There’s a new cut that combines Man of Steel with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice into a single, and in my opinion, much more interesting and entertaining film, Man of Tomorrow.
Edited by Daniel, aka JobWillins, the editor behind the Alien re-edit, Derelict, Man of Tomorrow really does a great job in presenting a far more heroic take on the character than Zack Snyder presented.
Man of Tomorrow is a narrative experiment that combines Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman into one film. The goal was to use material from both films to form a single, feature-length, 3-act structure that focuses on Superman.
Like many, I was less-than-enamored with Batman V. Superman. The Ultimate Edition was much more coherent, but it was fundamentally the same film. This was a very dark story about Batman wanting to kill Superman… and Superman being kind of a dick most of the time. And while I wasn’t a huge fan of Man of Steel either, I did think it had some pretty great Superman moments, which BvS lacked. I decided to try to combine material from both films, focusing on their strengths and streamlining the narrative to the rise and fall of Superman.
Since I started with Man of Steel (2.2 hrs) and Batman V. Superman: Ultimate Edition (3 hrs), keeping the running-time down to 2.5 hours was no small task. A lot of plot wasn’t used (most of the Krypton sequence, the Smallville fight, the Africa subplot, the jar of pee…), but because the major threads that lead to the 3rd act of Batman V. Superman came directly from the battle in Metropolis (the crashed Kryptonian ship, the Kryptonite from the world engine, Batman’s distrust of Superman’s power) I chose to hone in on those story points as the core of the narrative for Man of Tomorrow. Several scenes were reordered or reworked to fit the new narrative structure and better weave the material from the the two films together. For example: Batman/Bruce Wayne is introduced in the 1st act, Superman doesn’t put on his suit until Zod appears, Lex Luthor interacts with the Kryptonian ship earlier, the dour shots of Superman’s heroism from BvS are used much more optimistically, and the flashback to Pa Kent’s death is utilized very differently, just to name a few changes to the structure.
I hope you enjoy Man of Tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone who test screened it and provided feedback.
You can follow me on Twitter if you’re into that kind of thing (@JobWillins)
~Daniel (aka JobWillins)
