fruition in the way that the filmmaker and his fans expected, but it's still an intriguing series of films to look back on. The beginning of Snyder's plan, which was 2013's "Man of Steel," is a good origin story for the last son of Krypton, filled with interesting lore that redefined Superman for a new generation. While some questionable decisions were made involving the film's third act, one thing that stood out was the action.

One of the biggest challenges with putting Superman into a live-action film is how you display his powers. Richard Donner's original film gave the Kryptonian a sense of wonder and awe, using the character's powers in clever ways that more often than not ended with Superman time-traveling with his incredible speed. "Superman Returns" would repeat that formula many years later, with Brandon Routh's iteration of the character putting out fires and preventing disasters rather than ever really throwing fists. With Snyder's Superman, fans of the character were treated to a much more violent and physical Superman. The challenge of creating engaging fights for the man of steel would turn into a puzzle to the director, with one of the early fights in the film proving to be the most essential to solving.

For all the blunders associated with the film (mainly the ridiculous amount of destruction), how Snyder approached the relationship between the Kryptonian characters was engaging. Clark's need for belonging throughout the movie eventually takes a dark turn with the arrival of General Zod and his soldiers, who are taken aback by the effects of the Earth's sun on their physiology. The disagreement between Superman and Zod regarding the Earth eventually leads to the first battle between them, which takes place in Smallville. As Zack Snyder said during the VERO watch party for "Man of Steel," he was most excited to figure out how a battle between several super-powered beings would turn out:

"The Smallville battle, which was a really incredible, fun thing to shoot, and it had a lot of cool sequences in it, and a lot of cool kind of... For me, it was fun to do this notion of a physical fight between Kryptonians on Earth, sort of equally matched, and how that would look. You know, the challenges of trying to create that physical fight."

The small town setting of the fight would starkly contrast with the super-powered beings duking it out as Superman and other Kryptonians tear through all sorts of product placements. The fast-paced battle required constant changing of scenery, which Snyder recalled being hard to shoot from a technical standpoint:

"...it was a difficult sequence to photograph. But we knew what we were doing. It was only difficult because it was technically complicated, in that we just had to know what would happen all the time."

Visual effects are standard for any superhero blockbuster fare, and the Smallville fight of "Man of Steel" required a fundamental understanding of every beat so that anything shot on location would be sure to flow with the VFX work that was yet to be done. The need to have a grasp on the continuity of the fight would be something Snyder compared to a puzzle, as he would say during the watch party:

"When you're just shooting elements, constantly shooting pieces, you get this – what I would say is, it's a difficult puzzle to keep in your head all the time. Because you have to pre-visualize how it's all going to go together and make sense."

No matter your feelings on "Man of Steel," Snyder and his team care about entertaining viewers with its heavy action. Snyder's DC films are filled with inventive and stylistic action, such as the titular fight in "Batman v Superman" and the epic and the mythical large-scale action of "Zack Snyder's Justice League." "Man of Steel" set the tone for those future fights, and for Snyder, it was all about extensive planning and understanding the story the fight would be trying to tell:

"It was fun, but it was also, like I say, complicated, and you weren't ever sure, 'Oh, we gotta hold him upside down here because the camera's going to be like that, and we just need this element of his head there, but then he's gonna be CG and fly out, and...' So it was a lot of that, and a lot of pre-planning, which I think the guys did an amazing job."