Terrence Stamp, the actor who portrayed General Zod in 1980’s Superman II has opinions about the newly-released Man Of Steel and they’re not as rosy as you’d expect.
Outside of Christopher Reeve, Terrence Stamp may be the most recognizable actor to ever appear in a film adaptation of DC Comics’ Superman mythos. His work as General Zod in Richard Donner’s second Superman movie was simultaneously regal and menacing, and his iconic line – “Kneel before Zod!” – has become indelibly linked to the character in pop culture. Even the upcoming Injustice version of Zod drops that command during combat (and it’s awesome).
With Stamp having such an extensive history with the Zod character and the role being reprised by Michael Shannon in the new film Man of Steel, one would expect Stamp to have opinions. Polite opinions. Words of encouragement. But instead Stamp finds the whole production a bit depressing.
“When I heard they were remaking it, or they were doing a version of it, I was kind of sad in a way because it was the benchmark for all of these comic book movies,” Stamp recently told Enertainment Weekly. “There’s never been anything quite as good as those Dick Donner movies. And since then, big movies have become computer generated. They’ve become unemotional, and so I was sad.”
“I thought it would be diluted, in other words. And that it would be a personal dilution because it was such an incredible moment for me to come back and play my first comic book villain. I was sad, but the truth is, I’m sure it’s vastly different,” Stamps states.
“But, hey, you know, they wanted to pull on the Kryptonite boots? Good luck to them. They’re big!” he adds.
After hearing his feelings on Man of Steel, Entertainment Weekly asked Stamp to discuss the controversy surrounding Marlon Brando’s role in Superman II – or more specifically, why the legendary thespian was cut from the movie. Stamp obliged with candor.
“Incredibly, [the producers] replaced all of Brando’s stuff because he was trying to get a percentage that they had promised him,” Stamp recalls. “And to weaken his case, they replaced Marlon with this English actress [Susannah York], Superman’s mom. It didn’t seem possible. So it was very unhappy. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do much. We had to do the last sort of eighth of the movie, frankly.”
Marlon Brando was a pain to work with? My stars! That’s just … actually that’s exactly what we expected. Brando may be one of the finest actors in history, but the man had a lot of diva in him, especially once he started commanding huge sums of cash to simply show up on film sets and utter a few words. Stamp on the other hand wins full propers for his comments about Man of Steel. If only more actors were honest about their true opinions, huh?
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Published: Jun 21, 2013 07:10 pm