Steven S. DeKnight served as an executive producer on Smallville for a number of years, a show which spent a decade delving into Superman's origin story. Since that show ended, we've seen a few different versions of the Man of Steel with Henry Cavill's being the most prominent. Unfortunately, Zack Snyder's take on the hero has been meet met with a mixed response due to him being a little rough around the edges and a much darker take on the popular DC Comics hero than what fans are used to.
Joss Whedon went a long way in changing that perception with his Justice League reshoots but there's a lot of work which needs to be done. DeKnight, however, is sympathetic when it comes to finding the best way to handle Superman as it's something he struggled with over the course of several seasons.
"Superman is one of the hardest characters to write for. One of the brilliant things about Smallville is it’s all about Clark. He wasn’t Superman yet," DeKnight explained while promoting Pacific Rim Uprising. "Superman’s very different from Batman. Batman is this dark, psychologically messed up guy, Superman’s the man we all aspire to be. He’s inspirational and to try to find the human side of that, and not to mention, he’s so powerful it’s harder to relate to him so it’s very, very difficult."
As for what Snyder did with the character, DeKnight - who has expressed an interest in helming Man of Steel 2 - explained that he was a fan of that take on the character. "I actually really like what Zack Snyder has done with that character. It’s a super hard, very tricky character to do and like I said, if we were doing on Smallville, if he were Superboy on Smallville, I don’t think it would have worked."
Are you going to miss Snyder's version of Superman or is it time for a more optimistic version? As always, be sure to let us know your thoughts on that and these remarks in the comments section.
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