The Flash's Michael Shannon likens multiverse movies to playing with action figures

Michael Shannon was famously a little confused when he was asked to return for The Flash, on account of General Zod getting murdered in his last on screen appearance. “I’m like, ‘They saw Man Of Steel, right?’ And my manager’s like, ‘Yeah, they saw Man Of Steel, but it’s different,’” the actor recalled in a recent Vanity Fair interview. “And I’m like, ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a multiverse.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know what that means.’”

Well, Shannon now knows what the multiverse is, and “I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t quite satisfying for me, as an actor,” he shares in a new conversation with Collider. “These multiverse movies are like somebody playing with action figures. It’s like, ‘Here’s this person. Here’s that person. And they’re fighting!’”

He adds, “It’s not quite the in-depth character study situation that I honestly felt Man Of Steel was. Whether people think that’s crazy or not, I don’t even care. I really felt like Man Of Steel was actually a pretty sophisticated story. I feel like The Flash is too, but it’s not Zod’s story. I’m basically there to present a challenge.”

For Vanity Fair, Shannon explained that Man Of Steel “was like a year of my life,” whereas shooting for The Flash only took a few weeks. “The Flash isn’t my story. I’m there as an adversary, a threat, a problem to be dealt with. The Flash is really The Flash’s story.”

And Shannon only has positive things to say about cinema’s Barry Allen, the controversial Ezra Miller. “I just think Ezra is a fascinating performer and actor. I can’t wait to see this performance. It’s a huge challenge. I don’t wanna give anything away, but what Ezra has to do in this movie is pretty crazy, and I think [they’re] up for the task,” the George & Tammy star tells Collider. Despite the whole action figure thing, he’s not a snob about the big budget blockbuster: “I know a lot of times, with movies like this, people are excited about the big set pieces or the effects, but for me, it’s always about performance. I don’t care whether it’s an Ingmar Bergman film or the Avengers. It’s always about performance.”