A brief moment in Superman involving a squirrel was “hotly debated” and initially disliked by test audiences, but James Gunn kept it anyway.
Earlier this month, writer-director James Gunn introduced a more hopeful, unabashedly upbeat Superman – a marked contrast to the brooding Man of Steel seen in the Zack Snyder era. And one illustration of the new, sunnier Superman was a brief moment in which, in the middle of a wider action set-piece, the superhero rescues a squirrel.
As it turns out, the furry mammal was a point of contention both during production and later, when early cuts of Superman were shown to test audiences. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Gunn said that the save-the-squirrel scene was “probably the second- or third- most hotly debated moment in the movie.”
Given how out-there some of the ideas in Superman are, it’s a wonder what the other two debated moments were.
“We showed it to test audiences and some people did not like the squirrel,” Gunn said. “They’re like, ‘Why the fuck is he saving a squirrel? Why is he taking time out, saving a squirrel?'”
The response was such that Gunn even experimented with taking the squirrel out. But when he reviewed the squirrel-free edit Gunn realised just how much he missed the tiny furball. Beyond Gunn’s own fondness, something else ultimately saved the squirrel from deletion: taking him out messed up the scene’s continuity.
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Said Gunn, “There was a cut where I cut it out and I’m like, ‘I really miss the squirrel. He’s gotta save the squirrel.’ In addition, there were also some geographic problems with where [Superman] ended up if I didn’t have him fly over with the squirrel. So I put the squirrel back in despite the protestations of some of my people on my crew.”
It isn’t uncommon for scenes or characters to be cut from movies, of course – especially superhero movies, which often have a lot going on. In this month’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, director Matt Shakman eventually made the decision to completely delete John Malkovich’s villain, Red Ghost, from the finished cut – even though the character was briefly showcased in an early trailer.
This means that Superman’s squirrel – a relatively unknown squirrel at that, with no agent to speak of – has had more luck in Hollywood than an Academy Award-nominated master of his craft.
Contacted for comment by Film Stories, the squirrel simply remarked, “In your face, Malkovich,” then vanished up a tree.
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