Superman’s little red shorts are one of those things superhero fans tend to have a hard time being normal about: Walking, as they do, the line between being totally iconic and also completely ridiculous, the Daisy Dukes Of Steel generate comment whether they’re part of a cinematic Supes’ costume—as they have been in most incarnations, including James Gunn’s latest—or if they’re absent, as they were with Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel. Now, though, we can finally get a glimpse at what a brighter, more primary color-coded version of Henry Cavill’s Kal-El might have looked like, as Snyder hopped on social media this weekend to show some of the first test images of his version of the character—complete with a much brighter, more shorts-forward look.

Posted to Snyder’s Instagram, the photos show Cavill, not in the textured, armored-looking suit he wore in three films for the director (and then one more because Dwayne Johnson pretty much begged for it), but a clear copy of the suit that Christopher Reeve wore for his four Superman films, red trunks and all. It’s a simplistic, undeniably effective look: You can understand why Snyder notes in the picture’s caption that as soon as he passed the shots on to his collaborators at Warner Bros., “Everyone agreed: Henry Cavill was Superman.”

Interestingly, Gunn revealed, back during the run-up to the release of 2025’s Superman, that he’d talked directly with Snyder about his own struggles with the red trunks, which he couldn’t quite wrap his head around: “I talked to Zack Snyder, who was like, ‘I tried a billion different versions with the trunks, and at the end of the day, I tried it, but I just couldn’t get there.’ And I was feeling exactly the same way.” Gunn told reporters that it was actually Superman actor David Corenswet who ended up squaring the circle for him, acknowledging that the trunks make Superman look a little goofy, and that that’s actually okay: “One of the things David said is that Superman wants kids to not be afraid of him. He’s an alien. He’s got these incredible powers. He shoots beams out of his eyes. … He’s incredibly powerful and could be considered scary. He wants people to like him. He wants to be a symbol of hope and positivity. So he dresses like a professional wrestler. He dresses in a way that makes people unafraid of him, that shows that hope and shows that positivity. And that really clicked in for me.”