While Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch getting knocked around by critics, it's as good a time as any to remember that he's the man responsible for bringing Superman back to the big screen for Warner Bros. The renewed enthusiasm for the Man of Steel here in 2011 has led some to wander back to 2006, and the nearly forgotten about Superman Returns from director Bryan Singer. How come that movie failed to connect with audiences? Singer has an idea.
In an interview with Voices from Krypton, Singer admits that perhaps Superman Returns was too romantic for the Comic-Con crowd.
What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see The Devil Wears Prada, which may have been something I wanted to address. But when you're making a movie, you're not thinking about that stuff, you're thinking, "Wow, I want to make a romantic movie that harkens back to the Richard Donner movie that I loved so much." And that's what I did...
[...]
That's a tricky thing when you've built an audience that likes your comic book films [X-Men and X-Men 2] and you deliver a certain tone, and then you bring this completely different tone to them.... You know, I haven't really talked about this in depth, so I'm just thinking about this off the fly. It's hard, because I'm proud of it for what it is. I mean, there are a bunch of movies I've made where I'm, like, "Yuck, that was weak" or "That could've been better," and I can see why. But with Superman Returns... If I could go back, I would have tightened the first act. Maybe open with the plane or something.
Interesting. For his part Singer says if he had to do it all over again, he would reboot Superman with an action-heavy slant. Judging from Snyder's oeuvre, here's guessing he's thinking the same thing.
ยท Superman Exclusive: Bryan Singer Looks Back at Superman Returns [Voices from Krypton via Moviefone]