….
The training sessions didn't end after that first rehearsal.
They multiplied.
What started as a simple backward slide evolved into three weeks of the most grueling, technical, and frankly weird stunt preparation anyone on the team had ever experienced.
Henry Cavill essentially lived in that Burbank warehouse.
Some mornings he would arrive before the riggers, still nursing coffee, and find Jack Gill already there, staring at cable configurations like a man possessed.
….
The first week was spent just trying to understand the mechanics of Superman's movement.
"Look at this." Regal said on Day 13, standing in front of a whiteboard covered in diagrams. "With Iron Man, you show the thrust, propulsion, jets kicking in, and that's it. The audience instantly gets how he moves. You don't need to spell out the mechanics because their brain connects the dots the moment they see it."
He slashed a line through one of the diagrams. "Superman? Nothing. He just... decides to go up. "And when he comes to a halt mid-air, he doesn't drift or correct or lose balance." he said. "He just stops, perfectly still, like gravity itself has been switched off for him alone."
Jack rubbed his temples. "So we are screwed."
"Maybe." Regal said, studying Jack's expression. "-But you don't look like someone who has actually hit a dead end."
It's true, if anything he looked excited about the challenge.
Jack grinned, but there was exhaustion in it. "We need to make it so smooth, so natural, that people's brains don't even think to question it. We seduce them past the logic."
"Poetry. How do we actually do it?"
"Trial and error. Lots of error."
They started with Henry on a single cable, lifted five feet off the ground.
It looked absurd.
Henry hung there, arms slightly out, trying different poses. "How is this?"
"Like a Christmas ornament." Elliot called from the floor.
"Helpful, thanks."
"Drop your shoulders." Jack said, circling beneath him. "You're too rigid. Superman's been doing this since he was a teenager. It's not effort for him - it's reflex."
Henry adjusted, loosening his posture. It helped. Marginally.
"It still looks like I am dangling."
"Because you are dangling." Jack said flatly. "Maria, let's add the secondary cables. Cross-rigging."
By Day 15, they had four cables on Henry, fans blasting from three directions, and the cape finally starting to move like it was responding to flight rather than just hanging like fabric.
Henry had been up there for forty minutes.
"Can we—" he started.
"Not yet." Jack said, adjusting a cable tension. "Rotate fifteen degrees left."
Henry complied, his core muscles trembling. "Jack, I can't feel my abs."
"That means you're engaging them."
"That means they're dying."
Elliot walked underneath him with a water bottle. "Want me to hold a straw up?"
"I want you to swap places with me."
"Can't. Union rules."
"There are no union rules for this!"
"Exactly. I am protected by the absence of precedent."
Despite everything, Henry laughed. Then immediately regretted it as his core wobbled and the cables swayed.
"Stop moving!" Jack barked.
"I am not—Elliot made me laugh!"
"Elliot, stop making him laugh."
"I didn't do anything!"
Regal, watching from the monitor, finally took pity. "Jack, bring him down. He is been up there long enough."
"Five more minutes."
"Jack."
"Three more minutes."
"Now."
Jack sighed but signaled to Maria. "Alright, lower him. Slowly."
Henry's feet touched the mat and he immediately crouched, hands on his knees. His shoulders were shaking, not from exertion, but from suppressed laughter and exhaustion mixed together in a slightly hysterical combination.
"This is horrible." he said.
"This is superhero filmmaking." Regal corrected.
"Same thing."
….
By the second week, they'd built what Jack started calling "the Superman movement library."
Different types of flight., rigs and physics.
The Launch took four days to perfect.
The pneumatic rig could propel Henry upward fast, really fast. The first time they tested it, Henry's instinct was to throw his arms out for balance.
"No!" Jack shouted. "Arms down! You look like you're falling!"
"I am falling! Upward!"
"You are Superman! You have done this ten thousand times!"
They reset, tried again.
This time Henry kept his arms at his sides, but his face gave him away, eyes wide, jaw clenched.
Ben, watching from the crash mats, offered his insight. "Mate, think of it like diving. You don't tense up when you dive, you commit. Same thing here. Commit to the launch."
Henry looked down at him. "Have you done this?"
"Once, hated it. But I committed."
"Inspiring."
On the eighth attempt, something clicked. Henry launched upward, arms relaxed, face calm, and for just a moment, he looked like he meant to be going up. Like it was his choice.
"Hold it!" Regal jumped out of his chair. "Whatever you just did - that is the movement. That's the way Superman should look."
Henry, being lowered back down, was breathing hard but grinning. "I stopped thinking."
"Then keep not thinking," Jack said. "Do it again."
The Cruise was somehow worse.
Henry spent hours lying prone on the dolly rig, a reinforced board that slid along a track. His arms forward, cape trailing behind, body perfectly horizontal.
The problem was endurance. Holding that position, keeping his back straight, his core engaged, his expression focused - it was agonizing.
"My everything hurts." Henry said on Day 19 after a two-hour session.
"Which is everything specifically?" Regal asked.
"All of it. My back, my shoulders, my neck. I think my hair hurts."
Maria, adjusting the rig, didn't look up. "Your hair doesn't have nerve endings."
"Tell that to my hair."
Jack walked over with a heating pad. "Twenty-minute break, stretch. Then back up."
"You are a cruel man, Jack."
"I know. That's why I am good at this."
But the thing was, nobody was slacking. Jack stayed later than anyone, reconfiguring rigs, testing cable strengths.
Maria came in on her day off to rebuild a harness that had been chafing Henry. Elliot practiced falls for sequences he'd never even be in, just to understand the rhythm of the film.
And Henry? Henry never complained when it mattered. Between takes, sure, he'd gripe, joke, make sarcastic comments. But when Jack said "ready," Henry was ready.
The Hover broke everyone's brain.
Four cables, perfect tension and absolute stillness.
"You can't move." Jack explained. "Even breathing affects the balance. Shallow breaths, slow and steady."
Henry hung there, ten feet up, trying to become a statue.
Thirty seconds in, he swayed slightly.
"Too much." Jack called.
Henry corrected, overcorrected and swayed the other way.
"Henry."
"I am trying."
"Try quieter."
Regal intervened. "Jack, maybe we're approaching this wrong. Superman hovers because he's choosing to stay in place, right? Not because he's frozen. There's still life in him."
Jack considered this. "So micro-movements are okay. As long as they're controlled."
"Exactly."
They tried again.
This time, when Henry swayed slightly, Jack didn't call it out.
The cape moved in the wind.
Henry's chest rose and fell with breath.
He looked... alive.
Floating, but alive.
"Better." Regal said.
"My arms are asleep." Henry called down.
"We will fix that in post."
….
The third week was combat.
"Here's the pitch." Jack said on Day 22. "You are flying, someone hits you. You go backward, fast, tumble, crash through a building, come out the other side still airborne."
Henry, already strapped in, stared at him. "You want me to tumble, while flying, on wires."
"Yes."
His face darkened.
They added a gimbal to the rig, a rotating mount that let Henry spin mid-flight. The first time they activated it, Henry rotated once, twice, three times before they stopped him.
He hung there, upside-down, breathing carefully.
"You good?" Elliot asked.
"I didn't throw up, yet."
"So… that's a yes?"
But they kept going.
Because that was the thing, everyone was exhausted, sore, but nobody quit.
Jack stayed until midnight rewiring systems.
Maria learned to anticipate cable snags before they happened. Elliot took hits on the crash mats over and over, teaching his body to fall so Henry could learn to watch and mimic.
And Regal? Regal watched every test, gave notes, adjusted plans, but mostly he just trusted them.
Trusted Jack's insane rigging ideas, Maria's engineering instincts and Henry to survive another day on the wires.
On Day 25, they ran a sequence: launch, cruise, hover, combat rotation, recovery.
Henry nailed it.
Then immediately asked to go again.
"Why?" Jack asked, surprised. "That was perfect."
"I can do it better."
"Henry, you've been up there for an hour."
"One more run."
Regal caught Jack's eye but he just shrugged.
They ran it again.
Henry was right, it definitely looked better.
….
On the last day, they assembled everything - every rig, technique, painful lesson from three weeks of trial and error.
Ninety seconds and full sequence.
Launch, transition, flight, combat., tumble, recovery and especially descent.
The entire crew gathered to watch, not just the stunt team, but costume designers, production assistants, even the catering staff who'd heard what was happening and snuck in.
"Ready?" Jack asked.
Henry, strapped into the harness one last time, nodded. His face was calm. Focused.
"Let's do this."
"Action!"
Henry launched upward - smooth, confident. Transitioned into horizontal flight on the dolly rig, his body a perfect line. The crane lifted him into the hover, ten feet, fifteen, twenty. He hung there, still and powerful.
Then the combat sequence. Elliot signaled the punch. Henry's head snapped back, and the rotation began, once, twice, his cape whipping around him in a violent spiral.
The cables pulled him backward, fast, and Henry let his body tumble before catching himself mid-air, stabilizing.
Then the descent - angled downward, diving toward the mat, cape streaming behind him.
The crane lowered him the final five feet. His boots touched the ground.
Silence.
Then the entire warehouse erupted.
Applause, cheers, someone whistling. Maria was wiping her eyes. Elliot was clapping so hard his hands had to hurt.
Jack walked over to Henry, who was bent over, hands on knees, absolutely spent.
"Kid." Jack said quietly. "That was the best wire work I have ever seen an actor do."
Henry looked up. "Really?"
"Really."
Henry made an arrogant and proud smile. "I had help."
"Damn right you did. But you did the hard part."
Regal approached, and for once, he wasn't grinning. He looked serious. "Henry, I knew you could act. But that, what you just did, that's belief. You made me believe you can fly."
Henry's voice cracked slightly. "Thankgod. Because I would prefer never doing that again."
"You're doing it Monday."
"I know. That's the tragedy."
Regal clapped him on the shoulder. "You just spent three weeks learning to fly. Trust me, the hard part's over."
Henry looked at him, then at Jack, then at the massive rig still hanging from the warehouse ceiling.
"Somehow." he said. "I don't believe you."
But he was smiling.
Exhausted, sore, probably going to need a week of physical therapy, but smiling.
Because they had done it.
They would figure out how to make Superman fly.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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