Furious ‘Man of Steel’ supporters inevitably have major issues with ‘The Flash’ trailer

The chaotic first decade of the DCU had plenty of ups and downs, but the fact the movie that launched the entire franchise didn’t even come close to getting a sequel has to rank as one of the most bizarre, especially when you consider how popular Man of Steel continues to be among the fandom to this day.

Warner Bros. was desperate for the shared superhero universe to run before it had even learned to walk, so Ben Affleck was instantly drafted in for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which fed directly into the Justice League debacle. Murmurs of another Henry Cavill solo film popped up every now and again, but it was never officially in active development.

As you can imagine, then, the first trailer bringing back Michael Shannon’s General Zod and pitting him against a Kryptonian character that isn’t Kal-El has inevitably ruffled more than a few feathers, with Zack Snyder’s origin story for the DCU’s canonical Big Blue Boy Scout already being used as a weapon to trash Sasha Calle’s Supergirl.

Having been hyped by no less an authority than James Gunn as one of the best costumed capers he’s ever seen, The Flash had a lot of expectations to live up to given the buzz revolving around the first-look footage. For the most part, it lived up to them and then some, but there were always going to be a vocal band of detractors ready to pounce.

In fact, they’d already been sharpening their knives for years, so there was no other outcome than negative comparisons being made to the SnyderVerse.