Man of Steel. Nolan Superman Reboot.

Doomday was a one-trick pony. All he did was show up, start beating things up, and then kill Superman.

Oh sure, they've added stuff since, but even compared to Hush, he lacked dimension.

At least Mongul is more than a mindless killing machine.

Doomsday is generally a mindless berserker. If he had any sort of person controlling him he would have to act like the Dragon-in-Chief, so powerful the only thing one can do is direct where they take their destruction. But since he has no plan or goal in mind you need someone else to suppliment for an actual plot.

By the way, here's most of Superman's biggest villains. (doing this because why not)

• Lex Luthor

• Brainiac

• Bizarro

• Darkseid

• General Zod and pals

• Metallo

• Parasite

• Cyborg Superman

• Doomsday

• Mr. Mxyzptlk

• Mongul

• Kryptonite Man

• Silver Banshee

• Kryptonian Eradicator

• Ultra-Humanite

• Livewire

• Toyman/Prankster/yadayadayada

• Atomic Skull - yeah I'm stretching

Now as you can see, most of those guys aren't super powered thugs, not that it matters. Even Metallo could be made a compelling villain if done right.

edited 6th Apr '11 2:33:59 PM by Moth13

I never saw the most recent film....so how did they go about the whole, Superman-doesn't-wear-a-mask-at-all-thing?

I hope they change a lot about Superman for this move, an original and different perspective. Superman is cool and all, but he's incredibly boring and....well he's boring as a character and as a hero.

edited 5th Apr '11 5:14:21 PM by ViralLamb

Superman is only boring if left to the attentions of writers who don't know what they're doing. He's not survived what? 60 years? solely on Grandfather Clause. There's lots of junk but there's also plenty of good shit.

There are a whole bunch of factors at work, but it can be boiled down to Reality Is Unrealistic.

For more details, read Clark Kenting.

I could buy that. Not satisfied with it though.

How do you mean?

edited 5th Apr '11 5:51:32 PM by ViralLamb

What's not to understand? Not all of Superman's story lines are boring and Superman is not inherently a boring character, he can just seem that way because some writers just can't figure out how to provide conflict for him.

I was just wondering if you had examples, but never mind.

All-Star Superman

Kingdom Come

Superman: Red Son

What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

Those are ones I've read. Also heard good things about Superman: Birthright and Superman for All Seasons.

edited 5th Apr '11 6:35:36 PM by Pannic

I like Toyman as a secondary villain. Probably not much of a threat for Superman, but he can be made very creepy. Just do with him what Nolan did with the Joker.

Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow is also good. All Season is great!

Toyman could definitely use a reboot. Nothing against the new, younger Toyman, but a creepy old guy just seems more interesting. Though if they used the Toyman from DCAU then they would have a winner. I have to say, I would like to see what Nolan and co could do with The Kryptonite Man. Oh and I'm totally agreeing with Anaheyla. With a writer who knows the character and how to handle him, he's easily more interesting a character than most of the Justice League.

Nitpick number 2: more like 72 years.

Back to nitpick number 1: Yeah, the Big Bad is the guy who is behind all the other bad happenings. Doomsday was the one bad happening. It's part of the point of the name: Doomsday. He's not a villain, he's an event. Having a film with him in it would be like having a natural disaster film but with the desire to defeat something, better balanced and even conflicted with the desire to save lives, the world growing more desperate, a genuine sense of fear in Superman, a genuine sense of guilt too since this beast has come specifically to kick his arse.

It would be the most like a change, I would think.

But... I don't think the villain would be him because the news items have been throwing the idea of Doomsday and The Death Of Superman around for ages and the soundbite from Johnathan Nolan talked about coming up with an idea they just had to get out there because apparently no one had thought of it yet. So maybe that's just bad history on his part but The Death Of Superman... insert ennui here.

edited 5th Apr '11 6:51:38 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

Also, there's Cyborg Superman who could be fun on film, not as a main bad but as a supporting one.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about the Alan Moore stories.

Does it sound kinda ironic that the great american symbol that is Superman always seems to have more success when in the hands of a british writer? Mark Millar, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison etc.

That's probably because the English writers aren't concerned solely about The Merch and don't have someone like Didio or Quesada riding their ass.

Point. I think the only american writer to consistently write a good Superman story would have to be Mark Waid. Just reading books like Kingdom Come or Birthright, you see the respect he has towards the character and his forebears.

I know everyone is saying that Lex shouldn't appear in Man of Steel, but I really think he should stay and have an impact in the story. I mean, there has never really been more perfect a foil for the protagonist. Yeah Joker is insane as opposed to Batman's order, but Lex is literally up against a God! He is an intelligent, selfish, egotist who could very well remake the world given the time and the motivation. He's the anti-Superman! He is pretty much everything that is bad about humanity.

My own version of metaphysician's post, with my own thoughts on what I'd do with a Superman trilogy.

An overarching theme of the movies would be Lex Luthor and his distrust of Superman as an Alien/unknown agent and Luthor's own believe in himself as a 'true' protector of mankind. He'd therefore be tied to each of the 'main' villains even if he'd never be the Big Bad, and in a sense the trilogy would be as much about Lex as it would be about Superman.

1) Main villain would be a 'bad' Superman, either Bizzarro or Cyborg Superman or a mix of the two. He would be created by Lex Luthor, on the basis of being an alternative to Superman for protecting Earth/Metropolis. Initially, this Synthetic Superman would look like a good thing and be surprisingly effective, but would of course eventually go bad and make it necessary for the real thing to stop his doppleganger. Over the course of the film, there would also be a running theme of some artificial intelligence unit that Lex has that is helping him with some of his work, the identity of which would be revealed at the end of the movie, setting us up for...

2) Braniac, who would go from helping Lex in his quest to unmask Superman as the threat he knows that the Man of Steel is underneath and upstaging him to revealing his true nature as a evil robot. There could perhaps be another villain in here too, one secretly engineered by Braniac before he takes center stage. While Superman would defeat him (with no help from Lex), Braniac would get the last laugh by sending out a signal that would set up a big finale of a third act, brought to you by...

3) Darkseid, who quickly comes in and starts taking over the planet. While Superman tries to stop him, he isn't quite able to pull it off at first. A secondary plotline would bring Lex's story to close as well, as with the reveal of Darkseid as the kind of threat that Lex always saw in Superman, he would have his character development over the trilogy come to its climax where he'd find it in himself to ally with Superman to help defeat Darkseid and save the world alongside the man he'd always thought he'd have to find a way to beat. However, Lex would likely die or go missing in the process (there'd probably be at least a few nods to the role he had in the Justice League series finale here in one form or another).

edited 6th Apr '11 1:06:56 AM by SpaceJawa

See, I always thought that if Lex was what the worse of humanity could b, then it would be Brainiac, not Darkseid, who presented to worse attributes of Aliens: Cold, Logical, Ruthless. Thats what, to me at least, makes Brainiac and Lex so darn special in Superman's rogue gallery. They're basically the two sides of Superman's coin. The power-hungry human and the conquering alien. Course that's just my opinion.

You know, Nolan and Snyder have been really talking about how different a departure Man of Steel is going to be from the Donner film that I'm starting to wonder how are they going to make the Clark Kenting work? I mean in the Donner films, Reeves really did make it believable, even if he had to slouch and talk an octave higher. Do you think theyre going to go the All-Star route and give Clark "precise muscle control" so he can contort his features?

I think they mean more that they'll go a more serious route than the Donner films. Even Superman (1978), the most realistic movie in the series, seems kind of goofy now. Same thing happened with 1989's Batman, and I've little doubt that the same thing will happen to the 2000s' Spiderman very soon as well. With Nolan around, they'll be aiming for veresimilitude.

Okay just found out about a costume illustrator who will be working on Man of Steel! Phillip Boutte Jr! Boutte Jr will be working during pre-production for the film, but this isn't his first rodeo, no sir this guy has already worked on a Nolan picture (Inception) and a superhero flick (Captain America: First Avenger, where he was the key costume illustrator. Keep your eyes peeled for this guy folks!

edited 6th Apr '11 2:22:41 AM by AtomJames

Spider-Man wasn't "gritty and realistic" when it came out.

I didn't say it was gritty, but Spider-Man did pay attention to detail, synthesised a lot of disparate elements from the comics, was slightly more down-to-Earth than a lot of prior adaptions, much like Superman The Movie.

What I'm saying is that it was already a silly-looking movie when it came out.