When people poke fun at Superman, one of the go-to niggles about the character concerns the glasses he wears as Clark Kent. The alien from Krypton wears spectacles as a means of hiding his secret identity, and nitpickers like to complain that they shouldn't actually work in that capacity. With James Gunn's upcoming Superman movie, however, those complaints should officially come to an end: not only does the blockbuster provide an explanation for how the glasses work, but the explanation ties back to an answer that has been in the canon for decades.
In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, James Gunn has noted that he personally had issues with Clark Kent's glasses prior to taking on the most recent Superman film, but that changed when he learned that the Man of Steel doesn't sport traditional eyewear. Instead, they have the capacity to essentially hypnotize people who look at him so that they can't make a visual connection between his face and the world's most powerful hero. As the filmmaker explained, it was something he learned about from award-winning comic book writer Tom King:
That’s canon in the comics. It’s kind of been forgotten but that’s from the comics. I was sitting with Tom King, the comic book writer, and I was like, ‘You know, the thing that I just don’t really know how to reconcile in myself is the glasses because the glasses always bothered me as a kid.’ They bothered me because I just don’t have that much suspension of disbelief to believe that.
There are still a lot of people who say that a person wearing a pair of glasses can change the shape of their face and appear differently to others who don't know them as glasses-wearers... but "hyno-glasses" is a much more straightforward explanation – and the idea was first introduced to Superman comics back in 1978.
Hypnotic glasses are a kind of shortcut that should get people to stop nitpicking when they go see Superman in theaters later this month... but James Gunn also gives a lot of credit to actor David Corenswet for his ability to physically transform when he is playing Clark Kent instead of Kal-El. In fact, he even puts the turn on a higher echelon than the legendary work of Christopher Reeve, saying,
You know, they’re two different people even though I think out of all the actors that have played Superman, Corenswet looks the most different as Clark Kent to Superman, even more so than Chris Reeve. But he said, ‘You know, there’s an answer for that in the comics, it’s canon that they hypnotize people.’
Fans won't have to wait much longer before they get to see Clark Kent's hypnotic glasses in action for themselves. Starring Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Skyler Gisondo, Nathan Fillion, Anthony Carrigan, Isabela Merced, and Edi Gathegi in addition to the aforementioned David Corenswet, Superman is now less than two weeks away from flying into theaters – set to start playing on the big screen everywhere on July 11.
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