Henry Cavill Was Told to Lie About Superman in ‘Justice League’
By George Robbins
The DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, has managed to claw its way into the film industry because of the fanbase that exists for DC in general. This fanbase is a dedicated one like all comic book fanbases due to the fact that people won’t invest in something they really have no interest in, at least most of the time. This is why Warner Bros. knew that they would have plenty of dedicated fans that would want to watch their films when they came out. Looking at the comic book fanbase, they managed to estimate jsut how many people they would be able to draw in once they started making films for the characters. While the universe may not be too expansive, it has still managed to attract plenty of attention.
The DCEU came into being back in 2013 with ‘Man of Steel,’ 5 years after Marvel started their Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU. The MCU has easily become the more popular of the two franchises because the movies are just done that well. There are still plenty of people who nitpick at MCU films for not being as good as they expected them to be, but nowhere near as many as their are for DCEU films. This is because the approach to both film series has been different and they have been shaped to be fundamentally different from one another. This has, more often than not, caused a lot of people to be disappointed in the DCEU films as a whole which gives future films a lot less wiggle room.
Basically, this just means that they have to let their directors do what they can to make films that people will enjoy, especially the fans. Although the movies thus far have not been very highly rated, they have still managed to make a fair bit of money. Even though I say they have not really been highly rated, they have actually been rated pretty decently, it’s just that fans are very picky about what they see. So although it is the fans that are bringing in the money for the film, it’s also the fans that are giving those films the reviews that we have seen thus far. Among the movies that has received some of the worst commentary has been the movie ‘Justice League.’
The ‘Justice League’ movie has received plenty of flak over the past couple of years since its release due to how the film plays out. A majority of the complaints people had with the film were focused primarily on how the film tried building up a huge ensemble plot with almost no build up whatsoever. What people were used to at that point were the Avengers movies which had prerequisite films that helped tie in the plot of the film. This was not done with ‘Justice League,’ where all we had was a couple of origin films and another half-ensemble film that people were somewhat disappointed in. This led to people wondering just how the film would play out and, in the end, it left a lot of people disappointed with the results.
The ‘Justice League’ movie as a whole ended up disappointing a lot of fans of DC due to the lack of content leading up to the film. It left a bad taste in the mouths of people going into the film because fans knew that the film was going to have to build itself up over its own runtime. Considering that there is a limit to the patience of people watching, they could not make the film too long and so it felt a bit more rushed than people were expecting. This ultimately led to many a fan wanting a different version of the film, which is how we are now ending up with a director’s cut of the film being made by Zack Snyder who was the original director on the film. This was not the only thing that disappointed fans though when the film released.
One thing that many people may remember from the promotional material for the ‘Justice League’ movie, Superman was not in any of it. That is, until the final trailer before the film’s release and up until that point Henry Cavill was told to lie about Superman’s role in the film. Cavill has said recently that having to lie about Superman being in the film was an awkward experience and it is not something surprising to hear because it was something everyone knew, but the studio just didn’t want to admit it. It just ended up being awkward for everyone at that point and, in the end result, he didn’t have a huge part in the film anyway. Hopefully this fact will be rectified when the Snyder Cut releases on HBO Max in early 2021.