Superman’s Only Villain?
In keeping with the upcoming movie The Dark Knight, the next Superman movie will be titled Man of Steel. The villain…? Aww, you guessed it.
Kevin Spacey told Variety he will be back as Lex Luthor in Superman: Man of Steel. He met with director Bryan Singer and firmed up the deal to star in the movie, which is expected to feature a Michael Dougherty (Superman Returns, X-Men X2) screenplay. Hopefully, Superman: Man of Steel will sport an original plot and not be simply a warmed-over third-rate remake of a previous effort. C’mon, Warners, we’re talking about the family jewels here!
Production is expected to begin next year with a 2009 release.
This is such a limiting and shortsighted view. While not the flashiest and deepest rogues gallery, Superman has enough of rogues gallery to go beyond Lex. One word: Braniac. Lex can (and maybe should) have an appearance, but Superman needs a big alien threat like Braniac. Darkseid would fit the bill, but I know that is really dreaming.
Darkseid would be perfect — a real chance for Superman (and the CG team) to show its stuff. But there's Braniac, Parasite, Bizarro, Metallo… They could even make up a new villain. Just show us something original for a change.
I like the 'best of us but not even one of us' aspect to the hero and I like seeing Superman save us from ourselves and taking on Luthor. But I have to be honest with myself and recognize that of Supes' enemies the ones from space, like Braniac and Darkseid are powerful and complex enough to garner film time. I mean, who wants to deal with Mr. Mxyzptlk or Toyman for a full length movie? And i'm pretty sure those caliber or villians results in campy crap like 1997's Batman and Robin.That said I'd like to see Spacey doing Luthor not so over the top. He came off as scary wacky, which was a step up from Hackman's portrayal that made Luthor seem inept. I guess Rosenbuam on Smallville has spoiled me.
Mxyzptlk was used perfectly in The Animated Series, as voiced by Gilbert Gotfried. That's because they only had to entertain us for 22 minutes. And it was animated. And very funny.Now that they've got the CGI for it, I think it's time we saw Superman take on somebody larger than Earth. Let's see him go to Apokolips and kick Darkseid's ass. But they'd have to bring Ed Asner back as Granny Goodness. His best role!