As more spoiler discussions emerge from James Gunn on writing and filming Superman, he's now revealed that there are three moments in the movie that caused the most divided reactions from test screenings.
Some of these scenes, Gunn admitted that he got his way, while others, the test screening reactions resulted in the movie going another direction.
Per Gunn, the three scenes were:
- saving the squirrel
- Guy Gardner didn't call Superman a wuss, he called him something else (replace the 'w' with a 'p' and add a 'y' on the end)
- does Jimmy Olsen smile when being hugged by Eve Teschmacher
On the squirrel scene, Gunn divulged, "We had three or four things that were heatedly debated throughout this movie. [Number one] saving the squirrel- heatedly debated! Some audience members thought it was too much...I said, 'Here's a cute little squirrel that's about to be crushed by a tail.' There's a lot of squirrel haters out there and this is in Los Angeles. Michael Rooker, he eats squirrels, that's for real, that's not a joke."
For the Guy Gardner line change, Gunn stated that this was probably the most heatedly debated change, as in the first cut of the film, he called Superman a p-word. "It got an enormous laugh," said Gunn on the original version. "Clark goes, 'Hey, there are kids here.' And Guy goes that's why 'I said don't be.' That was a big debate, whether we were going to keep that word."
For the Jimmy Olsen scene, where he's being hugged by Eve Teschmacher, Gunn stated that there were two versions shot, one where Jimmy just stares into the void with a blank face and one where Jimmy smiles, sort of admitting that deep down he kind of feels something for Eve.
"She did save the day. She is the unsung hero of the movie, selfies saved the day...I was pro void, Peter Safran was very pro-smile and we argued about this, although it wasn't as heated as the p-word arguments."
With a production budget of $225 million and an estimated $100 million, Superman has recently crossed an impressive milestone at the box office in its first full week of release.
After facing a non-existent challenge from the Smurfs reboot this past weekend, its first real test will come in the form of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which opens on July 24 and will command much of the lucrative IMAX screens.