I'm in a Superman kind of mood and not even Smallville can dampen it

[seriousfic]

So maybe I'm being a bad fan, but the rumors of the next Superman story being an origin with Zod as a villain don't bother me too much. Picture this, using Superman: Birthright as reference material.

We start off in some other exotic locale. A twentysomething Clark is searching for fragments of his starship. See, before it landed, it orbited the Earth a few times and deteriorated (you could go for the ominous here and say it's as if something shot at it). Many of the memory crystals that were supposed to educate him are missing. We can have him mention this to a companion, someone like Pete Ross, Lana Lang, or Chloe Sullivan (as appropriate). But when he finds the beacon, a Lexcorp team is already digging it up. There's a brief but badass action sequence as Clark takes down the well-armed mercenaries and retrieves his birthright.

With it, he's able to gleam more of his heritage than ever before. He sees how Krypton was once a brutal planet ruled only by war, but the House of El united it under a single crest, leading the way into a golden age of peace, science, and artistry. Clark, who up till now has only been helping people from the shadows (and despairing that this doesn't really make a difference), realizes there's more he can do. He doesn't have to just save people. He can inspire them.

He returns home to Smallville, where he shows the Kents his ideas for a costume. Martha shows him the blankets he was swaddled in as a child. Red, blue, and yellow.

Thirty minutes in (or less) and he's in Metropolis, ready to save some lives. Of course, Lex Luthor hasn't been idle. He's found some memory crystals of his own, and the truth behind Krypton's destruction fascinates him. When Superman steals his thunder, he's able to signal to either Zod or Brainiac. Either would be a good antagonist -- with Zod, you have Clark being tempted by his past as the public reacts to him with suspicion and mistrust, while with Brainiac you have the big damn conflict of Clark fighting the guy who destroyed his home planet. And, of course, Lex has no intention of trading one alien for another -- he plans to play both sides against the other, stab the winner in the back, and pick up the technological pieces. That's gotta be good for 90 minutes of thrills and spills.

While I'm on the subject of Lex... Terry O'Quinn, anyone? Dude could pull off the arrogance, genius, Lawful Evil humanism, and sheer malevolence of Superman's Big Bad in his sleep, plus he looks good bald. I know there's a modern tendency to make Lex, at most, a decade older than Big Blue, but Luthor as embittened old SOB has been canon too. Just think of All-Star Superman. "I keep getting older... and he doesn't."


Pressed for time, Lex Luthor decides to simply play one of those whiny emo ballads about Superman. It doesn't kill him, but it does annoy him a lot more than having to punch a giant robot.

Bryan Cranston would also be a great choice, but he's kinda already playing Lex Luthor in Breaking Bad. Seriously, that show is like an Elseworlds. "What if Lex was a meth dealer?" Just pretend that his cancer is a result of wearing a Kryptonite ring and it all lines up.

Comments

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Which Braniac, tho? The original green alien? The techno-orgamic design? The modern version?

I wouldn't mind a redesigned techno version, personally.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I'm partial to him being this green guy with pasty, plastic-y skin (you can call him Vril Dox, even, if Brainiac is too cheesy), but then when he gets damaged or pissed, you can see that he's really

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Bronze Age Brainiac is everything that the Borg, the Terminators and the Cybermen should have been, but never quite managed to be.

Not only are his visuals deeply creepy for achieving a near-perfect synthesis of all the most inhumanly Uncanny Valley physical traits of a mummified walking corpse with all the most unnaturally antiseptic aesthetics of a soulless but sentient machine intelligence, but his spaceship was actually A PART OF HIM and IT LOOKED LIKE HIS HEAD, EXCEPT WITH TENTACLES.

Bronze Age Brainiac is what H.P. Lovecraft would have imagined if he'd grown up as part of the same generation as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I cannot even begin to describe how profoundly unsettling I found it, as a little kid, that when he piloted his hentai self-portrait spaceship, the back of his honeycombed braincase would hook up to the circuitry of his spaceship in a seamless connection.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

If THIS was the script that we'd be GUARANTEED to get as a result of yet another origin retread? Then yes, I'd say Fund It. But you KNOW it WON'T be.

Also, Jesus Christ, Terry Quinn as Lex Luthor. From The Stepfather forward, it's the role he's been preparing for all his life.

I disagree about Bryan Cranston, though, who's turning into an excellent supervillain on Breaking Bad, just not in the Luthor mold. In a very real sense, he's playing a Peter Parker who was never bitten, suddenly turning to supervillainy out of desperation in middle age. What's awesome about Walter White is that he never quite loses that school teacher didacticness - the scene where he spots the meth-head buying cooking ingredients at the supermarket, and then proceeds to give him a disappointedly paternalistic LESSON on how he should be going about it instead, is fucking GOLD.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Also, Jesus Christ, Terry Quinn as Lex Luthor. From The Stepfather forward, it's the role he's been preparing for all his life.

Just imagine him giving a shareholder meeting as "warm Uncle Locke," then turning right around to Mercy and starting work on a Metallo body. He could sell it with one eyebrow.

I disagree about Bryan Cranston, though, who's turning into an excellent supervillain on Breaking Bad, just not in the Luthor mold. In a very real sense, he's playing a Peter Parker who was never bitten, suddenly turning to supervillainy out of desperation in middle age. What's awesome about Walter White is that he never quite loses that school teacher didacticness - the scene where he spots the meth-head buying cooking ingredients at the supermarket, and then proceeds to give him a disappointedly paternalistic LESSON on how he should be going about it instead, is fucking GOLD.

No, Walter White is Bruce Banner if he'd never been exposed to gamma radiation. All that rage would eventually manifest itself as muscling in on rival drug dealers. Can't you just imagine him saying "Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!" to Pinkman after another monumental screw-up?

Peter Parker is a nice guy. Bruce Banner's favored career path was building A-bombs.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

I so, SO miss the Hulk-less Banner that we had for a while there. He was the most terrifying motherfucker on the planet, precisely because he no longer had to devote 90 percent of his genius intellect to stopping the Hulk, and he could now indulge the worst parts of his personality without any risk of awakening the monster within.

[latetothpartyhp.livejournal.com]

I've been excited about the Bryan Cranston-Lex idea, but Terry O'Quinn does sound intriguing...