Man of Steel. Nolan Superman Reboot.

No offense, but Brainiac is just bigger than Luthor. If they want to establish a sequence of villainy, it should be Luthor => Brainiac, definitely.

You know what I'd like to see? Luthor's warsuit.

I had the idea that Luthor develops some kind of power armor to use in his fight against Superman as a result of studying Brainiac's remains. I also put him as the last because I just prefer the idea of capping off a trilogy with the hero's primary villain.

Or you could have Brainiac feeding him information and technology... like in the DCAU...

Brainiac's more of a direct threat, while Luthor has a bit more subtlety and nuance in his actions, and as archenemy is more liable to have plans which build up to a big climax over a period of time. So it makes sense for Brainiac to appear as an unrelated Big Bad in one movie while the next deals with Luthor's plans finally coming to fruition.

Villains shouldn't be chosen in a "this villain is more powerful than the last" fashion, but in more of a "which villain can we use to write a better escalating story," which can involve the next villains being more powerful than the last but doesn't actually require it.

It all depends on the kind of story that is told.

I think I've said this before in this thread, but I'd like to see a Superman movie that's more episodic in nature, without the conflict revolving around a single antagonist. It's hard to make a big, epic story for Superman because his main schtick is being way, way better than everyone else; if most of the movie is spent making the villain look unstoppable and Superman look like the underdog, it doesn't quite feel like Superman. I think it would be interesting if instead Superman had seperate encounters with several different, not-as-intimidating villains, sort of a superheroic Slice of Life thing, so long as a there's a sufficiently foreshadowed Knight of Cerebus who shows up in the third act.

edited 3rd Oct '12 6:32:11 PM by RavenWilder

^ I agree, which is why I think the series should slowly build up a Big Bad - Luthor being a good example because he's such a great foil for Clark/Superman and is in a nice role/niche to do that sort of thing - while having other Big Bads come and go on a movie by movie basis.

But naturally, all this villain talk is irrelevant because the mighty Titano is the greatest villain of all, right?

But my biggest wish for these movies? I think a Superman movie should focus on Clark - something that a lot of writers outside the comics don't do but really should. This series should be about Clark coming to terms with the fact that he is a Superman, not Kal El coming to terms with being a part of humanity.

edited 3rd Oct '12 6:36:10 PM by KnownUnknown

I think the best 3 act setup is the first villain being the setup, the second being the most powerful and the 3rd being the most emotionaly charged encounter. Although suiting the needs of a paticular story is good, as is variety.

edited 3rd Oct '12 6:40:26 PM by C0mraid

Titano wouldn't be too out of place. I mean, Snyder PROMISED a film about girls fighting giant robot Germans*, so a giant monkey with Kryptonite vision shouldn't be too out there for him.

• Sadly, in the finished product, none of that stuff was in any way important to the plot.

edited 3rd Oct '12 6:36:19 PM by maxwellelvis

I'd prefer them to do Luthor after Brainac actually. It would be more interesting to see something like out of the JLU arc with Luthor trying to jack Brainiac tech.

Eh. I actually see Braniac as kinda needing more build-up than Luthor, really. Luthor would be set up quite nicely after two aliens get in a super-powered beatdown on Earth. Though it ultimately doesn't matter. Luthor could be used to set up Brainiac and vice-verca. I just think Brainiac is a better finishing villain than Luthor. Zod is the appetizer. A taste of whats's to come. Luthor is the steak. He goes in the middle and the real meat of the trilogy is here. Brainiac is the dessert. He wraps up the meal with a big finish.

Of course, they could always use Doomsday. ^__^

Please name Brainiac Vril Dox. Brainiac just sounds too goofy for a world-killing emotionless machine. Although you can put a gag reference to the original name making Jimmy call him 'that Brainiac' at some point. Bonus points if that's how Superman calls him to taunt him in their final battle.

They always could set Brainiac as the mastermind who just happens to use Doomsday as his strong arm brute. Maybe use that to mirror Luthor's relationship to Metallo?

edited 3rd Oct '12 7:10:41 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

You know what I've long thought would be neat in a Superman adaptation (whether film, cartoon series, or what-have-you)? If Doomsday shows up and fights Superman, but the actual focus of that scene is on Lois using the distraction to sneak into a secure location to do her investigative reporter thing, and Supes and Doomsday clobbering each other is just a Funny Background Event.

edited 3rd Oct '12 7:21:31 PM by RavenWilder

I personally would love seeing a Superman movie made up of little vignettes rather than one narrative with a single villian. I have no problem with unified narrative, I'd just like to see an episodic Superman film, kind of structurally reminiscent of Pulp Fiction (though bearing no other resemblance to that film).

Let me think...good Superman villians...Brainiac, Darkseid could be good, but if you add the New Gods you'd run the risk of making Superman a character player in his own film...Bizarro could be cool...

One of the things I loved about Batman Begins was that it utilized a half dozen or so established lesser villains (not all directly from the comics, such as the Ducard/Ras Al Ghul switch or Rutger Hauers character). Superman has a much more limited "movie scale" Big Bad gallery but a healthy supply of brutes to at least give him a challenge.

And the nice part is, Smallville already ruined all of those villains, so the studio has a primer on how not to handle them.

I hope they make Lex Luthor a utopia justifies the means type of character.

That might be a long shot. The majority of Luthor stories are plain bitterness and distilled evil...

I just kind of wish they will go a different route with Lex Luthor.

Luthor should be a paranoid old product of the Cold War, and played by Bryan Cranston. The film trilogy should be partly about his development: he'd start off suspicious of Superman & trying to kill him out of blind fear of the unknown, then gradually let go of his problems and learn to trust Superman. In the final film he'd side with Superman against whichever baddie.

That's how I'd do it anyway.

Naw, Luthor's a racist.

...Speciesist.

...Racist/speciesist.

although he did pop one on Amanda Waller in that one cartoon movie. Scarred me for life.

I wouldn't call him a speciest exactly. He has been willing to work with Brainiac and even Solaris at one point. Would you call him an Elitist?

Humanist?

As I see it, Luthor is just ego. He has an enormous inferiority complex and hates the idea of being below anyone in any way. Luthor's drive to be above everyone else has made him very rich and very powerful, but in the process he has overseen enormous technological innovations that have improved the lives of people around the world and he helped build Metropolis into one of the greatest and most prosperous cities in the world. As a result, he's the darling of the people. And he loves the idea of being worshiped.

Then Superman comes along. Superman who can do things that even Luthor can't do, and in Luthor's mind Superman is out to steal his thunder. Out to one-up him. And Luthor hates being anything other than number one.

So, Luthor capitalizes on the inevitable backlash against Superman (people are naturally afraid of the implications of Superman and the effect he will have on the world). He makes himself the leader of the anti-Superman lobby. And his conflict with Superman kicks off from there.

In the old Elliot S.Maggin Superman stories (tail end of the Julius Schwartz era), Maggin always hinted that, eventually, Luthor would get over himself and become not only a friend to Superman but a boon to mankind. Maggin's take on Luthor was that, as well as having a giant ego, Luthor hated and despised anything that he didn't understand (being a genius, Luthor felt he should understand..well, everything, easily), and Superman being both awesomely powerful and benevolent screwed with Luthor's worldview. This was in addition to the "you made my hair fall out 'cuz you were jealous of me" bit.

Then of course, there's Grant Morrison's take. Luthor thinks he should be running things, and Superman consistently thwarts his plans for world domination. Pretty simple, really. Lex Luthor: A boot stepping on the face of humanity, forever...

Optimatally, Luthor's a total foil to Superman, and one of the best hero-villain foil dynamics in all of comicdom.

The simplest bit being power, and their concepts of it and the idea of right: Superman has great alien powers and abilities, but does not see himself as any greater than humanity. Luthor has obtained great economic and political power with the help of his very human genius, and sees himself as superior to the common man. Luthor's ego extends greatly to his worldview - he sees that the optimal being should be his mirror. As he is the superior example of man, the uberman should have his virtues and share his flaws - perhaps extending to the idea that all people are intrinsically like him.

So when Superman comes along with power rivaling if not surpassing his own, but none of his arrogance and greedy ambition, Lex immediately takes outrage with the very concept of him.

While Superman is genuinely altruistic and is dedicated to doing good, Luthor's stints of altruism are all rooted in ego somewhere - while he genuinely believes a lot of the bile he says about Superman being a blight to humanity, it's merely him believing the lies he constructed to cover a mix of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good and It's All About Me (as again, he feels that should the world be brought to utopia it should be done according to his vision).

As he is, Luthor isn't an antagonist because he dislikes and hates Superman, he hates Superman because his very character causes him to be antagonistic to what Supes is and stands for.

edited 4th Oct '12 10:46:51 PM by KnownUnknown