ZACK: I knew there'd be a lot of action and I knew that we were gonna see Superman fight.
TWIGHT: It's a must for any type of action film like this to have your physical training...
...as well as the stunt training.
Because they're each gonna complement each other.
We're gonna go through this process...
...because we know it's not only important to the physical aesthetic and how they look...
...but it's important for their character development.
DEBORAH: Like all of our films, there's a great deal of physicality...
...and we've always believed in not just preparing the body, but it's also a state of mind.
It has to embody everything you do.
So we worked again with Mark Twight from Gym Jones who we worked with on 300.
I love, you know, the sort of Gym Jonesian approach.
And I love Mark's approach to the actors and their characters and the physicality.
It's like a triad all combined. And the training, in a weird way...
...is a meditation on those things.
TWIGHT: The wonderful thing about a superhero...
...is all you gotta do to look at the physique you need to produce...
...is open a comic book and there it is.
To live up to that iconic ideal was not an easy task.
Mark's fantastic. He understands the diet and the mindset.
He was tasked with bringing Henry from human status to superhuman status.
Henry was game from the get-go.
TWIGHT: For Henry's journey on this job, I met him for the first time...
...and basically asked questions.
I tried to get, you know, a handle on his character...
...a little bit of his training background, his sort of lifestyle background.
That allowed me to write a training plan...
...that he followed for the entire duration that we expected.
CAVILL: Mark, probably one of the most incredible people I've met.
The things he has helped me achieve-- I can only speak for myself, really.
But he's opened my eyes to seeing past what I thought were my limits.
And the ability to crush me in the gym, just enough that I can't walk out properly...
...and I feel horrible and feel a little sick but I still want to come back.
It's not easy for anyone, but that doesn't mean that it was painful.
Obviously, there were times where he was cursing me under his breath...
...sometimes to my face, but it's expected.
Having it be difficult, I think, makes the end result worthwhile.
ROVEN: Henry's work to get his body in shape...
...also just evolved into...
...getting his mind and spirit into shape.
TWIGHT: One of the strongest connections that I saw not only with our gym...
...but with Henry and the idea of Superman was that he's given this great power by birth...
...and with that comes this responsibility to develop values, to live by a code.
Henry's journey was quite similar in a way.
CAVILL: One hundred percent, the training has been a journey of discovery...
...just like Superman's journey of discovery.
Superman learned he could fly.
I learned I could do all sorts of things in the gym which I never thought possible.
TWIGHT: He started out-- I think his deadlift was about 245 pounds.
After a period of time, he pulled 435.
And it all came from hard work and discipline...
...and paying attention to his diet and to his sleep and to his recovery.
And ultimately, I think Henry Cavill is Superman.
ROVEN: Mark Twight has worked with all of the Kryptonians.
The Kryptonians are a very physical and physically fit race.
And we needed to make sure that whether it was General Zod...
...or his number one sub commander, Faora...
...that they were all really pretty amazing specimens.
A lot of the first week with Mark, we talked more than anything else.
Their philosophy about why they do what they do...
...and why it's important is much more convincing...
...than anything I've heard anywhere else.
TWIGHT: He started to get it and he was like:
"Wow, this is cool. Now I get it. It's time to get serious."
I mean, he would just kill himself and then rest long enough...
...to decide that it was okay, that he really wanted to go again.
SHANNON: You know, people, they like to talk about it...
...in terms of how it's going to be extreme or torturous or whatever...
...but I never really found it to be their approach.
I never felt like they asked me to do anything I couldn't do.
TWIGHT: With Antje, she wasn't fit...
...from our point of view, but she had taken care of herself.
And she came from a sport background having done gymnastics when she was younger...
...so she moved well, she knew how to use her body.
And that gave her quite a bit of advance in terms of teachability.
Two hours with Gym Jones is basically work hard and confront yourself.
Everything you do in these two hours needs absolute 100 percent of your focus.
So the gym, you know, there are no televisions...
...there are no newspapers or whatever distracts you.
You find yourself in front of a bar with 215 pounds...
...and of course you're naturally scared...
...like, you know, injuring yourself or failing or whatever.
But I also wanted to feel Faora's powers, right, and not just imagine them.
So I knew, okay, I should go for it.
She became this person she wanted to become.
And she noticed the effects of working in the gym day after day...
...working very hard with stunts...
...and her character development and dieting very, very hard.
TRAUE: Eventually, you come to a point where your mind...
...allows you to break through your physical boundaries...
...and takes you to places where you think you could never go to.
And when that happens, it's a great feeling. I have to say it's almost addictive.
TWIGHT: For me, functional training means transferrable.
That means that the training I do in the gym...
...improves my ability to do the actual tasks.
For Henry, you know, learning to move his body not only in the gym...
...but also in the stunt training was what gave him the capability to do that.
SHANNON: Even though you never really see my actual body in the movie...
...I'm playing someone who is very physically capable.
Obviously, it affects the way you move and just your physical presence.
TWIGHT: Mike Shannon takes acting very seriously.
And it shows in his character. He's constantly thinking.
And to bring that into the actual fighting and the conflict that he has...
...in a way that's not just character-driven or emotion-driven...
...but also has a physical component.
BLEVINS: We have hands in kind of how they developed their character.
The discussions during warm-ups and cool-downs was how to express a character.
In Henry's case, that silent strength comes out very well.
In Michael Shannon's case, it was how a general acts.
You see his posture change in mentioning to him about how a general would act.
If they have to express power through their attitude...
...and their shoulder and their posture, it's usually, you know, very, very subtle.
Antje in the same way, one day...
...she came in before shooting and I believe she had to throw somebody through a ceiling.
To see her pick something up off the ground heavy...
...and then go shoot this scene, those things definitely have to do with the character.
TRAUE: Working out and lifting weights made me experience that there's beauty...
...to physical strength and fearlessness and power.
And it actually became a very important pillar to approach...
...to play a female superhuman character.
Because they were all doing it together...
...and because they knew what the pain was like...
...it was this kind of camaraderie.
TWIGHT: You put an actor in the situation where:
"Hey, if you live up to this role, if you are believable in this role...
...you're gonna be the guy, you're gonna be the next guy."
CAVILL: He keeps it constantly evolving...
...as not just a physical thing, but a psychological thing as well.
He's just someone who understands what I'm going through physically...
...which I think is what makes him such a good trainer.
He sees your breaking point about to happen...
...then he'll either push you past that breaking point...
...or he'll push you right up to the edge of that precipice and then hold you back.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall watching him work...
...because he's a remarkable man, truly. And I have so much respect for him.
It's a cool way to make a movie. It's a cool way to get someone...
...to do something that they've never done.
And I think that that's what Mark loves to get at and kind of mess with.
To take these people who've chosen to be actors...
...who experience emotion in a way where they're analyzing it as they do it...
I think for him, those guys in the gym are really interesting...
...because pain and fear, success and joy, all those things are present. It's there.
And with an actor, the reward of the suffering...
...is really evident. And you bring that to the movie. It's fun.
CAVILL: It's not the kind of training which just makes you look pretty.
It's the kind of training which, first and foremost, is useful.
I didn't realize, like, how difficult the stuff that I was doing was...
...but because I trained with Gym Jones...
...I'd been given that, at the very least, core strength.
CARO: Any type of action, any type of stunt work...
...specifically wire work, you need a strong core...
...and you need your muscles to be lengthened...
...you need them to be strong, and you need to be stable.
If you don't have muscle to hold that together, you can get injured.
So being in shape is an enormous advantage.
In terms of the action, that was something Zack said:
"I want some really great action."
He has these powers and what would it be like...
...when he's fighting another Kryptonian who has the same kind of powers?
CARO: Flying was one of many attributes...
...that we had to really, really take our time to figure out. How do we do this correctly?
We went from wire rigs to gimbal rigs...
...where we had more of a base plate. You name it, we explored it.
Thanks to D.J., there's a tremendous amount of takeover with CG...
...but we still do what's called a performance capture...
...where we fly our guys on wires...
...and D.J. uses that base movement and builds over it to give it that human connection.
You're gonna see Superman fly faster than ever before.
It's hard to come up with those speeds.
CARO: Zack and I would sit down and come up with a scale...
...so we have some sort of rules, a playbook, some guidelines, foundation...
...to go, "Okay, let's try and not violate these."
Then he has, like, a riot with this.
Exactly. I mean, it's more about pressure than it is about pain, yeah.
So basically we take that as a reference...
...and we built all the physics around the action to see if it makes sense or not.
Most movies have three elements you have to achieve throughout the movie.
And this one has, you know, 11, 12 giant sequences.
Thought it was just impossible to make but it was gonna be great if we could pull it off.
CAVILL: I think the way that the fights are different in this movie...
...is the super-speed aspect, making it completely superhuman...
...and beyond the scope of what is actually humanly possible.
And I think that's what makes these particularly exciting...
...because anything can happen...
...and what the imagination allows does happen in this.
WHIST: There's the handoff between visual effects...
...and then picking the moments when you put them in...
...and have real stuff happen. For instance, the oil rig.
You see him more as a human in that element...
...because he hasn't got the Superman outfit on yet. He's just a guy.
But he's this guy who happens to be able to walk through fire...
...and have nothing happen to him.
GRISPO: Henry's very good at physical things.
Having an actor that has natural talent to perform action is always a bonus.
MAN: Go.
GRISPO: Our challenge is always to make the actor do the most of his physical abilities...
...of course, without asking them to do anything too crazy.
The most you see the actor performing their own stunts and action...
...the more rewarding it is for us.
CROWE: It's an incredibly good collection of stunt people on this film.
There's a level of commitment that something like this takes.
And that goes all the way through.
Russell was great because he had the physical ability before...
...so he knew what he was good at.
So he had a little more input in the style and the performance.
He brought a lot to the table with experience in action.
In the Genesis Chamber, he's swimming through a tunnel.
DESJARDIN: It's supposed to be this very watery, amniotic-fluid environment...
...and how else do you do that but submerse somebody?
We talked for a while about should we hang him from wires...
...and blow some wind and shoot him at high speed?
But the style of the movie is handheld, it's real...
...so we wanted the real physics of what that would be.
CROWE: You have to submerge yourself 15 feet and then kick off from a certain point...
...and then travel 60, 7O feet underwater...
...sometimes going through specific motions...
...and then return up to the top. It's a big breath required, you know?
It was super crowded down there. You got camera guys, you got focus pullers.
ROMANO: We had underwater electricians, underwater grips.
Because this tank was rigged...
...like I've never seen a tank rigged before. The amount of lights...
And I think at our disposal here we have close to 700,000 watts of light.
RIGBY: And then you've got people down below, need to be mindful of their bubbles.
And they have to hold their breath when cameras are rolling.
It's not very pleasant.
Pete and myself did a lot of head scratching about how we could get the shot.
And seemingly it seems quite simple.
He just needs to be floating there, motionless in the water...
...but we had flames above the surface of the water.
You never wanna tie anybody underwater when you're gonna remove the regulator from them.
Henry would naturally float feet down and then he would sink.
So had to have lines from his feet...
...up to just below the surface, in fact.
We couldn't go above the surface because flames were gonna go above the surface.
So we had to go as high as we could, but tie below the surface.
And then he had just loops around his fingers so he could still have this Jesus pose.
Then I would just have to leave him with all the guys holding their breath...
...because they're shooting up and bubbles can't be in it.
The danger, of course, in that is if Henry went to the surface as the propane blast went off.
You just sink down, you're holding your breath...
...and you're doing whatever you need to do for the camera, which you can't see.
And I had this wonderful moment...
...ofjust taking a few deep, slow breaths and then dropping down.
And all of a sudden, all I could hear was my heart.
And it was peaceful and quiet and I was down there for ages.
And I just felt like I could just keep on holding my breath, everything slowed down.
And as a contrast, all the work we're doing and then how rushed everything is here.
And how sort of frenetic the energy is.
It was nice to just have that peaceful moment. And I never expected that to happen.
It's something I will not forget.
It's probably one of the lasting memories from this job...
...that moment of peace, which I found just underwater.
CARO: Anytime we're working with an actor or a stunt person...
...everyone brings their own God-given talent and attributes to a particular project.
When Zack and I are creating the styles in the laboratory...
...before we get to actually even sometimes hire the actors...
...we have an understanding of how we want each person to move stylistically.
On Krypton, they're a military culture.
So we looked at that and go, "Okay, what do we--? What sort of basis do we wanna give?"
And we mixed some Chinese methods, Filipino methods.
A little bit of basic boxing.
But we kind of tried to create this little hybrid that hadn't really been seen before.
Not radically different than other styles we've created before...
...but just to give it a little flavor of its own.
WATSON: We first have to see what they're good at and then make the decision:
"Okay, do I wanna try to push them to a level that, say, might not be natural...
...or go with what they're good at?"
So Antje had good lines, really good fluidity...
...so we kind of made her style a female version of the Kryptonian form of martial arts.
For the fight geeks out there, they're gonna notice...
...that the guys from Krypton all do similar movements.
Faora has a move, like a palm slap.
Which, on Krypton, would be like a right hook or something.
But on Earth, I mean, it would disintegrate a human body.
So she throws that slap with, you know, power, and Zod'll do the same thing.
But they both have different styles.
Michael Shannon was really good with straight movements...
...so we kind of made his moves were a little more straight blasts and more direct stuff.
So we had to come up with a movement form for each of them that kind of fit their storyline.
Henry could pretty much do anything you showed him.
His character, Superman, he doesn't know this Kryptonian martial arts form.
So you almost had to take Henry's crispness and clean lines and training out of it...
...to give him the frat boy, haymaker, if you will.
So that was kind of fun, just telling him to open his moves up.
Big strikes and heavy blows because he's a superly-- A power base.
Zod had more of a strategic style to him so it makes for a good fight.
ZACK: We knew this was a broader challenge conceptually...
...because Superman can't do anything that's not a visual effect.
He can't just grab a thing and move it without it being a visual effect.
He doesn't move it at our scale.
GRISPO: Zack likes to draw his own boards...
...so we take that, we design the action around it...
...and then we shoot our rehearsals in a cinematic way.
We build the whole sequence as you're gonna potentially see it on the screen.
We know the running times...
...and we know if the timing of the action is gonna work out in the end or not.
We do stunt vis to figure out all the beats, create the action...
...get everyone on the same page...
...so we have a much clearer vision when we actually get on set to shoot it.
They show us the entire fight scene.
They say, "This is what it's supposed to look like." Obviously in a very, very basic version.
"And this is the one piece we're doing here."
And that did make it a lot easier. Otherwise we'd be a little bit lost, I think.
Because when you're in a green room doing a whole bunch of punches...
...thinking, "Am I on the side of a building, am I upside down...
...am I in space, am I flying through a building?"
The previs helps with that.
I love it. It lets me know the world I'm walking into.
And it lets me know how they see these action sequences from an emotional point of view.
It lets me know the moments they're looking to capture.
(PEOPLE CLAMORING)
A lot of Illinois was dominated by the battle of Smallville.
Which is a big military operation in the small town.
MAN: Back. Get back!
WILSON: A lot of complexities involved with that.
Lot of action, lot of stunts, live fire, helicopters, the whole shebang.
I mean, it's a monster. I don't think I've ever seen an action scene that's this big.
(INAUDIBLE)
And we shot it in two weeks.
So that was probably the hardest scene to come up with, just because of the size of it.
When we did the battle of Smallville...
...we used part of what existed and then we built our own buildings and destroyed them.
(MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
We put pieces of airplane parts...
...and we lit these enormous fires...
...and we did it more practical than we've ever done things before.
ZACK: When it dips and the guns start firing, it's gonna come forward.
Yes, it is.
- Damn it. -I know.
Couldn't we get those helicopters that don't do that?
- Tell them you can do that? -Damn physics.
We probably shot 95 percent of it on the actual streets.
Couple beats we shot on green screen.
But the majority of that was live action on location.
As much as we can do practically is always better.
Henry's been fantastic. Total trooper.
Inherently trusts the Stunt Department.
We always show him video beforehand.
Say, "This is what's gonna happen:..
...with one of us in that situation, so he knows what's gonna happen.
He knows that we've already done it, that we've got his best interests at heart.
That's when we started coming up with how fast Superman flies.
They really had to plan out every move...
...and what was gonna be shot practically and what we were gonna be doing digitally.
David and I sat down and said, "Oh, yeah, we'll be able to photograph these pieces...
...but there's these other pieces that we can't photograph."
So we either had to use wires...
...or a lot of times we've done this physical-to-CG handoff...
...where we'll start out and it's actually really Henry...
...and then all of a sudden when he goes into the air...
...or he makes a really fast move, we turned him into CG...
...and then we put him back to the real Henry again.
You Okay?
We wanna keep as much real as possible. Peflod.
You know, we wanna see the nuances of the face and when the hair blow by.
And, you know, the cape. We wanna be in there.
We wanna be in it, we wanna be over the action.
We wanna constantly push back the digital hand-off.
And as long as we can push that and keep that real...
...then visual effects is not taking over, visual effects is assisting what we're trying to do.
And we're trying to keep it as real as possible to the last possible moment.
We wanted to able to have these guys really do some of the moves...
...so that when we get to the pauses in the fight...
...or the moments where your eye is gonna dwell on them, it's really them.
The other authentic thing that Zack wanted and really paid off...
...was that all the soldiers in the scenes are real soldiers and airmen.
They're not Central Casting extras.
I think every one of them had deployed at least once or twice, either Iraq or Afghanistan.
They knew how to put on the equipment, they knew how to hold the guns...
...and they knew how to be authentic because they were the real deal.
Zack is awesome, outstanding.
He respects the military.
He gets out there and talks to each one of the soldiers or the airmen and it's great.
(MAN SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY)
ZOD: I'm going to make them suffer, Kal.
These humans you've adopted, I will take them all from you...
...one by one.
One of the big fights that we did takes place in Metropolis.
Zack said, "You know, I envision this to be a barroom brawl on a larger scale."
As opposed to picking up a beer bottle and whacking the guy over the head...
...maybe he picks up an I beam.
To shoot a stunt vis for that was challenging. We basically had some wire moves.
Some walking and talking blocking.
Mixed together with more visual effects previs for that...
...due to basically the battle being all in the air.
WATSON: They're busting up through buildings.
Doing moves in the air, dodging each other, flipping each other...
...but never landing on the ground, just continually rolling around...
...and creating this intense, aggressive fight.
The hummingbird fight got its name because that's sort of the hummingbird thing.
You're able to, zzz, come up here then, zzz, go over here.
WATSON: They're able to stay in one spot, hover...
...and then they can switch positions real fast.
So we wanted to come up with this fight that they're all going around each other.
Now, it's easy to come up with it in our heads...
...but how are we gonna make that practical?
CARO: I can only do so much flying guys around...
...at the speed and the agility in which these two characters do.
We couldn't move a human that fast and not rip them apart or blow something.
I've never really participated in something like that before.
Trying to build one of these, you know, epic fights that people talk about for years to come.
I'm not the type of actor that goes to the monitor usually.
Particularly if I'm doing a scene, I would never go, I don't wanna see it.
But in this kind of work when you're just trying to get each little movement correct...
...I'm actually very critical of it.
Inevitably, it never looks the way that it felt.
You can do something and it feels very full-on...
...and then you go look at it and it seems kind of flat.
And you realize that there's a lot of technique at play.
And it's just about angles and how your body moves.
Great, let's do it tighter, very nice.
And that's what Zack and Damon especially do very, very well.
It's like these two gods, basically, fighting over the city.
Causing destruction, but mainly taking each other out, you know...
...that's what you wanna get. That's your payoff at the end as a fan.
It's been great fun working with the guys. Doing the wire work for hours on end.
There's a lot to be said for it because you get to fly. Ha, ha.
And that is fun.
When you're doing something which is physically taxing...
...and all around tricky to do...
...because it's so new...
...it makes it that much easier when you've got guys who are actually enjoying it with you.
And having a laugh and having fun and working exceptionally hard to get it right too.
SUPERMAN: You might want to step back a little bit.
Maybe a little bit more.
We're still waiting for the easy part of the movie to show up and it hasn't shown up yet, so...
(YELLS)