Michael Shannon returns as General Zod in The Flash – but he first played the character in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which he seems to have preferred as an acting experience.
"I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't quite satisfying for me, as an actor," Shannon told Collider. "These multiverse movies are like somebody playing with action figures. It's like, 'Here's this person. Here's that person. And they're fighting!' It's not quite the in-depth character study situation that I honestly felt Man of Steel was. Whether people think that's crazy or not, I don't even care."
But, that doesn't mean he has a negative opinion of The Flash overall. "I really felt like Man of Steel was actually a pretty sophisticated story," he continued. "I feel like The Flash is too, but it's not Zod's story. I'm basically there to present a challenge."
Zod isn't the only character back via multiversal means. Michael Keaton's Batman also returns for the first time since Tim Burton's movies, while the film introduces Sasha Calle's Supergirl. Ezra Miller, meanwhile, plays two different versions of Barry Allen, and Ben Affleck's Batman is also part of the cast.
"I talked to Zack," director Andy Muschietti told us in a recent interview. "But it wasn't technical or narrative or anything. I just wanted to reach out and say, 'Hey.' Because we haven't met before, and I just wanted to tell him that we would be respectful to the stuff that he did before."
He added of Snyder's movie: "Man of Steel obviously is foundational to this movie because the big threat of Zod coming to Earth is a big twist in this story, and it's something that most DC fans know very well. And that's one of the great things that can form the narrative of this movie."
The Flash is in theaters this June 14 in the UK and June 16 in the US. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows for everything else the studio has in store, and see the rest of our interview with Andy and Barbara Muschietti through the link.
