How does one go about establishing a big screen superhero continuity in the opening moments of a blockbuster? For James Gunn and the Gods and Monsters chapter of the DC Universe, the answer is with elegant use of the number three. Echoing the classic Star Wars scroll to an extent, on screen text in the opening scene in "Superman" offers a very brief timeline of the canon – from three centuries ago (when metahumans arrived on Earth), to three years ago (when the Man of Steel revealed himself to the world), to three minutes ago (when "Superman" loses his first ever battle).
It's a simple yet epic intro that quickly informs the audience about the history of the DC Universe. So how did it come together? We got the low-down from the writer/director/co-DC Studios CEO himself for you as "Superman" arrives in theaters this weekend.
00:00First of all, there's no reason for the number three.
00:02You're not the first person to ask.
00:03It's simply something that Alan Moore has done before with repetitive use of the same number.
00:09So that's all it is.
00:11And three just happened to be the one that fit.
00:15And it really is there for the beginning of our journey in the DCU just to give us a grounding of the fact that we're entering a world where metahumans, what we call superheroes, also exist.
00:27And, you know, that Superman has been around for a little while.
00:30For anyone who doesn't know, for the three or four people in the entire world that don't know Superman came from Krypton as a baby, we get to tell them that.
00:39You know, and also as a signal to people, basically, yeah, we're not going to explain.
00:44This is the origin.
00:45So you don't have to worry about getting bored when you're expecting to see flashbacks in the first act.
00:51We've seen it.
00:52We've seen his origin enough.
00:53I quite liked the, like, DC Studios intro being so simple and unassuming, you know what I mean?
01:01Was that intentional?
01:02Was there a lot of thought that went into that?
01:03And was anyone pushing for this big animated Marvel-esque kind of thing?
01:06Peter Safran is too cheap to push for a big animated Marvel-esque thing.
01:11And I remember we talked to one of our marketing guys at the beginning and we're saying we want a new intro and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:17And he said, okay, well, it's going to cost about $2 million and this and that.
01:21I'm like, we're not going to spend $2 million on that.
01:24I got a CGI dog I want to make.
01:27But I do like the simplicity and elegance of it.
01:31I did find sometimes with other things I've had to deal with, both at DC and Marvel, they were both so long that it almost became too much a part of the movie itself as opposed to just being a stamp on it.
01:46And sometimes it worked really well, but sometimes it seemed to be too unwieldy.
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