Like it or not, there's a rivalry between Marvel and DC, and not the good kind that means thrilling crossover comics or mash-up movies. It turns out one of Marvel executive hated DC's Man of Steel, and he's not shy about telling the world why.
The Mary Sue has drawn our attention to comments made by Marvel Entertainment’s chief creative officer Joe Quesada on director Kevin Smith's Fatman on Batman podcast, wherein he essentially says Zack Snyder's take on Superman had him rooting against the hero, and for the villain Zod. Quesada explains:
"As a comic book fan, I wanted to love that movie so much. I wanted to love it so much, and I didn’t love it so much. Again, there are little things here and there that you could pick at and things like that, but I just think at the end of the day, Zod was the hero of the movie to me… He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him.Zod, in this particular incarnation, struck me as not necessarily an evil man, but a man of… he had a particular… he had his orders, he had a mission. He was a zealot of sorts, but he was a zealot… again, correct me if I’m wrong… but he didn’t say, ‘I want to rebuild Krypton, and then come back and destroy this little planet. All I want is to rebuild this planet. And the only reason I’m blowing everything to bits here is because you’ve got what I want, and you’re not giving it to me. So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.’… When Superman said Krypton had its chance, I was like, ‘Will you just f***ing kill him, Zod?’"
Before you start pointing out that Zod was planning to destroy Earth regardless of whether or not Superman gave him what he wanted, that's not the only thing bothering Quesada. He seems kind of furious that his brain was even offered this pathway by David S. Goyer's controversial script. "You could have had a better solution if you had written a better problem," Quesada said. "So I see things like that, and I’m like, ‘Aww, man.’ It was one of some things in the movie, that I just ended up feeling disappointed in it."
Notably, Joe Quesada is just the latest noteworthy comic-book lover to get riled up over Man of Steel's depiction of Superman. Here at Cinema Blend, some of us took issue with Superman's recklessness that led to the kind of collateral damage that made the movie more disturbing than fun. Additionally, last summer Chronicle scribe Max Landis was so incensed about how he felt Man of Steel got Superman wrong that he unleashed a 9-minute video rant on the subject. Mark Waid, who penned the Supeman comic Birthright, was particularly disturbed by the final battle between Kal-El and General Zod, which he felt broke completely from Superman's long established character. Finally the crew behind Honest Trailers had their say with a snarky (and silly) revamped trailer:
