Superman’s big twist might not actually be a twist at all; rather, it could be setting up the DCU’s Brainiac.
James Gunn and Peter Safran are building big things with their DCU. What those things are, exactly, and where this is all leading can only be speculated as for now; however, there’s clearly got to be some kind of major threat that will require the Justice League’s intervention, right?
It’d make sense that Superman would have something teasing this threat — maybe something that’s not verbally stated in the movie, but a plot point that fans can later go back to and be like, ‘Oh, this was being set up from the very beginning.’ Perhaps that is in Gunn’s movie. And, perhaps, it has to do with Brainiac.
Superman’s big twist is that his father Jor-El wanted him to conquer Earth
For the first half of the Superman movie, Clark Kent believes he’s been sent by his Kryptonian parents — Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van — to Earth in order to protect humanity. Kal-El takes great comfort in this, often listening to the message when he’s alone in the Fortress of Solitude.
It’s not until Lex Luthor and The Engineer break into the Fortress of Solitude and decode the second half of the message that Superman realizes he was actually sent to Earth not to protect it, but to conquer it. His parents specifically tell him to rule over mankind and to take as many wives as needed in order to restore the Kryptonian race.
This is a major lore change; while comics have played around with Kal-El’s origins before, the most common, well-known version of the story sees Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van as loving souls who have nothing but respect for humanity.
There’s been much talk about the moment and the lore change on social media over the past week since Superman was released.
The twist might be a setup for Brainiac to be the DCU’s first big villain
Maybe we should take the twist at face value — Gunn has commented on the matter, as he told IGN he wanted to allow himself to “make changes where changes might work and wouldn’t go against the integrity of who the character is.” This could just be a case of Gunn wanting to put his own stamp on the Superman character, and this is how he decided to do it.
Or, maybe it’s not that; rather, maybe the message sent to Superman was altered by a villain like Brainiac. In the comics, Brainiac is one of Superman’s biggest and worst enemies. Some continuities make him responsible for Krypton’s destruction but, even in the main DC Comics canon, he’s got strong ties to Superman’s home planet given that he carries a miniaturized Kandor (the capital planet on Krypton) along with him.
Brainiac is also typically depicted as a super-intelligent android or cyborg, meaning he would have the technology to manipulate the message. Let’s also keep in mind that DC recently told a similar storyline in My Adventures with Superman Season 2, meaning this idea wouldn’t totally come out of the blue.
If this does turn out to be the case, this could finally give fans a chance to see a live-action Brainiac in a movie — and this movie doesn’t necessarily have to be Superman 2, as Gunn could be setting the character up to be the first big DCU villain. Supergirl could certainly continue to tease his arrival, before he finally touches down on Earth in some future project and causes all hell to break loose.
