The anticipation keeps getting bigger and bigger for what could be the biggest and most important blockbuster of the year, Zack Snyder’s Superman film, Man of Steel. New TV spots have been providing us with a great amount of previously unseen footage, and we’re finally getting a good look at the action scenes in the film.

clark kent

Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent

However, one element of the Superman mythos has been conspicuously absent from any of the promotional material for the film. We have seen nothing of the mild-mannered reporter persona that Superman uses as his secret identity.

Zack Snyder avoided speaking on the issue directly when Collider interviewed him on-set, but he did have some specific things to say about their version of Clark Kent.

“I’ll only say that I think in a lot of — well, definitely in the movies — he always jumps straight from childhood to Clark.  Like, he jumps from sort of his teenage version of himself to the adult version of himself. Frankly, The Daily Planet Clark, that happens pretty quick. I just think that our Clark, he’s not fully realized and I think — by the way, that’s huge information — but I think that’s the big difference.  That’s why there’s this talk about who Clark is.

“In a lot of ways, the movie really is about the why of Clark, not to say that this kind of bumbling — I don’t want to call him bumbling — his mocky, nerdy Clark is…  But that’s not the Clark that we went after or are going after.  We’re going after sort of a different, there’s a different take on Clark, how Clark is.”

This actually does make a lot of sense. With the exception of Smallville, almost every version of Superman has him assume the role of the meek Daily Planet reporter very early on in the story, frequently in a time jump after he discovers and masters his powers. It seems that Snyder, Goyer and company will instead be taking the path that Goyer and Nolan took in Batman Begins. In that film, Bruce Wayne needed to develop the public persona of the reckless hedonistic billionaire as a further disguise to combat evil. However, with all the themes and story beats that Snyder and company want to show us, they may not have time for that particular subplot. Maybe they can just add that into the sequel.

What do you think of the idea of the Clark Kent disguise being absent from Man of Steel? Do you think that it’s a good idea? Why don’t you just tell us what you think in the comments below?

Source: Screen Rant