Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel deserves a lot of credit. The Christopher Reeve Superman movies had become such cultural icons for the character that the one time prior to Man of Steel that anybody tried to make a new Superman movie, they just tried to make a Christopher Reeve movie with different actors.

“That was really unfortunate,” Gunn continued. “So Peter and I [thought] the right thing to do was to sit down with [Cavill] and talk to him. And we sat down and we talked to him. He was an absolute gentleman, a great guy about it. He said, ‘The only thing I ask is that I’m able to reveal it myself as opposed to it coming from you guys.'”