DOES THIS TOY COMMERICAL SHOW US OUR FIRST LOOK AT ZOD AND HIS SECRET WEAPON IN ‘MAN OF STEEL?’
Director Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, Man of Steel has been in production for almost two years now, and the only footage we’ve seen from it is a teaser trailer that looks like what would happen if Terence Malick filmed an episode of The Deadliest Catch. There is a very brief shot of Henry Cavill’s Superman soaring high into the air, but it’s such a wide shot that he just looks like a blue and red speck. There have been a few publicity stills of Cavill in the Superman suit, but we still have no idea what the main villain of the film, Zod (played by the terrifying Michael Shannon) looks like. Or do we?
Bleeding Cool posted this sizzle reel/test commercial for a new line of Man of Steel tie-in toys called “Superman Exploders.” The spot shows the new Man of Steel “S” shield, and the Superman action figure is in the Man of Steel costume, but the most interesting part of the clip is the sequence were the Zod toy shows up with a robot army, lands the ”Black Zero” spaceship and activates the ”gravity beam.” The Zod toy here is wearing high-tech black armor, a blue cape, and is bald with pointy ears. Is this the look Michael Shannon is going to sport as Zod in the movie? Is his ultimate secret weapon this “Black Zero” spaceship shown here?
My initial reaction to this ad? Well, I will be overjoyed if Superman has to battle a black-armored robot army, punching his way through them and throwing robot tanks through the buildings of Metropolis in an epic sequence of spectacular destruction. I’m even down if that giant, War Of The Worlds -style tripod “Black Zero” spaceship shows up and Superman has to destroy it and its “gravity beam” — whatever the hell that is. But if that is truly a kiddie toy representation of Zod’s appearance in the film, color me disappointed. They’ve been highly secretive of Zod’s costume for well over year, and Shannon spent months in a motion-capture suit for that? Just another suit of black armor? Is it going to have swirly space patterns moving inside it or something? And why does he have to be bald? Superman seems to be stockpiling bald arch-villains – Lex Luthor, Braniac, and now this version of Zod. These guys don’t hate Superman because he’s a do-gooder preventing them from taking over the world, it’s because he has that beautiful head of thick black hair.
As an aside — I love how this commercial is touting stretchy action figures as a revolutionary innovation in action figure technology. News flash kids, Stretch Armstrong was being stretched and flung into piles of plastic cups 35 years ago. You can’t fool us eldery geeks.
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