James Gunn stopped in London for a Superman fan event and to answer some questions about the new film and what to expect from the DCU.
On July 1st, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a couple of the events as part of the London stop of the Superman world tour. First up, making my way towards The Shard, I saw a Daily Planet helicopter flying overhead, which of course led me to this Daily Planet pop up booth.
They handed me an issue of the newspaper itself, and a small sample of the Hugo Boss x Superman cologne. Earlier on in the morning, visitors would receive those items, as well as other goodies including capes, hats, pens, or mugs.
After that, it was time to make it down to HMV Oxford Street, who have had a Krypto themed make-over, for a Q&A with director James Gunn. Questions were submitted in advance via a Google form and picked at random. Read on at your own risk, as the following transcript contains possible spoilers for Superman and Peacemaker season 2.
The Q&A
So, tell us about your relationship with Superman, what was your introduction. Was it Christopher Reeve for you or did you pick up a comic?
No, it was the comics. I think that when I was very young, I learned to read on comic books and there was, like, Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie comics, the beetle boys, but there was also Superman. When I read the comics as a kid, I entered a world of whatever it was, number 3/400 of Action Comics, it wasn’t entering into a world where I saw the origin of Superman, it was entering a world where Superman was friends with other superheroes and lived in a world where there was giant robots and monsters and flying dogs and sorcery and science so extreme it seemed like sorcery, so making this movie one of the things I wanted to do was to recreate that feeling in cinemas, that the comic books felt like to me as a kid.
That actually brings me to one of the audience questions. From Hasan Mohammed: Beyond the fantastic cast we are going to see, which character are you personally excited to see Superman share the screen with?
Well, it’s definetly Krypto. But, besides Krypto, I’m really a big fan of Mr Terrific and Edi Gathegi is so so good and funny as Mr Terrific that people love him, so I’m excited to see him.
Absolutely. So tell me about your process with this film, I know that you turned it down at one point and then even when you started writing you weren’t sure about directing, so when did it get its hooks in you?
When I say I’m not sure about directing when I’m writing a script, it’s really a little game I play with myself. So, I write a script, and I will only kind of commit to writing the script when I first accept it because I may not feel like directing it at the end of the day and it allows me to be free and to write something that is more fun, but I always usually want to direct it anyway. But, I was originally offered to direct Superman back in 2018 and I said no. I was daunted by the task, I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. Also, I don’t know if you remember but there was other stuff going on with Superman at the time, so it was going to be politically messy.
So, I said no and I took The Suicide Squad, which more of a familiar type of group to me, which I’m glad I did, that was fun, but I kept thinking about Superman, I couldn’t get it out of my head. How would I do it if I did it, what would that movie be like? How could I make it work for today’s audience, how could I speak to people? And eventually, started to think that it was maybe something I could do. So when they reapproached me with the idea of writing Superman, whatever it was, 3 years ago, I said yes.
We’ve got another question here from Dean Dionisio: You’re known for giving underdog characters their moment. How do you apply that to someone as iconic and seemingly invincible as Superman?
Well, I think that you’re right, and that’s one of the reasons I was afraid to write Superman. You know, I’m kind of known for taking characters who are kind of edgy and mean and off balance a little bit, and we discover them and uncover that they’re really good people, it’s a thing I’ve done many times, but I think with Superman, I think in today’s world, there’s nothing edgier than being good hearted and kind and looking out for people who need protection and saving lives, no matter who it is, so I feel that there is something, to me, of very rebellious about Superman. He is an insider, but also an outsider, he’s an alien from another planet, and he wants to be human, but he isn’t. He’s also the most powerful guy in the world and women love him and he’s so cool and he’s this mix of things, and actually I relate to that a lot. I feel like that, I feel like an outsider, but I’m the head of a studio, I’m a director, I’ve been successful at what I do, so it creates a weird feeling in a person thinking that I could relate more to Superman than in the past.
And isn’t that the thing that really sets Superman apart? Not just the laser eyes?
I think it is. I think that in other times, people have thought of Superman as Pollyanna or too old fashioned or too earnest and I’m like, screw that, he is too earnest, and that’s okay! I wish we had more people who were too earnest in this world, it would be a much better place, and I love that he is like that. He’s a square, and he owns it and that’s cool.
So, tell me about then David, casting David Corenswet.
David is also a square. So we’re sitting outside one day, like we were rehearsing a scene, we wanted to rehearse the shot where he’s whistling in the snow, because we were about to leave to go to Svalbard which is actually the arctic and is freezing, so I wanted to be able to get the crew to do it as quick as possible. So we were working on that shot and we had time as we were setting up and I said “So David, what kind of music do you listen to? What kind of pop music, what kind of rock, do you listen to rock, do you listen to pop or alternative or punk or what?” and he’s like “I listen to old jazz standards, American Songbook.” And I’m like “What the hell is American Songbook?”. I think I understand music but I don’t understand David Corenswet music. I think he’s snapping his fingers in the kitchen to Dean Martin all the time. I think that’s what it is.
Is he secretly a singer? Are we going to see him sing in a musical in the future?
I think he might sing? I’m not sure, I’m not sure. He can do everything else and that’s what it was like. I mean, I was so lucky because I saw him in, my friend Ty West made a little movie called Pearl, which is a really good movie right? It’s creepy and weird and cool, and I watched it at around the time we were about to start casting Superman, and there’s a guy that plays the projectionist character in that movie and I was like, “That guy looks like if he put on a little muscle, maybe he could be Superman.”. So I jotted the name down and gave it to John Papsidera, our casting director, and he called him in. And so, David was actually the second audition I saw out of hundreds of auditions and right away I was like, I said to Peter Safran before hand, if we don’t find the right guy, we’re not going to make this movie. I’m not going to go out and fall flat on my face because you know, Paul Giamatti, he’s a great actor but he’s not Superman. I’d feel weird sitting in front of you right now with Paul Giamatti behind me. He might be good though, he’d still be good though. It would be a very different movie. You know, my dog only barks at animals on screen, and Paul Giamatti with a beard. It’s true. Anytime he sees Paul Giamatti with a beard he screams.
Anyway, David auditioned and he was great. He had the acting chops, he had the comedy chops, he was able to deliver the fast paced delivery in the way that I wanted, and then when we brought him in and did the stunt assessment, he was able to do all of the athletic stuff we needed, because it’s a really physically rigourous job being Superman, because we hang you and pull you and puppeteer you from all these wires. I mean, people don’t know, but almost all of the flying shots are real in the movie. I mean, he’s not really flying but, I mean it’s really his body and we’re puppeteering and we put the sky in the background.
That’s incredible. You’re taking about fast paced dialogue and you also have Lois Lane in this movie, is this sort of His Girl Friday?
It’s totally His Girl Friday, Preston Sturges, you know we had a conversation between Clark and Lois that happens about 15 minutes in, and we learn everything about their relationship. It’s a 10 minute long scene between the two of them where we learn their views on the world, the state of the relationship and just everything about them and I knew that for the movie to work, that scene had to work. They couldn’t work just as superheroes and icons but as two human beings with complex emotion journeys, because this movie, yes it’s about Superman and the pyrotechnics and the flying dogs, which I love, that’s my favourite thing to do, but it’s also about Superman’s personal journey which I thought was important to set it apart from most of the other Superman movies, which is, he learns some things about himself, and has to assess who he is, and he struggles with that, and that’s the core of the movie.
I wanted to ask about another piece of casting which is Nicholas Hoult. Rumour has it that he was up for Superman?
That’s not a rumour, that’s a fact, he was up for Superman- and the whole time he was auditioning as Superman, what we did was we brought in the three final Supermans and the three final Lois Lanes and we mixed and matched them and I shot them so I could watch it in theatres, you know, an actual screen test, so we built a set and everything. The whole time I was watching Nick on the monitor and I was directing and I kept putting my finger over his hair and going “I don’t think he’s Superman but there’s another character he might be really good for.”. You know, he was really good.
A lot of times people think that when you’re auditioning, and you’re choosing actors, that you’re choosing the best actor but you’re not, you’re choosing the actor who is best for the role. I like to say this sentence when I’m next to David because I go “And Nick is a waaaay better actor than David.” but it’s not as funny if David’s not here, then it just seems mean. But, Nick was amazing and I loved working with him, but he just wasn’t Superman as I conceived him, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that he was Lex so I called him up and said “I know it didn’t work out with Superman”, it also didn’t work out for Batman a few years ago, he was final two for Batman and final three for Superman, so I said “I don’t want to screw you up again, but would you consider being Lex?”. I was so happy, you know his agent Billy Lazarus called me the other day and said “I cried during the movie, it was so good, and thank you so much for giving Nick Hoult the role he was born to play.”. And he is really really amazing in the movie.
I wanted to ask as well, because there’s this idea that is sometimes in the comics, that Lex might’ve been a hero had Superman not existed. Almost a sort of dark mirror, twin relationship, so casting from the same casting pool is almost reflecting that.
It is. I mean Nick doesn’t outwardly seethe with jealousy towards David but maybe inside he’s trying to kill him I don’t know, that could be cool. That could be a movie in itself. Our Lex in this movie, he’s this guy who has helped humanity, he’s a great scientist, you know, science is his love. He’s very very competitive and even though this is a world in which superheroes exist, he has worked so hard to be the greatest man in the world, and he was considered the greatest man in the world, even among superheroes like Green Lantern and things like that, up until about 3 years ago when Superman showed up and in his point of view, it’s this guy in this silly costume coming with a square jaw and dimples and suddenly he’s not the greatest person in the world. He’s a distant second and he’s so overwrought with jealousy that he feels replaced, that he’s almost turned his jealousy, his envy, into a spiritual quest to rid the world of Superman, believing he’s doing something that’s good for humanity.
Was there a part of this, because even just judging from the trailers, you’ve got Superman/Clark’s personal life, you’ve got Krypto, we’ve seen Ma and Pa Kent, we’ve seen the Daily Planet, we’ve seen monsters, we’ve seen aliens, so was there something that you really had to work to get in there that was more difficult to fold into the story than anything else?
No, you know, when I was working on the story, it wasn’t last minute, I started writing the script but the thing that got le was Krypto. I just adopted a dog and his name is Ozu and he’s just the worst dog. I’ve already told you he attacks Paul Giamatti, but he’s much worse than that. If the only thing he did was attack Paul Giamatti he’d be good but he’s not, he wrecked my entire house, he ate my $10 000 computer and he’s just afraid of human beings, because I rescued him from a hoarding situation, so he was biting my feet til they bled everyday. Every time I’m walking around my house, I’m barefoot, like a lot of people, so I’m barefoot and he’s constantly coming and biting my feet and I’m like “I don’t know if you like me, if you’re playing or if you hate me but it doesn’t feel good.” And I’d be on the phone so I would get up on top of my kitchen counter and would try and pull my legs up and continue my conversation with David Zaslav, the head of Warner Brothers, and all of a sudden I’d look over and see him jump up on top of the counter. He really did, he destroyed everything, so I was like “Thank God he doesn’t have superpowers” and it hit home that I could put Krypto in there and what it would be like if the world’s third or fourth most powerful being was a 30 pound dog who was absolutely terrible and he kind of became this, he kick started the movie and become this chaos element that really helped to take the movie in places that we didn’t expect it to go because you know, dogs are stupid.
A question from Jane Lynne: Could we ever see a Krypto and Eagly team-up?
You know, I think Krypto would eat Eagly. Ozu yesterday, my wife’s in Atlanta where our house is, and he attacked a deer yesterday! He’s not that big and he was biting the deer’s leg and the deer was squealing and my wife had to go and save the deer from my stupid dog! She said it was so cute. Not him attacking the deer, the deer was cute and she had never ran faster in her life. No he’s really really like a monster.
So he’s toned down for the superhero movie version?
Oh yeah, he is. There would be dead people everywhere. He would be flinging people like zombies in I Am Legend. Yeah, a Krypto zombie movie, that might have more potential than a Krypto/Eagly team-up. I mean, Eagly’s not so great either but he’s better than Krypto. He is vicious. Wait until you see him in season 2. Eagly gets his whole action sequence all to himself. Big spoilers for the crowd right here!
So what did you have to work with for Krypto on set? Did you have some models like you did for Rocket?
So, the way we did it Krypto is, number one, there’s this company called Frame store, they created Rocket Racoon, a lot of my characters, a lot of the characters from Guardians 3, we took Ozu and put him in a room with a thousand cameras and did a 3d creation of Ozu. He’s not white though, he’s brown so we turned him white and made him a little bit bigger than he is. That’s where we started with the 3d modelling and I also just have hundreds of videos of my dog, like him biting Superman’s feet at the beginning of the movie, that’s him biting my feet, we have videos of him tackling my cat. They actually love each other, the only thing he loves is my cat who is 13 and just loves this dog and she’s been around a thousand dogs but they love each other and cuddle and tag each other all time. I know, it’s weird, he doesn’t love me like that. And so, I have tons of videos of him playing and that’s what we use for the beginning of him tackling Superman and so we use those videos for reference and then we have a dog on set, named Jolyne and she was a very nice, kind dog who was also very funny, like one day I turned up to set and Jolyne was just sitting in front of my trailer wearing sunglasses. No, I don’t think she put them on herself, but I don’t know. But Jolyne was used as fur reference, she has white fur so we would know how his fur interacted with the light and then we had a bunch of petite women who were Krypto on set, like my friend Murph, who was actually one of the characters in Guardians 3 in monster make-up and all sorts of stuff for me every time I’m in Atlanta and she would push David around and bite him. Well she wouldn’t really bite him, she would use her hands, occasionally tug on his cape and that sort of stuff, she’s great.
Great, I’ve asked about that because someone’s asked about props and physical effects. Amber Rose Thompson asks: As a prop maker in the industry, and as a massive fan, I’ve always loved how you champion practical effects, so was there a prop or set piece in this that you considered a favourite or that you felt particularly helped make the world feel real?
Well you know, everything in the Fortress, we really built the Fortress of Solitude, so the roof is fake but everything else was real, and we had tons of these mini hundred-pound crystals that we had in there and this dynamite computer, this Kryptonian computer that we designed that was really inspired by Frank Quitely’s artwork from All-Star Superman. Frank and Grant and Jamie Grant who did the colours on that comic are all really important to this movie, not so much the story but the inspiration and the look for the movie, even the way the characters are, the sort of chest forward, square jawed Superman and the narcissistic Lex and the intrepid but a little crazy Lois.
So the first thing that comes to mind is, yeah, is that computer, but we had so much cool stuff on set and it was so fun going from these very real world locations to the Fortress of Solitude or a pocket universe that we go into, or all these contrasts between those two things, because on Guardians I’m used to everything being outlandish. If we design a toaster we have to take 4 days to decide does it toast bread or something else? What does it look like? We have to design every single thing and in this movie it’s really split between the two and I feel like the jumping back and forth between a very grounded and real world and these crazy places was a lot of fun.
So you started off in Svalbard?
Yeah, we started off in Svalbard, Norway, our first day was shooting that shot that most people have seen, pushing in on David, he had to lie in the snow, it was absolutely freezing outside, but he didn’t have it as bad as Henry, his stunt double He had to get dragged through the snow by Krypto, which was a sled. David got dragged too, just not as harshly as Henry. Sorry not Henry, Eddie is his name. Eddie, it was. Yeah, that was the first day. We were actually really lucky because Svalbard is known for blizzards, it’s the arctic, and we had 4 clear days, so I was only there half as long as I planned to be there.
What was the best surprise on set while you were shooting? Was there anything you just found in the moment or you know, thought of on the day that you can talk about now? No spoilers please.
Hmmm… There’s little moments everywhere but my mind is going to performances. Like Sara Sampaio, who’s a model, and Eve Teschmacher, her and Mr Terrific were the hardest roles to cast. I did three rounds of screen tests for Eve Teschmacher and couldn’t find her, it just wasn’t working. Finally Sara came along, and she’s a model so, it’s bad, but I didn’t take her seriously at first. I barely even looked at here until my wife Jen, she was sitting next to me as I was going through the auditions and she was like “Wait a minute. That person has something special about her.” So I brought her in and tested and she’s just so funny and amazing and alive in the film and so great, the same thing with Skyler Gisondo, Jimmy Olsen, the two of them are really something special.
I love Skyler Gisondo, I was so excited with that casting.
He’s really funny, he’s funny in true life too. He’s not as arrogant as Jimmy though.
A couple of questions here looking forward so, intrepid reporter Chip Ross asks: (Author’s note: I may be taking some artistic license with that description but WWJD: What Would Jimmy Do?) So, looking at Iron Man and Man of Steel as the beginning of their respective cinematic universes, they both approach the characters by making them more or less the first superheroes in an otherwise normal world, but you’ve gone in a world where superheroes already exist. Why go that route instead, why was that important to you?
Well, I don’t think that there’s anyone here, if you’ve read comics, I don’t think there’s anyone here who’s started reading comics and started reading at the beginning. I’m older than almost everyone in this room and we all entered in the middle of these stories. That’s the magical world which I love. Not only that, I really love the MCU, and I love a lot of the stuff that was happening with the DCEU but I also love Star Wars and Game of Thrones, and I wanted to create a universe that was different from ours. One of the things I liked about DC was it wasn’t our world, it was another world, it was Gotham instead of New York, it was Metropolis instead of whatever, it was Star City and Central City and all of these different places, it was like a fictional world and so I wanted to create this other planet, this other reality, that’s what I love doing, this sort of world building and it gives you the freedom to sort of do anything. If you destroy New York in the MCU it’s, I mean it’s heavy to destroy any city, but anything can happen in the DCU. We can destroy anything at anytime. We could destroy a continent. It could happen. It gives you the freedom to do what you want, but it’s also, I love the imagination and I love the fact that, we’re going to be telling some stories that are continuous over numerous pieces of media, but also were taking this big globe of stories over this big span of time and we can pick any little piece out of it to tell any little story about any little piece of that and this is just the first, well I guess the second with Creature Commandos, so it’s the first movie piece, and I love being able to approach it that way.
What are insurance rates like in Metropolis? It feels like they would be way high just from the trailers with that building going sideways.
I mean, I live part of the time in California, and we have fires and earthquakes, so it’s about the same, it’s just that there aren’t as many fires and earthquakes in Metropolis, just more Kaiju.
Continuing on from that last question a little bit, did you have to think about this much as the start of a new thing, a new universe or is it kind of detached or disconnected?
Well, it’s not disconnected, because for instance we have Rick Flag, Sr, played by Frank Grillo and he was in Creature Commandos and now he’s in Superman and he’s pretty much the antagonist in Peacemaker season 2. You’ll see his character change too. He’s kind of a good guy in Creature Commandos, in this we’re kind of like “Ah, I don’t know” and the next one he’s not so good. He’s breaking bad. But yeah, I’m aware of that and I don’t want to do anything to hurt the universe, but it will always be most important to me whatever is the story in front of me. Telling that story with authenticity and integrity and fun is more important than trying to build out a world and I don’t do anything in there that hurts that movie for the sake of something in the future. I’m not saying I’ll never have to do that, because I might, but in this movie I refused to do that.
So has this kind of scratched the Superman itch for you or has it given you even more desire?
(Author’s note: James Gunn proceeds smile and wink, and the crowd cheers)
Well, I think the people here are glad to hear that!
I didn’t say anything! They’re putting words in my mouth!
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