If you’ve seen Man of Steel, you know that Henry Cavill looks like a Man of Steel. The dude got buff for the role, which is a given because he’s essentially playing a god. So how did he do it? A lot of work and a lot of eating.

He told Total Film:

“I’m on 5000 calories a day… You’ve got to eat protein first, then a little bit of carbs…you’ve gotta keep your hunger levels going. I’m training two and a half hours a day, pushing my body beyond its normal limits, putting on a lot of muscle mass and just making myself look like Superman.”

Pushed his limits he certainly did. In this National Guard promo series, called Soldier of Steel, episode 4 deals with Cavill’s workout routine.

So how did he do it? Well first, it matters greatly where he did it. Cavill turned to Mark Twight, the owner of Gym Jones in Salt Lake City, Utah. You’ve seen his work before: he got the guys buff in 300.

According to Men’s Health, Twight uses a punishing routine called “tailpipe.” It’s a 100-rep workout that burns through calories and fat, and will obviously make you exhausted.

There are two sides to the tailpipe routine: recovery and exercise. It works like this: the moment you finish an exercise, take eight controlled breaths in and our of your nose. No gasping or mouth breathing allowed! Then get to the next exercise.

Men’s Health says you can do this workout at the end of your regular set, but that you have to do these exercises in order. Each one is 25 reps and Men’s Health recommends a 35-pound kettlebell or dumbbell for exercises that require weights (though it’s OK to downsize if that’s too heavy).

Here’s Men’s Health’s take on the workouts. You can head over there to check out their awesome videos showcasing the techniques if you wish:

1. Goblet Squat Grab a kettlebell or dumbbell and stand with your feet just beyond shoulder width. Cup the weight with both hands and hold it vertically next to your chest, your elbows pointing down. Keeping your back naturally arched, push your hips back, bend your knees, and lower your body as far as you can. Push yourself back to the starting position and repeat.

2. Kettlebell Swing Bend at your hips and hold a kettlebell or dumbbell with both hands at arm’s length down in front of you. Rock back slightly and “hike” the kettlebell between your legs. Then squeeze your glutes, thrust your hips forward forcefully, and swing the weight to shoulder height. Allow momentum to swing the weight. Reverse the move between your legs, and keep swinging.

3. Squat Thrust Stand with your feet slightly beyond shoulder-width apart. Bending at your hips and knees, squat and lower your body until you can place your hands on the floor. Kick your legs backward into a pushup position, and then immediately reverse the move and quickly stand up from the squat. That’s 1 rep. To add to the challenge, jump up from the squat instead of standing up. Want to learn more great moves to sculpt your body? Then check out The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises and The Women’s Health Big Book of Exercises, where you’ll find full-color photos of more than 500 exercises, and dozens of great workouts.

4. Jumping Jacks Stand with your feet together and your hands at your sides. Simultaneously raise your arms above your head and quickly kick your legs out to the sides. Without pausing, reverse the movement. That’s 1 rep.

As Cavill and Twight say, most of this in mental. Do remember that you won’t see results as quickly as Cavill. That guy is a paid actor and his job was, for months, to get as big as he could so he could play Superman. Superman. Either way, attempting this workout should help with losing fat and gaining some muscle.

One of the best parts of Man of Steel is Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score. He didn’t have an easy task either as he was stepping into the mighty big shoes of John Williams, whose original Superman theme is legendary.

Warner Bros. released a short featurette today exploring how Zimmer and his staff of players and music engineers worked on the score. Essentially, he wanted everyone involved to be perfectly OK with failing. And it also seems like constant iteration was a huge part of this process.

Also, it looks like producer Christopher Nolan and director Zack Snyder were involved heavily with the score. Perhaps not in a nitty gritty “making music” sort of way, but in a more general spoken advice sort of way.

If you’re a fan of Zimmer’s soundtrack then you’re doing yourself a disservice by not watching this.

Note: This post contains spoilers for Man of Steel.

It’s pretty obvious that Man of Steel is a very important film to Warner Bros. and DC. For a long time now they’ve planned and planned and then scrapped those plans and planned again. But not much has come from all these plans.

Warner Bros. is far too scared to commit to anything with their superhero movies. There have been two instances before Man of Steel where they’ve committed: Batman Begins and Green Lantern. One turned out wonderful and spawned a mega trilogy. The other flopped both critically and financially.

The odd thing was that Green Lantern kind of feels like DC’s version of a Marvel movie. It wants to be a big, fun comic book movie so bad, but it just isn’t there in any aspect (except for perhaps Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively).

However, with Man of Steel they’re finally committing to a style. And for a company that has been running around with their head cut off for so long that’s a good first step. The next step for them is opening up the world and building the DC universe in film.

There are 6 references in the film that hint at a larger universe. Screenwriter David Goyer has admitted this, saying:

It is our intention that, in success, [Man of Steel] would be the zero issue and from this point onward, possible films could expand into a shared universe. In our world, the Man of Steel world, Zack has gone on record saying that we’re implying there are other superheroes in this world. But I don’t know that they’ve come forward yet. The idea is that Superman is the first one. There might be people helping people, but not in costumes, and that Superman comes forward and announces himself to the world. In him announcing himself, he’s the one that changes things.

So what are these references? The good people at /Film (you can check out there page for their takes on these as well) have compiled a great list. So let’s go through and talk about them.

Lex Luthor

This is the most obvious. You don’t even have to look for this as it’s almost thrown in your face. When Zod and Superman are having their final fight, you clearly see some sort of oil truck that has LexCorp painted on the side in big, white letters.

So we know that Lex is somewhere in this world. We know that he’s probably a very, very rich man. And I think they’ve set up a wonderful starting point for Man of Steel 2. They could easily start the sequel with Luthor paying to clean up the city and challenging the world on Superman. Is Superman really good for humanity? Is Superman really good? Luthor would be the perfect foil in this second movie for this Superman, especially since by the end of Man of Steel Superman has finally decided that he would be Earth’s protector.

Bruce Wayne

This is the other big one in the film. During the final fight scene, Zod and Superman take a brief detour into space and destroy a satellite. That satellite has the Wayne Enterprises logo on it, showing us that Bruce Wayne is somewhere in this world. Is he Batman yet? Is he traveling the world? Is he training to be Batman? We don’t know that (yet) but we do know that he exists. Somewhere.

Cyborg

This one comes straight the mouth of Goyer. He told MTV:

“…we mentioned S.T.A.R. Labs at one point, that’s kind of a connection to Cyborg.”

As /Film notes, this is a very slight reference and possibly the weakest connection of them all but Emil Hamilton, the main scientist in the film, is primarily associated with STAR Labs. So we know that place exists. How does it connect to half-human/half-machine Cyborg, also known as Victor Stone?

His parents, Elinore and Silas Stone, use Victor for experiments at STAR Labs. Eventually, he turns into Cyborg – who in 2011 pretty much became a permanent and important part of the Justice League.

Booster Gold

There’s a third logo for a company within Man of Steel that’s more subtle than the other two: the logo for Blaze Comics. Blaze Comics is an in-universe company that publishes comics featuring Booster Gold, a time traveler from the 25th century with a whole ton of technology that makes him valuable to the Justice League.

Booster is something of a self-promoter as he constantly tells amazing tales of him doing grand things, never failing to take advantage of an opportunity to increase his fame. While I don’t think we’ll ever see Booster Gold in a DC movie, it’s clearly a reference to him.

Supergirl

This one comes from Zack Snyder’s wife Deborah, who is a producer on this film. When speaking to Crave Online, she said:

You know what’s interesting, and I don’t know and I’m not going to say what it means or anything, but the one thing if you look closely when Henry’s going through the Fortress of Solitude there’s an empty… you know all the bodies… the pods? There’s an empty pod. I’m not going to say what, or if, it means anything but there is an empty pod there.

When asked whether it’s Supergirl, Snyder laughs it off saying no, but that it’s definitely a thing. So what’s causing people to think about Supergirl? In the prequel comic to Man of Steel, shows how the Genesis ship comes crashing to Earth. It has a crew that includes Kara Zor – El, who is more well known as Supergirl.

However, there’s a stowaway on board named Dev-Em. He’s an explorer cadet that killed Kara’s friend and tried to kill her. He failed and was improperly imprisoned. He gets on Kara’s ship and is responsible for the death of the majority of the crew. Dev and Kara are the only two that are alive when the ship arrives on Earth.

So what happened? Did Kara escape? Is she alive somewhere on Earth? Could she have died because the ship arrived 20,000 years before the film? Who knows, but the filmmakers tell us that there’s something there.

Carol Ferris

At the end of Man of Steel, Superman throws a drone at a military general and tells him stuff. Shortly after this, there’s a moment played for laughs featuring actress Christina Wren, who plays Carol Ferris. She says that she finds Superman hot.

Carol Ferris is the romantic interest of Hal Jordan, aka Green Lantern. Of course, she was played by Blake Lively in Green Lantern, but it seems like Warner Bros. is just going to forget that movie (good). Ferris is a fantastic pilot (likely why she’s a high ranking military officer now?) The thought here is that this is a new take on Ferris. On top of that, Ferris has an alter ego called Star Sapphire, who happens to be both a villain and hero.

Aquaman (bonus!)

I’ve seen and heard other people point this out and I agree with it. But first, I like Aquaman. I think he’s a badass character that can be more compelling than people realize. This dude is no joke. He’s the friggin’ king of Atlantis, for chrissakes!

So maybe it’s just me and others seeing what we want to see, but whatever: near the beginning of the film, after Superman saves the people on the oil rig, he’s floating under water and thinking about is childhood. He’s magically woken up by a pair of singing whales

Why the hell would there need to be whales there? To wake him up? He wakes up on his own, not because of whales. The whale shot just feels weird. And why would they swim near an oil wreckage in the first place? I believe these whales are a hint at Aquaman.

Maybe I’m reading too much, but I could totally see Atlantis sending out some whales to investigate what hell is going on with that oil rig out there, or something.

So there you have it. Six references to a larger DC universe. With a bonus character because I love him. Either way, this world is established. Now they just have to establish the characters. [/Film]

Studios are kind of afraid that improved home theater experiences are cannibalizing movie theater ticket sales, so they’ve slowly taken steps to curb that. The proliferation of Netflix and VOD is allowing people to wait a couple months and check out a movie for half the price of a movie ticket. And hey, it’s much cheaper for a group of friends to rent a movie for $5 than everyone paying $11.

Of course, movie buffs recognize that there’s something special about a theater. Everyone has to shut up and watch the movie, firstly. Have you tried to have a movie night with other people? Most of the time people are doing other things and the movie is almost secondary. You also really do get video quality that is unmatched my TVs and you get a sound experience that is unparalleled.

Oh, and it’s a guaranteed communal experience with other humans – good or bad. You get to experience something with other humans, and we don’t do too much of that anymore cause we segment ourselves off into our smartphone worlds.

So I’m a really big fan of what Paramount is trying to do here. Their Mega Ticket is $50. Here’s what you get: a 3D showing of the film before the movie opens wide, a small popcorn, an HD download of the film when it’s released on Blu Ray, limited edition 3D glasses and a full-size, limited edition poster.

Now I don’t care about the glasses or the poster, or even the 3D showing, but I do care about the value here. A 3D movie costs around $15. An HD digital purpose of a movie costs around $20. A small popcorn is around $5. A poster is around $10. Glasses are, I dunno, some price. That’s $50 right there. You’re really getting your money’s worth.

The negative here is that this is for World War Z, which is a movie I’m not very hyped about and don’t expect to like. However, for something that excites me and expect to like – like Elysium or Gravity – I’d do this in a heart beat.

You can check out the program at World War Z’s website here. [World War Z via /Film]

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Would you be willing to pay for something like this for certain films?

When console manufacturers show off what their console does they like to make tech demos. Most of the time these demos are kind of lame, showing off how many ducks you can have in a pool or some volcano stuff. But Sony seems to have figured it out.

They’ve continually turned to one of their best developers – Quantic Dream, makers of Heavy Rain – to put together short tech demos. This really started when Sony was showing off the PS3. Quantic Dream put together The Casting, which actually previewed a character from Heavy Rain. It was impressive!

At Sony’s E3 briefing, the company showed off The Dark Sorcerer, a tech demo showing off the power of PS4. It’s even more impressive than The Casting and its far more enjoyable. At the briefing, they only showed off a couple minutes. But Sony has now released the entire 12-minute short.

It’s worth watching. Not only does it show how advanced these new systems can get, it also hints at the possibility of video games with better narratives. One of the problems that video game narratives face – and there are many – is that it’s hard to feel for a lot of the characters. There’s always an uncanny valley thing going on. If they can look more human and emote more like humans it’ll be easier for us to connect.

This is also the same motion capture technology that’s all the rage in Hollywood films like Avatar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I really think there’s something there in that technology that’ll help games tell better narrative stories. Of course, game stories have a lot of issues, but these are nice steps.

If you’ve paid attention to anything in the past couple of weeks you’ll know that Man of Steel is everywhere. There’s a National Guard Man of Steel spot, there are sponsored Facebook posts featuring Twizzlers and Man of Steel. There’s the Carls Jr. Super burger, there’s Walmart. SEARS features prominently in the film. And there’s that awesome Gillette shaving campaign.

What in the world is going on. Should you be worried? AdAge reports that Warner Bros. has nabbed nearly 100 promotional partners for the new Superman movie, worth about $170 million. The Hollywood Reporter says that the Brothers Warner are planning on adding more just before the film comes out. Why?

It’s to appeal to every possible market and niche. Warner Bros. obviously feels like they have THE event movie of 2013. When The Dark Knight came out everyone went to go see it. Then they went to see it again. It was a huge event movie that only got outdone by The Avengers, which also had a lot of promotional partners. So that’s why. The question then becomes: Could this be a bad thing?

Yes, as noted by AdAge:

The studio and marketers “can achieve success when the marketing tie-ins are separate and distinct both in message and in target audience,” said Tom Meyer, president of the entertainment division of Marketing Arm. “Likewise, when there is category overlap and the campaigns are targeted at similar audiences, you can cause consumer confusion, which is worse for the marketer than the studio.”

If you have some guy who really loves Carls Jr, but hates the shit out of Twizzlers then you’re going to alienate him. He’ll really really excited when he sees that Super burger and will order it, but the moment he sees those Man of Steel Twizzler ads on Facebook he’s going to lose interest in the film.

That’s the problem Warner Bros. has with so many promotional partners. However, if they’ve done their marketing research intelligently they shouldn’t have too big of a problem. In fact, the only problem they could have is counting all the money that Man of Steel is going to make them. [AdAge]

Imagine you’re a young actor that’s had roles in smaller movies and TV shows. You get the chance to audition for a role as iconic as Superman. It’s a career changer! Or, it could be a career changer (sorry, Brandon Routh). But what if you missed that call because you were way into your video game?

Henry Cavill was promoting Man of Steel on Jay Leno and admitted to that happening to him. Take it away, Supes:

“I’m a big PC gamer, and I was playing an online game called World of Warcraft.”…I was playing this game, and you can’t save it. You can’t pause or anything, and other people are relying on you to play certain roles on a team. And it was a highpoint of the game. And so the phone’s ringing, and I’m ignoring it and ignoring it, because I’m not going to bail on these guys. And I look down and it’s Zack Snyder calling, so I dive for the phone, and I missed the call from Zack Snyder, the one I’d been waiting for, for Man Of Steel.”

Obviously Cavill eventually got in touch with Snyder and he’s now set to show us what this new reinvented Superman/Clark Kent is all about in a week. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the video footage of this conversation for a while because NBC is uploading these things a segment at a time.

I think, come next week, we’ll all be very happy that Cavill got the call and was able to call Snyder back. Man of Steel is probably going to lead to a sequel as well, so let’s hope he pays attention to his phone when they call him back for Man of Steel 2. [via Uproxx]

Fast 6 has one of the more insane set pieces in recent memory. The gang has to bring down a giant carrier plane with a bunch of cars on what seems to be the longest runway of them all. How did they do it? Well, lots and lots of CG. However, director Justin Lin is in love with old school, practical effects.

So Lin would create physical manifestations of what the CG would be like and then coat over it with a whole bunch of CG. The good people at Wired got a detailed look at how this went down when they visited renowned special effects house Double Negative.

I’m a huge fan of practical effects. I think they genuinely make movies better. With CG, you always run the risk of taking people out of the experience if things are too obvious. It also can’t help actors if they’re doing everything in front of a green screen. Movies also lose a bit of charm when they decide to do pure CG rather than practical sets.

And really, how awesome is it that they built a giant flaming plane skeleton? As they say in the video, the actors and stuntmen really had to react to the giant flaming plane behind them. And just when I thought I couldn’t adore this franchise enough, they go and employ practical effects in addition to CG ones. Yes, they just coat over the practical effects in post production but at least they try to ground it in practicality. [via /Film]

One of the more annoying parts of going to a CineMark or AMC theater is their condescending or dumb “No Talking, No Texting” PSAs. Especially CineMarks, which basically treats you like a kid in a classroom with a stern, almost douchey voice laid on top. It’s terrible and doesn’t grab anyone’s attention. It doesn’t solve the problem at all.

Alamo Drafthouse, however, has found a way to make these PSAs fun to watch and effective. Their Voicemail ad is still hilarious and effective, as is their James Franco one. Their latest is inspired by Before Midnight, which is the follow up to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

They got stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy to have some fun in telling someone in the theater to stop talking and texting so that their performances can be fully appreciated. It’s fun, and it’s something other theaters don’t do.

Please take note, AMC and CineMark. This is how you do those boring PSAs. [via Slate]

This new behind-the-scenes Man of Steel featurette just adds to my excitement for this movie. It features many of the big names behind the film, including director Zack Snyder, producer Deborah Snyder, star Henry Cavill and screenwriter David S. Goyer talking about how they came up with this new, grounded Superman.

They go into how you have to make a Superman for a modern audience and all that jazz, but it also shows off some neat behind-the-scenes footage (practical street destruction!) in addition to some new footage from the film as well.

What strikes me as interesting is the inclusion of Am-PM and Sears. But I guess Deborah Snyder is correct, they wanted to make the world feel real. And what’s more real world than seeing a Sears with its doors blown off and an Am-Pm gas station? All we need is a Subway and this movie will significantly push the “real” factor. There is, however, an IHOP in there so that’s good too.

Anyway, it’s clear at this point that everyone on the production knows what they’re doing and has a clear idea of what the movie is. We just have to hope that this comes across to us in the film and that they actually execute. [via EW]