James Gunn Can Fix Superman's Movie Villain Curse (By Learning From Batman)
All eyes are on James Gunn when it comes to the Man of Steel's future. The co-president of DC Studios and current helmsman of live-action Superman movies has plenty of superhero experience, but even he has never been in charge of such a project of such gravity. Can he pull off the impossible and give the world a truly great Superman film for arguably the first time since 1978?
Fortunately, there's a way to put together "Superman: Legacy" that plays to both Gunn's offbeat sensibilities and Superman's Boy Scout image. Even better, said way also fixes one of the biggest problems in past "Superman" movies — which is their terrible villain game.
On the surface, this might seem like a pretty awful thing to say, but think on it. Yes, many "Superman" movies have featured extremely intimidating villains — both the Terence Stamp and Michael Shannon versions of General Zod are excellent — and delightful mastermind enemies such as Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor. There's just one problem: It's always one of those two guys, and repeating Zod and Luther is getting very, very tired. In order to establish itself as the Big Blue's new beginning, "Superman: Legacy" needs to level up its antagonists. To do this, Gunn must crack open the comic books, avoid Luthor and Zod, and borrow Batman's fromplaybook when it comes to villain diversity.
Superman movies have recycled their villains for decades
With almost no exception, the overwhelming majority of Superman movies have featured either Zod or Luthor as the main antagonist. In fact, only a single Superman solo movie — 1983's "Superman III" — has been completely devoid of either. Perhaps the most ridiculous example is "Batman v Superman," which finally introduces the classic Superman villain Doomsday ... but reinvented as a monster constructed from the genetic material of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Shannon's Zod. So even when Superman gets a new cinematic bad guy, he's still Lex and Zod. Groan.
Neither Lex nor the Kryptonian general are useless antagonists, of course. The former is one of the top comic book villains in history, and the latter is so easy to shoehorn in a Superman movie that any filmmaker would be tempted to use him: "Look, here's a dude from the same place as Superman, they have the exact same powers but this guy's evil." Backstories don't get any more concise than that.
This is, however, precisely why "Superman: Legacy" should steer clear of both. These guys are old hat. Instead, Gunn's movie should look into the way the Batman movies have rotated the Dark Knight's sizable rogues' gallery, thus creating a great many supervillains with tentpole movie precedent.
Batman films love bringing in new bad guys
Sure, live-action Batman movies aren't completely innocent of overusing villains, either. After all, they've featured five different six versions of the Joker — six if you count Joaquin Phoenix's standalone version. However, Joker is an outlier, and unlike Lex and Zod, he's arguably just as big a star as Batman — as proven by the massive success of that aforementioned standalone film.
Once you look past the clown prince of crime, though, Batman has faced a ton of villains on film. 1966's Adam West-starring, rogues gallery-heavy "Batman: The Movie" notwithstanding, the only non-Joker villains that have had multiple versions in live-action Batman movies are the Riddler, Two-Face, Penguin, Bane, Catwoman, Zsasz, and Carmine Falcone.
These characters alone would give Batman a pretty impressive list of movie antagonists, but there's so, so much more. The films have featured an amazing number of other villains from the comics, including Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson), and Talia Al Ghul (Marion Cotillard). There's even the occasional obscure villain cameo, such as classic Swamp Thing baddie Dr. Jason Woodrue (John Glover) in "Batman and Robin." And that's not even going into the many, many Batman villains who appear outside "proper" Batman movies, such as ... well, roughly half the characters in the two "Suicide Squad" flicks. To top it off, the Snyderverse movies have seen Batman taking on the same two Superman villains that Superman always takes on in the movies. It's like the Dark Knight is showing off, at that point.
It's actually getting hard to find a major Batman baddie who hasn't appeared in a movie yet. Someday, even Professor Pyg will get his 15 minutes. Superman's rogues' gallery, meanwhile, remains almost totally unexplored.
Batman villains get hype that Superman villains don't, and there's a reason
Having a variety of villains is great for allowing Batman movies to explore different types of stories, but after years and years of great Bat-baddies, it's led to a surprising bonus: new Batman villains feed the hype machine like there's no tomorrow.
When a new Batman movie is announced, fans are desperate to find out which villans will feature, even if it's somebody they've seen before, and immediately theorizing how the movie will use that character. Tom Hardy playing a more comics-accurate, methodical Bane? Consider audiences piqued! Is Colin Farrell reimagining Danny DeVito's gruesome Penguin as a snarky mobster? Jump aboard the hype train! Cesar Romero handing the Joker makeup kit over to Jack Nicholson? 25 tickets, please!
At this point, bringing back an old villain creates hype in itself, because we not only know the villain but are familiar with older versions of them and eager to see how the new one measures up. It doesn't hurt that the Batman movies have an excellent villain track record. Who could have predicted that Heath Ledger would surpass Nicholson as the Joker? What fan could have guessed where Paul Dano would go with the Riddler, a character Jim Carrey turned into a human cartoon in "Batman Forever?"
That's the kind of buzz Superman movies should have behind them. Instead, all we have right now is, "What kind of haircut will Lex have this time around?" And the ironic thing is that, if we just look at the comics, Superman's assortment of bad guys is just as interesting as Batman's.
Superman has a rogues' gallery just as fantastic as Batman's
If "Superman: Legacy" indeed starts building up Supes' movie enemy list, it has plenty of talent at its disposal.
Despite what the movies would have you think, Big Blue has acquired a pretty awesome list of villains over the years. Apart from the obligatory "doppelganger" archetypes — think Bizarro, Cyborg Superman, Superboy Prime — there's the evil psycho-techno villain Brainiac, who's given Superman some of his biggest battles over the decades and has one heck of a cool skull-shaped spaceship.
If that's not your jam, how about the power-siphoning Parasite, who feasts on Superman's powers and thus requires careful strategy to defeat? Perhaps they could feature Metallo, a Terminator-style cyborg with a Kryptonite power source? Then there's Silver Banshee, a woman with mystical super scream powers that can hurt even Superman, and who can kill anyone by screaming their real name out loud? Maybe even Mister Mxyzptlk, an all-powerful imp from the 5th dimension who can do whatever he wants, sees through the 4th wall, and is utterly undefeatable unless Superman manages to make him say his name backward — a weakness that's just about as tricky as it sounds, and only banishes Mxyzptlk for 90 days, anyway.
You get the point. Superman has been around since the 1930s. There's a lot to draw from. It's a travesty that Warner Bros. has instead chosen to recycle the same villains over and over again. And in the rare case that they've actually bothered to feature non-Lex, non-Zod villains, they make up new ones, like Mark Pillow's abysmal Nuclear Man in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
James Gunn's love of obscure characters could finally give us much Superman bad guys
Fortunately, it's pretty obvious hat James Gunn will not take the obvious route when it comes to picking his Superman villain. Everything in Gunn's superhero film history speaks toward that. This is the guy that gave us three big-budget movies based on an obscure Marvel space superhero team, featuring a sentient tree and a talking raccoon. He followed that with a reboot-slash-sequel of "Suicide Squad," arguably the least-beloved DC movie at that point. Then he did an HBO show based on the most obnoxious character of "The Suicide Squad," announced before anyone had a clear idea how either the movie or the character would be received by the fans.
The man loves to follow his vision and said vision doesn't usually line up with common wisdom. Other filmmakers take Academy Award winners and stick them in grand superhero theater that ticks all the boxes, but Gunn's big emotional beats hinge on dance-offs and CGI otters — to say nothing of how he keeps handing star-making roles to pro wrestlers (who invariably proceed to crush it). At this point, no one can deny that his drum has a pretty great beat, but often, it can be difficult to understand where he's headed before you get to witness the finished product.
This applies to Gunn's villain game as much as anything. He, if anyone, isn't afraid to let Lex Luthor and General Zod have a rare day off, and shine the spotlight on some fresher faces.
So, which Superman villain would fit James Gunn best?
Gunn's superhero movie career has juggled two kinds of villains. The antagonists of both "Peacemaker" (the various Butterflies) and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (Chukwudi Iwuji's High Evolutionary) are intense creeps with a penchant for body horror. Meanwhile, the first two "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies have Ronan (Lee Pace) and Ego (Kurt Russell), two self-assured powerhouses with enough might to level planets.
Unless he's planning to rewrite his playbook for "Superman: Legacy" entirely, it's probably safe to assume that the movie's main antagonist fits one of those rough wheelhouses. It's also a pretty fair guess that he'll plan to steer clear of any and all Snyderverse-era villains — it's a reboot, after all. Finally, it's worth remembering that Gunn has a history of using multiple antagonists in his superhero movies, with colorful baddies ranging from Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) and Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) to Taserface (Chris Sullivan) and Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) hovering around the B-plots.
So, let's say Gunn intends to feature not one, but two supervillains in "Superman: Legacy," one from both brackets. Being a wild combination of utter ridiculousness and stone-cold threat, Mister Mxyzptlk would be a magnificent fit for Gunn's style. Defeating him would be a great cerebral challenge for David Corenswet's young Superman, and a well-cast Mzyzptlk could have the potential to become to the DCU what Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is to the MCU. The punchier side of Gunn's villain equation might go to Lobo, the Last Czarnian. The Main Man has enough brute force to clash with Superman, and he also has plenty of buzz behind him, thanks to the rumors that Gunn might cast current Aquaman Jason Momoa as Lobo.
Even if Gunn doesn't pick these two, it's near-guaranteed that he'll finally tap into Superman's horribly unexplored vault of villainy — and it's about time.