James Gunn Cut A Problematic Superman Scene After Poor Feedback

Writer, director, and producer James Gunn can occasionally be a little controversial, taking big swings with beloved franchises and characters that sometimes royally irk fans. His upcoming "Superman" film, starring David Corenswet as everyone's favorite Kryptonian, is almost guaranteed to be divisive because it looks to be the polar opposite of Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel" (and Snyder's fandom is intense, to say the least), but there's at least one potentially problematic scene we know audiences were spared from. In an interview clip from the YouTube channel Jake's Takes, Sara Sampaio, who plays Eve Teschmacher, and María Gabriela de Faría, who plays the Engineer, revealed that there was a scene that was received so poorly by test audiences that it was cut completely. 

While there are quite a few things you can get away with doing in movies, one of the ultimate taboos seems to be violence against animals — especially dogs. That's why it's not really much of a surprise that a scene in which the villainous Ultraman punches Supes' dog, Krypto, was just too much for test audiences. No one likes seeing dogs get hurt, and there are entire websites dedicated to finding out whether or not the dog dies in a movie, so people's problems with the pupper punch make a lot of sense.

Gunn has never had a problem with a little violence against animals in the past, with some pretty brutal bird deaths in "The Suicide Squad," a decapitated German Shepherd in his debut feature (the hard-R horror-comedy "Slither"), and some squeamish moments with Rocket Raccoon and his animal pals in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," but apparently test audiences just couldn't handle Ultraman punching poor scruffy lil' Krypto. The dog is based on Gunn's own pooch and is really stinking cute, so people probably handled it even worse than your average downbeat doggy movie moment. Look, people are still upset about the Beagle puppy that gets killed at the beginning of "John Wick," so maybe it was smart to take out the Krypto knuckle sandwich. After all, "Superman" has a lot more riding on it than something like "Slither," and a wide swath of audiences just aren't going to tolerate canine carnage. 

The other factor here is that since Ultraman is usually Superman's clone, that means we could have potentially seen someone who looks just like Superman punching Krypto, which could be a little traumatic for younger audiences. The actors noted that they felt the scene was "the worst scene" in the movie, so it sounds like the cast wasn't all that fond of the moment, either. But since Krypto is a CGI super-dog, at least there was no danger of a real dog being injured while filming. Krypto is sure to get into some peril in "Superman," but we'll have to wait to see what happens until the movie hits theaters on July 11, 2025.