Saturday, 22 September 2012

Has LEGO Revealed a MAJOR "Man of Steel" Spoiler??

Everyone else is running this, so I figure I might as well get my clicks while I can.

In one of those developments that I'm sure I'll be hearing about as the "symbolic death of film journalism" at the next critic's meetup; major movie news has once again been (potentially) made by the release of a toy company's product schedule: LEGO has been giving retailers the heads-up as to their 2013 licensed products, and references therein seem to have let some possible-surprises slip a little early.

One of them isn't all that much of a surprise (pretty much everyone has figured out who/what Ben Kingsley is ACTUALLY playing in "Iron Man 3," yes?) but the other MAY have given away the game for Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's "Man of Steel."

All speculation at this point, but still... POTENTIAL MAJOR SPOILER AFTER THE JUMP!

Last chance to turn back, kids:

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The last entry on LEGO's product list for playsets reads as follows: 76009: SUPERMAN BLACK ZERO ESCAPE. If there's an especially well-versed DC Comics fan reading this in the vicinity near you, it may be wise to give them a bag to breathe into.

Who or what is "Black Zero?" Well, to give you an idea of why this could be the mother of all spoilers for this particular movie, the Silver Age (1968) story that introduced the first iteration of the character/concept was called "The Man Who Destroyed Krypton."

Yeah.

In the story (now long-deleted from "official" Superman canon by a Crisis or fifty) Black Zero is an alien "space saboteur" who specializes in causing the destruction of entire planets; and reveals that while Jor-El had been right about Krypton's demise being probable, the "internal pressures" issue would actually have worked itself out had Black Zero not given them an extra shove. When Zero turns his attentions to Earth, Superman is forced to release a Kryptonian supervillain named Jax-Ur from The Phantom Zone in order to defeat him.

In post-Crisis continuity, "Black Zero" is the name of a terrorist organization that was part of a clones-vs-natural-borns Civil War on ancient Krypton whose superweapon "The Destroyer" set in motion the milleniums-long chain reaction that eventually. resulted in the planet's ultimate demise. There's also been a "Black Zero Computer Virus" and the original's name/costume were adopted by an alternate-universe doppleganger of the post-Doomsday Superboy.

So, then... assuming that this is legit, what is "Black Zero" in "Man of Steel?" Is "what destroyed Krypton?" part of some big overarching mystery in the film? Is it a character? An organization? Just a "shout-out" for fans? Mucking around and "over-complicating" the Krypton backstory has been sketchy territory for Superman adaptations in the past... but it's also something I can easily imagine Warners aiming at to give the character some Batman-ish angst; and it'd be VERY typical of the ultra-literalist, mechanics-fixated Nolan Bros. to want to tie the end of Krypton in the backstory to the main story (re: Superman has to literally protect Earth from the same fate his father failed to prevent on Kypton.)

I'll be honest... neither of those theories sound like particularly good ideas to me, but I'm intrigued.

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