Why probably won’t Superman’s most powerful villain appear in the movies?

Now that James Gunn’s film “Superman” proved to be a real successthe doors are wide open for Gunn to expand on this film into the larger DC Universe. One of the best aspects of “Superman” was watching the movie depict a world that was already accustomed to seeing superheroes taking on extra-dimensional goblins and kaiju attacking the city just like on a regular Tuesday afternoon. It allows Gunn and those who come after him to imagine a DC Universe where you don’t have to stop and explain everything, where you don’t need a funny quip every 15 minutes to joke about how weird it is that we’re watching a comic book movie.

So far, Gunn and Peter Safran have done an excellent job of making the DC Universe a unique and distinct superhero universe compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making it a place that embraces weird concepts and characters like the full cast of “Creature Commandos” or He impresses Mr. Mxyzptlk in the second season of “Peacemaker”.. With the “Superman” sequel seemingly confirming Brainiac as the villain, it seems like Gunn has finally allowed the DC movies to embrace more eccentric comic book characters who are more than just punching bags.

Unfortunately, there are still characters we will probably never see in the movies. Such is the case with Superman’s most powerful villain, which is also one of the strangest and most convoluted character origin stories of the modern era: Superboy-Prime.

Superboy-Prime was introduced in DC Comics Presents in 1985 during the final periods of the massive crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. There we are introduced to Earth-Prime, the “real world” of the DC multiverse, where Superman is a fictional hero appearing in comic books and DC Comics is simply a comic book company. There we meet a 15-year-old superhero, who has been bullied his whole life for sharing a name with his favorite hero – Clark Kent. Except Clark discovers that he also comes from Krypton and has superpowers. He’s become one of the most powerful characters in mainstream comics, and one of the most defining as well. Superboy-Prime is literally capable of tearing holes in reality and the time stream, and tends to break the fourth wall like Deadpool – only with a much worse attitude.

Superboy-Prime started out as a hero, surviving “Crisis on Infinite Earths” alongside Superman, Earth-2’s Lois Lane, and Earth-3’s Alexander Luthor. At the end of that story, they go to another dimension and seem to live a happy life. Except, of course, that wasn’t the case, and that dimension ended up being a torture prison, one that drove Superboy-Prime insane and turned him into a villain who orchestrated the events of the “Infinite Crisis.”

As a villain, Superboy-Prime is seen as a representation of toxic fandom, a character who saw the changes made to the DC heroes he loved and became angry and resentful – eventually becoming a sadistic villain who commits multiple genocides, joins the Sinestro Corps, and much more. Now, the idea of ​​a Superman villain serving as a meta commentary on toxic fandom isn’t inherently bad, and in the hands of someone like Gunn, it could be an interesting idea. The problem is that. In order to make the character work. The film has to oversimplify his motivations and backstory, thus erasing much of the character’s tragedy.

This is because Superboy-Prime was originally supposed to be the exact opposite of the toxic fan. It was originally a representation of the original idea for Superboy, a farewell to that era of the character as DC turned away from Superboy in the post-Crisis reboot, much like Earth-2 Kal-L got a send-off in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” as a farewell to the Golden Age of Superman.

Superboy-Prime also represents the readers themselves, the idea of ​​fans having one last adventure with the heroes they grew up with, jumping into the pages of the comic book and becoming heroes like Superman and the others. By Superboy-Prime surviving the Crisis and leaving with Kal-L, it was an acknowledgment of the importance of the fans.

A Superboy-Prime story on the big screen needs to be more than just a story Syndrome from “The Incredibles”. It should start out as the purest form of fanservice and a tribute to it, a literal fan power fantasy that eventually turns evil and spawns a supervillain like no other. Could it make a good villain movie? Maybe, but not without a lot of changes and simplifications to make the character more digestible and understandable to a general audience in one movie.