We recently reported that not only would Michael Shannon be appearing in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but that his character would have flippers for hands. It was part of a funny anecdote the actor told Vulture about getting stuck in a Porta-Potty, and being rescued by the craft services guy. Classic Shannon. Along with the rest of the known universe, we reported this totally straight-faced, because this is a Zack Snyder superhero movie, and God only knows what kind of madness might actually happen. Only it turns out Michael Shannon was fucking with us. In a new interview with The Daily Beast, the actor confesses to having made the whole thing up.
Somebody was asking me about this in New York and I made up some ridiculous bullshit answer about how my character Zod has flippers, and this went viral on the Internet or something and people have been asking me about that. That is so obviously a complete bullshit story, right? But people took it seriously.
Indeed, in retrospect, the story does sound pretty silly. In Shannon’s mind, we should feel pretty foolish for having swallowed that line of malarky. And normally, that would be true. Only, here’s the thing: Michael Shannon seems to forget that he is Michael Shannon. We expect madness from him. He could tell reporters that he was going to perform an appendectomy on himself with a rusty spoon in order to get into the mindset of the doctor he’s playing in his next movie, and it would sound plausible, because he’s Michael Shannon. Flippers for hands? The man doth protest too much.
Actually, Shannon hasn’t even seen the Batman V Superman trailer featuring his corpse, which isn’t surprising, given that he didn’t film any scenes for the movie. “It’s a really awkward situation—I’m in the trailer for a movie that I didn’t work on,” he says, stressing his appearance would be more akin to the “ghost” consciousness of Jor-El in the first film, and that he did record some new voice-over dialogue for the movie. Of course, this is coming from Michael Shannon, America’s court jester, so take it with a grain of salt.
Still, now that he’s gotten everyone all excited about a flipper-handed Michael Shannon, perhaps he should just commit to that? “Maybe they should add it, I don’t know!” he says, unable to resist the potential for more Shannon-screws-with-the-internet flim-flammery. “Maybe in Part Three, Doomsday will have flipper hands. I mean, look—nothing would make me happier than to work with Zack [Snyder] again, he’s hysterical and he’s a lot of fun to work with.” Zack Snyder is hysterical? Oh, Michael Shannon, you are the living end.