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You will believe a man can fly. Or in this case, a girl.<\/p>\n
But not just fly. In Supergirl (review)<\/u>, the latest movie from James Gunn\u2019s DCU, the Girl of Steel has her own particular style of flying, using the ability as a sort of unique form of martial arts at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of liked her having her own flying style, because I think she’s so herself in every sense of the word,\u201d star Milly Alcock recently told me. \u201cShe can only ever be exactly who she is, so it makes sense that she wouldn’t conform.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s been quite a journey to go from the early days of onscreen Kryptonian flying to today\u2019s high-tech methods \u2013 and it\u2019s rarely been an easy path along the way.<\/p>\n
So with the help of the Woman of Tomorrow herself, Milly Alcock, and Supergirl\u2019s director Craig Gillespie, let\u2019s trace the earliest attempts to depict super-flight in movies and TV, and the heights that have been achieved in the modern DC movies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nMilly Alcock stars, and flies, in Supergirl.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
The Fleischer Shorts and the \u2018Effortlessness\u2019 of Flying<\/h2>\n Of course, there’ve been a ton of superhero movies over the years, and many of them have featured some form of flying or another. But Superman- and Supergirl-style flight has always been the trailblazer to which all other airbound characters have looked. In the case of Alcock\u2019s Supergirl, she flies in a manner similar to her cousin, as we saw in last year\u2019s Superman, but then she adds in a kick here or a punch there \u2013 melding her fighting with her flying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn’t got to see Superman at the point that we were doing these flying sequences, and there was this discussion of the physics of it and how fast it is,\u201d Craig Gillespie explains. \u201cRob Inch, our stunt coordinator, had a lot of input, which I liked. And it’s like for him, it was this effortlessness. She didn’t have to crouch down and jump. It was something that was very intuitive and easy to do, so he had a lot of input on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘I hadn’t got to see Superman at the point that we were doing these flying sequences, and there was this discussion of the physics of it and how fast it is.’
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThat sense of the ease of flight can actually be traced all the way back to the first onscreen depiction of Kryptonian flying, the animated Fleischer Superman shorts<\/u> from the early 1940s. Interestingly, while Superman was rotoscoped in that cartoon series \u2013 which is to say, much of the animation was traced over live-action shots \u2013 the actual flying of course could not be achieved this way. This gave the animators a free hand, in a sense, and the result was a sort of balletic dance through the sky that enabled them to chart some of the earliest movements of the Man of Steel. (Also, fun fact: This series marked the first time that Superman used flight as his regular mode of transportation as opposed to just jumping around Hulk-style.)<\/p>\n
Leaping forward 40 years or so for a quick aside, the beloved by many\/forgotten by even more TV series The Greatest American Hero tackled the question of how exactly flight would work. Like, do you just start levitating upwards, or is there some kind of forward thrust needed to get going? The show posited the opposite of the effortlessness that Gillespie wanted with Kara.<\/p>\n
In the series\u2019 pilot episode, <\/u>William Katt\u2019s hero of the title, Ralph Hinkley, is trying to figure out how to take off for his first flight. He\u2019s approached by a young boy who\u2019s been watching nearby and is obviously a comics fan. The kid points out what Ralph\u2019s doing wrong: \u201cYou gotta run like three steps, and jump with your hands out in front of you,\u201d he explains. And what do you know? It works!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe animated Fleischer Superman shorts from the early 1940s are the first onscreen instance of the character flying.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
You can see why the makers of the show introduced ideas like that. And really, it\u2019s something that even the modern superhero movies continue to struggle with. Putting aside the fact that the Greatest American Hero never really mastered his powers over the course of the show\u2019s three seasons, characters like this always run the risk of being too powerful. Says Alcock, \u201cHow would we make it harder for [Kara]?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy input was more like disabling the flying, like having her be poisoned,\u201d Gillespie says of his attempts to de-power Kara in the new movie. \u201cIt’s the tricky part of Superman or Supergirl \u2013 that they’re so all-powerful. It’s like how do you make them compromised?\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, the makers of the earliest attempt at a live-action Superman really<\/em> didn\u2019t have to worry about their version of Kal-El seeming too powerful\u2026<\/p>\nYou Will Believe a Man Can Fly\u2026 Sorta<\/h2>\n In 1948, Kirk Alyn became the first live-action version of the Man of Steel in Columbia Pictures\u2019 15-part movie serial, titled simply Superman<\/u>. Here, the filmmakers must\u2019ve figured that the Fleischer cartoon worked well enough, and so they simply cut to an animated version of Superman for the flying scenes. It\u2019s kind of cool, sure\u2026 but it\u2019s also kind of jarring by today\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe first live-action Superman serial starring Kirk Alyn used animation when flying was needed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
(Oddly enough, even Tim Burton resorted to this kind of trickery back in 1989\u2019s Batman, though in that case it was just to show the Dark Knight standing on the balcony of a skyscraper. Kinda weird, eh, Tim?)<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s be fair here to Kirk Alyn and directors Spencer Gordon Bennet and Thomas Carr. They were working with what they had at the time, and hey, fans finally had their first real, live Superman on the big screen.<\/p>\n
The resources at the disposal of Warner Bros. and DC Studios would probably boggle the minds of Bennet and Carr. For example, Alcock and Gillespie told me that the shot of Supergirl flying into a karate kick was achieved in-camera, as opposed to through CG or some other visual effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s in camera, and we had that massive fight sequence in the middle of the movie, and we started off in almost six weeks on that stage,\u201d Gillespie tells me. \u201cRobin, who was our stunt coordinator, came over at one point with all the ratcheting and the cabling of those flying sequences. There was eight miles of cable. And he said, \u2018I’ve never used eight miles of cable.\u2019 It’s that one shot, which was the stunt double. Mickey, and from way up the top of the set, she flies down about 50 yards and kicks\u2026. That was half our day.\u201d<\/p>\n
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