In a world where Hollywood would like J.J. Abrams to do everything, the director had a solid story for a Superman film. He recently spoke to Empire Magazine about what that entailed and eventually got around to the topic of this whole Star Wars thing…
Abrams comics treatment was called “Superman Flyby” and just happened to leak online earlier this year. It would have revolved around a civil war on Superman’s home planet of Krypton which lead up to his exile.
“The thing that I tried to emphasise in the story was that if the Kents found this boy, Kal-El, who had the power that he did, he would have most likely killed them both in short order,” Abrams told Empire. “And the idea that these parents would see – if they were lucky to survive long enough – that they had to immediately begin teaching this kid to limit himself and to not be so fast, not be so strong, not be so powerful.
“The result of that, psychologically, would be fear of oneself, self-doubt and being ashamed of what you were capable of. Extrapolating that to adulthood became a fascinating psychological profile of someone who was not pretending to be Clark Kent, but who was Clark Kent. Who had become that kind of a character who is not able or willing to accept who he was and what his destiny was.”
We’re still not exactly clear on the direction Zack Snyder is taking Man of Steel but Abrams said it didn’t look far off and he was glad for it.
The interview inevitably turned to the topic of Star Wars: Episode VII and how the director would approach the franchise he loves so dearly as compared to Star Trek.
“I don’t know because we’re just getting started. So it’s a great question that I hope I’ll have a good answer to when I know what the answer is. There are infinitely more questions than answers right now, but to me, they’re not that dissimilar. Though I came at these both from very different places, where they both meet is a place of ‘Ooh, that’s really exciting.’ And even though I was never a Star Trek fan, I felt like there was a version of it that would make me excited, that I would think ‘that’s cool, that feels right, I actually would want to see that.
“How we were going to get there, what the choices were going to be, who was going to be in it – all of those things I knew would have to be figured out, but it was all based on a foundation of this indescribable, guttural passion for something that could be. It’s a similar feeling that I have with Star Wars. I feel like I can identify a hunger for what I would want to see again and that is an incredibly exciting place to begin a project. The movies, the worlds could not be more different but that feeling that there’s something amazing here is the thing that they share.”
Meanwhile, the latest Star Trek Into Darkness trailer was released this past week. What are your thoughts on Abrams take on Superman?
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Published: Mar 23, 2013 12:55 pm