VFX BREAKDOWN SUPERMAN
HOLDING OUT FOR VFX BREAKDOWN A HERO It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… another Superman adaptation! We sit down with two VFX supervisors, Stephane Ceretti and Stephane Nazé, who helped bring James Gunn’s vision to the big screen
WORDS KATIE KASPERSON IMAGES WARNER BROS DISCOVERY
S uperman first fell to Earth in June 1938, appearing in Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Action Comics #1 . One short year later, the alien hero received his own magazine – unprecedented at the time – when Superman #1 hit shelves. By the early forties, the series was selling over a million copies every month, introducing readers to side characters like Lois Lane (love interest), Jimmy Olsen (colleague) and Lex Luthor (arch-enemy). As with any intellectual property, it wasn’t long before Superman received the multimedia treatment. Superman (1948), a 15-part film serial starring Kirk Alyn, marked the hero’s first on-screen appearance in a live-action adaptation. Superman (2025) is the latest. This time, with David Corenswet in the titular role, writer-director James Gunn ( Guardians of the Galaxy , The Suicide Squad ) puts a contemporary spin on the classic comics, leaning heavily on VFX to bring the superhero’s story to life. In Gunn’s version, Superman – also known as Clark Kent – has intervened in a geopolitical conflict between fictional countries Boravia and Jarhanpur. Defeated, for the first time ever, by a being called the Hammer of Boravia, Superman and his super-dog Krypto retreat to the Fortress of Solitude, a
crystal castle hidden beneath the ice in Antarctica. Once healed up, Kent – a reporter for the Daily Planet – resumes his normal life in Metropolis, enjoying a secret relationship with his award- winning co-worker Lois Lane. Meanwhile, tech billionaire Lex Luthor is plotting to kill Superman, or at least ruin his reputation and turn humanity against him. The story is steeped in otherworldly elements, from black holes and pocket universes to talking robots and flying dogs. No stranger to sci-fi, Gunn used CGI for characters like Groot (a tree), Rocket (a raccoon) and Cosmo (a dog) in the GOTG trilogy with VFX supervisor and right-hand man Stephane Ceretti. Gunn renewed this creative partnership on Superman , tapping Ceretti to handle the film’s many VFX elements, including Metropolis, the Fortress of Solitude and Kent’s canine companion Krypto. DOWN TO EARTH The thing about Superman: “He’s a character everybody knows, and who we’ve seen many, many times before,” begins Ceretti. “There are a lot of eyes on the project, so there’s extra pressure on us to create something really good.” With Superman’s story dating back nearly 100 years, there’s a retro element, visually, that Ceretti wanted
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