According to Vulture, Michael Shannon divulged that his cameo as General Zod in Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice will finally address one of the grave missteps that alienated audiences from 2013’s Man Of Steel. No, he won’t be retiring his petulant shouting. Nor does Shannon promise to refrain from pulverizing large sections of Metropolis. Rather, General Zod will have flippers for hands. While promoting 99 Homes, Shannon inadvertently broke the news while regaling an interviewer with the time he was on the set of Batman V. Superman, trapped in a Porta Potty:
I was in my costume, and I couldn’t use my fingers because in the sequel I have flippers instead of hands. So I had these wax flippers on my fingers, and I couldn’t open the [Porta Potty] door, and I could hear Zack [Snyder, the director] being like, ‘Where’s Shannon? Where the fuck is he?’ and the whole crew was standing around. I was like, knocking on the door with my flippers, ‘Let me out of here!’ [I was helped by the] craft-service guy, who doesn’t have the best craft service. He was actually paying attention to what was going on. He came over and he opened the door for me. Otherwise I would have gotten fired.
There’s a lot to unpack in this anecdote. Of course, the big story is that Zod will finally gain the appendages necessary to go give Aquaman problems. But beyond that, we are meant to understand that it doesn’t matter if you’re a mobility-impaired movie star having a panic attack while trapped in a portable toilet. If you aren’t on set, ready for the cameras to roll, you will get fired, because Zack Snyder doesn’t take that kind of shit. And then there’s the distressing news that craft services weren’t very good. How can we expect a coherent ensemble film from DC when Ben Affleck’s rye pumpernickel bagels are rock hard and Henry Cavill can only get Oolong tea instead of Earl Grey?
Of course, all of this just adds to the speculation that General Zod will be transformed into Doomsday by Lex Luthor, never minding the fact that the two are distinct characters. On the other hand, they do share one important similarity: Neither were ever depicted as having flippers, fins, or even claws for hands. Can this simply be coincidence? In a cinematic universe where fans claim to have incontrovertible evidence that the Joker is actually Robin, there is no such thing as coincidence.