Five Projects for DCE to Jump On, Day 4: New ‘Superman’ Film

Superman has had both a wonderful and rocky career on the big screen. The film commonly referred to as Superman ’78 by nerds like myself set the high mark for how good not only a Superman movie could be but a comic book movie in general It’s sequel, while having major problems due to infighting and a switching directors, is loved by a lot of people. Sadly after Superman II the drop of is dramatic. I don’t need to go into the details, but trying to sit through Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, is really difficult to do.

As we all know Superman Returns was supposed to be the return to greatness for the franchise and while the movie isn’t terrible, it’s not the film fans had waited decades to see. To make a boring drawn out story about how Superman is dealing with coming back to Earth after years away isn’t exactly the action packed good time the franchise needed to cement itself into the public’s consciousness.

Luckily DCE is here and they have the opportunity to really do something special with Superman. As a fan of Superman, some one who was named Kent in honor of the character and who fondly remembers wearing both a Superman t-shirt and a belt while running around with a towel as a cape, this is what I want to see.

Superman needs a relaunch. A start from scratch, but not in the way you might think. Superman hasn’t needed an origin story for decades. The character is firmly cemented into all our minds as the alien from the dying planet Krypton who was destined to save us all. Great. Now let’s use today’s special effects and give Superman an adventure worthy of the big screen! Completely recast the series and for this first film back, less Clark Kent, more Superman! But Superman is nothing without a villain to fight.

NO MORE LEX LUTHOR. I’ve had it with that bald douche! He’s the villain that studios have relied on for their Superman films four times now, and he’s come close to winning ONCE. I thought Superman II showed us how weak Lex Luthor really is when compared to the villains from Krypton or Superman himself. Superman can turn back time in movies. What can Lex Luthor do to mess with that?

There are two new obvious choices for villain this time around and Brainiac seems like the most logical choice. He’s been around forever, is now closely tied to the destruction of Krypton and it’s history, and is just a cool villain. Brainiac is a villain with many different looks over the years so almost anything works. I say almost because on Smallville the character was played by James Marsters of Buffy fame. Bad choice.

Brainiac can bring a lot as a villain. He can either be a Terminator or Matrix like machine mind that simply doles out orders to destructive robots and machines that could really wreak some havoc on Metropolis and the rest of the world. Or he can be a physical villain, a machine himself, powerful enough to take on Superman. He can also appear as partially humanoid and play on Superman’s sympathies regarding the history of Krypton and his true parents. There’s a lot of choices you can make. The key to writing Brainiac is taking all the best parts from comics 0ver the decades and finding a perfect mixture for the big screen. I’d like to see him as a super intelligence, the virus version of Brainiac that threatens to control the world’s computers and send us into a dark age. But I also want Superman to have to punch something. The writers can find the math on that one.

The other villain that they can work with is Darkseid. Darkseid is a conquering warrior king from the planet Apokolips. His goal is to simply change the entire universe to fit in his image and remove everyone’s free will. This is of course everything Superman stands against. Darkseid is almost as strong as Superman and has an army of warriors working with him, a whole planet’s worth. This would be a battle the scope of which no one has ever seen on film. It would be complete chaos in the streets, people fighting off demon looking creatures all over earth while Superman and Darkseid rumble with Earth’s fate in the balance. What’s great about this story is that it could easily lead into tomorrow’s article The Justice League film.

In the end all I want is a Superman film that is fun and action packed. All these rumors about The Wachowski Brothers wanting to direct (none of which are proven) make me all tickled pink and giddy. They’d surely get the idea and let’s face it… The Matrix’s Neo is Superman. A fresh start is what this character needs.

… Or a Smallville movie…

JUST KIDDING!