is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.
James Gunn knows that most people are familiar with Superman’s origin story, which is why DC Studios’ new feature about the Man of Steel opens at a point when he has already become a world famous superhero. Instead of rehashing the tragic beats of Krypton’s destruction, the movie is punctuated with moments that show you how deeply Superman cherishes the few remaining pieces of his homeworld. He loves his Kryptonian family crest and his out-of-control superdog. But the most impressive and alien keepsake that Clark Kent holds close to his heart is a massive stronghold buried deep beneath the ice in Antarctica.
The Fortress of Solitude (which originated in Street & Smith’s Doc Savage pulps from the 1930s) has been part of Superman’s lore since the Golden Age of comics, when it was first introduced as a hidden citadel tucked into a mountainside by Metropolis. Over the years, the Fortress has been located in a variety of places and taken on different forms, but Gunn’s Superman presents the structure as most people know it — a gleaming cluster of gargantuan crystals situated in the frozen wilderness. Everything about the Fortress is so grand and otherworldly that one could easily assume that DC Studios would have elected to create the whole thing with VFX.
There are digital elements to the new Superman’s take on the Fortress, but Gunn has always been a fan of practically created effects. Having worked with Gunn on The Suicide Squad, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, production designer Beth Mickle was intimately familiar with his filmmaking sensibilities. Mickle could see Gunn’s vision for a Superman movie that was modern but nostalgic and vibrant like a classic comic book.
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1 / 2 Image: Warner Bros. Discovery / DC Studios
When I spoke with Mickle recently about her work on Superman, she told me that creating the new Fortress of Solitude wasn’t just difficult — it was an exercise in patience and experimentation. Mickle was certain that going the practical route would result in a much more magical final product, but she wasn’t always sure how she and the rest of Superman’s production team would pull it off.
“I’ve been on those sets where it’s just a full blue screen and the poor actor is sitting there looking at a blue tennis ball, trying to figure out how they’re supposed to be reacting to it,” Mickle said. “I feel like, no matter what, practicality comes across in the filmmaking and in the performances. But it’s really tough to pull practicality like this off seamlessly.”
Like Gunn, Mickle was a big fan of Richard Donner’s first Superman film, in which Christopher Reeves’ Clark Kent summons the Fortress of Solitude by tossing a green crystal into Arctic waters. Though she wanted to pay homage to the 1978 classic, Mickle was also interested in exploring how else the Fortress could be depicted.
“I started looking at the way that crystals sometimes grow naturally from rocks, where they kind of splay upward and have this propulsive, explosive feel,” Mickle explained. “I thought to myself, ‘You know, that actually feels a bit like Superman, exploding up into the sky.’”
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