The Official Michael Shannon IS General Zod - Part 4

[terry78]

Nothing else to live for basically.

 

[storyteller]

What I liked was that if circumstances were different, Zod and Superman could have been friends.

...............too bad Shannon can never be Lex now.

 

[The Guard]

I have a friend who looks like Michael Shannon and I can pull off Crowe. We're going to be Jor-El and Zod: The College Years for Halloween.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

There's a lot of lines I feel like Shannon didn't pull off. Upon my second viewing this week I'll bring some specifics. But his voice didn't carry enough emotion or emphasis in many scenes. I hate to say "he sounded bored" because I realize he was most definitely not bored. He's too good of an actor for that. But something was off.

Oh well, loved the movie and still loved the character.

 

[Visiting Arkham]

There's a lot of lines I feel like Shannon didn't pull off. Upon my second viewing this week I'll bring some specifics. But his voice didn't carry enough emotion or emphasis in many scenes. I hate to say "he sounded bored" because I realize he was most definitely not bored. He's too good of an actor for that. But something was off.

Oh well, loved the movie and still loved the character.

I agree. I love Michael Shannon, I think he is one of, if not the best American actor working today. However, the word I would choose for General Zod in this film is slight. For some reason he didn't have a lot of presence onscreen, and I don't know if it was the performance or the things he was given to do, but he never quite felt like a force to be reckoned with until towards the end.

I watched The Dark Knight Rises last night, and Bane was an absolute giant in that, not necessarily physically, but his entire presence is felt throughout. Shannon never got a scene like "Do you feel in charge?" or "Follow him." to flesh out Zod. Almost all of his scenes were plot specific, so the story was dictating who he was and not the other way around. Ultimately I'm going to take the easy way out and blame David Goyer for not giving him enough moments to shine.

 

[jacobed]

I didn't feel he needed lines to be bad ass because his eyes and actions did all of that for him

 

[terry78]

^My thoughts exactly. His face conveyed exactly what he was feeling a lot of the time. You could tell when he was excited, angry , jealous, bitter, slighted, etc.

 

[DMC40]

Exactly his eyes showed so much more emotion than saying some cheesy lines. He was brilliant and by far my favorite performance.

 

[The Guard]

Michael Shannon portrayed Zod as reserved and cold, until he had his emotional outbursts, and you saw the true, underlying passion for his mission and his people that drove him.

I guarantee you this was an acting choice by Michael Shannon, not his inability to deliver relatively straightforward dialogue effectively. He made some very bold choices with his deliveries in this movie, and most of the time, it worked wonderfully.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

HELP

The symbol of the House of El stood for "Hope"

What did the House of Zod stand for?

 

[ares834]

Darkseid.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

Okay, but is there actually an answer to this question?

 

[John-An]

HELP

The symbol of the House of El stood for "Hope"

What did the House of Zod stand for?

good question.. maybe pasion.. I don't know lol

 

[godisawesome]

It would be a lot of fun to know what it stands for since you could make an argument they implied the El symbol was tied to the hope for a new beginning by its appearnace as a colonial flag and Jor-El extraterrestrial expertise. You can see some ancestor of that family (Ken-El) staying they look to the skies in hope and taking the symbol for their own. Maybe Zod's symbol is something like Duty?

And I loved the balance they gave to Zod's portrayal in terms of his presence versus Clark's story. He's nowhere near as background or hateable as most of the Marvel villains, but he's far more rational and unemphatic than the villains we saw in the Drak Knight Trilogy. Those guys were designed to drive the film from an emotional place in their souls, while Zod is still quite clearly focused on an obtainable and sane military objective. He may get angry, frustrated, and saddened by the heroes conflict with him, but he's psychologically focused on his mission and is really pragmatic about it. If he knew Clark had the codex, you know he would have killed him on the spot, not tried to deconstruct Clark's choices or torture him.

 

[C. Lee]

HELP

The symbol of the House of El stood for "Hope"

What did the House of Zod stand for?

Well...since they said that Kryptonians were bred to be a certain thing in society, and he himself said he was born to defend Kryptom....it probably means something like "Defender".

 

[Iron_Madrigal]

Why would he want to terraform a planet that gives him and his people super powers?

 

[TheNextNolan22]

Michael winding up his evil face lol!

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

^ Shannon's performance in MOS was underrated. I think people were expecting him to be this huge menacing monstrosity instead of this obsessed anti-hero.

I think that when he finally lost his hope of a new Krypton, he became easy to sympathize with, before flying off the rails.

Where did you train?! On a FARM?!!-

 

[terry78]

He was very lowkey, as he should have been. It wasn't this grand royal upper class thing that Faora had nor what Jor and Lara had, he was just an average guy for the most part who was a patriot, which was pretty much the metaphor.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

^ Exactly. Though a more sinister and blantantly EVIL Zod would have probably been more powerful, it would have taken the movie away from Henry.
Not that wiping out the planet isn't evil, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

 

[Nathan]

Shannon was awesome as Zod. I won't say he was better than Stamp, because it was a complete different portrayal. But I preferred this Zod simply because of the passion and intensity he delivered.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Zod was going planetary killer at the end. A one man Exitinction Level Event. This was some real Supervillain stuff. I will refer again to what Zola told the Col. in CA:TFA: "The sanity of the plan is of no consequence.... BECAUSE HE CAN DO IT!" This is one of the things that puts comic book supervillains in a separate category than your average, over the counter strength villain. Can their plans be beyond all sense of rationality? Yes. But that doesn't matter. They have the intelligence or power, or both, to pull it off. For maybe the first time since we started putting these characters on the sceen in the 40's fim makers can really bring these villains to life in power and cunning. Joker, Loki, Zod.... These were supervillains as I've known them since I was a wee lad. It's a good time to be a fan of this genre.

 

[Human Torch]

HELP

The symbol of the House of El stood for "Hope"

What did the House of Zod stand for?

Hell

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

^ Yes! Shannon provided an unconventional performance that surprised even me.

 

[herolee10]

One thing that I liked was how Shannon subtly portrayed the differences in Zod during the two different time periods that see him in (Younger Zod/Krypton and Older Zod/Present Day). I wasn't sure if he was originally going to portray him that way before seeing the film, but after seeing it, I definitely liked how Shannon added some differences in how he played the character in those two different time periods.