Michael Shannon Talks ‘Man Of Steel’ And Sympathetic General Zod

Michael Shannon has been talking about his appearance as the evil General Zod in the upcoming Man of Steel.

In the recent trailers and TV spots for Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, Zod comes across as a worthy foe for Kypton’s final son, and it’s all down to Shannon’s terrifying performance.

When talking about General Zod, Shannon revealed that he never actually wore the impressive suit as it was entirely created by CGI.

“I never wore the armour,” revealed Shannon. “That is a CG outfit, I think I can say that without getting assassinated, yes. Honestly, the armour would be very heavy … they wanted me to have freedom of movement.”

Shannon added, “So every time you see me in that metal suit just close your eyes and imagine me in an Arlequino outfit; green, red, blue, with the little tight around the midsection. Yeah, we all looked like a bunch of dorks.”

Shannon was constantly looking to make sure he didn’t reveal too much about Man Of Steel’s plot points, however he did discuss his initial reaction to David S. Goyer’s script.

“I thought the whole script was just very sophisticated for the genre that it is,” said Shannon. “It was as sophisticated as scripts for other movies I’ve done that have been considered more highfalutin, or whatever. It has a lot of deep themes in it, and the way they deal with Kar-El’s journey is really fascinating.”

Shannon even compared his performance to that of Terrence Stamp, who played the character of Zod in 1980’s Superman II.

“As much as I love what Terrence Stamp did in that movie, it was kind of opaque,” Shannon told Empire. “It was impossible to have any empathy with him, it was pure malice. We wanted to break down that wall a little bit, so the audience might think, ‘Yeah, I know what he’s going through.’ It’s not better or worse, it’s just different.”

Are you looking forward to Man of Steel?