Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel gets its official MPAA rating; Plus, new villains?

And it’s a hard R!! For scenes of intense gore, decapitation, and apocalyptic destruction. 

Okay, we all know that would never happen.  But, man, what if it did?  The expected rating for Zack Snyder‘s MAN OF STEEL is PG-13 “for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, action and destruction, and for some language.”  This is consistent with most superhero movies, which is perfectly consistent with the general rating of the source material, at least in terms of how the material is presented.  The Comics Code Authority was dismantled years ago, leaving the industry to self-regulate and they’ve done well in keeping things consistent with which books are marketed to who.  PG-13 is the most suitable rating for mainstream books and I’m glad to see Supes stick with it (SUPERMAN RETURNS was also rated PG-13).

In other MAN OF STEEL news, it seems that news of two new villains in the film has leaked online, courtesy of…Lego sets?  Yep, those damn marketing tie-ins really know how to screw the secrecy pooch, don’t they?  The folks at Warner Bros. have been pretty good about keeping things under wraps, so there’s certainly the possibility that this isn’t accurate, but it sure seems legit.

According to a source for comicbook.com, a Lego set at the London Toy Fair revealed a “Battle of Smallville” playset, which has a character of Tor-An, a “sleeper-agent” of Zod on Earth.  The source also states that another villain, Dev-Em, a Kryptonian juvenile deinquent sentenced to the Phantom Zone, will also be in the film.  Tor-An is reportedly played by Richard Cetrone and Dev-Em by Richard Dufresne, both of whom previously worked with Snyder on SUCKERPUNCH.

True? False? Rumor?  Who’s to say?  Neither actor is listed on IMDB, but it seems fair to think that this could be accurate given the shroud of secrecy on the project thus far.  The sky’s the limit, really.

MAN OF STEEL, starring Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Amy Adams, and Laurence Fishburne takes flight on June 14, 2013.