New Superman Rumor Spells Doom for the Movie
Superman may be in trouble, and not from Kryptonite this time. No, it’s something much worse than the irradiated rock from his home world – it’s horrendously self-aware modern writing. Recently, a rumor about the plot of Superman, James Gunn’s first big-screen entry in his and Peter Safran’s DCU, has been making the rounds, mostly because of how bad it sounds. This one comes from MyTimeToShineHello, who revealed that Avengers: Doomsday is filming with an unfinished script. I wrote about the Doomsday rumor because it was confirmed by John Rocha and Jeff Sneider, who have a good track record for scoops, and I’m writing about this one because it was confirmed by Gary from Nerdrotic, who says this plot point was in the version of Superman that’s been test-screened. If you want to keep unspoiled about Superman, don’t read below, but for context, it’s a spoiler about what I assume is just one element of the film’s plot and doesn’t include major things like character deaths or a final battle or anything like that.
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MyTimeToShineHello revealed this exclusively to his X subscribers, but here’s the text courtesy of ComicBookMovie.com:
“In the movie, Superman is frustrated by social media backlash, with the hashtag #SuperShit being mentioned several times as really getting under his skin. Meanwhile, in Lex’s interdimensional world, hundreds of mutant monkeys are shown typing furiously at keyboards, flooding social media with hate against Superman.”
Is this real? Gary says yes, which is good enough for me. Beyond that, Cosmic Book News points out that James Gunn has denied several of MyTimeToShineHello’s scoops about Superman but hasn’t said anything about this one, which suggests that it’s either true or Gunn is too busy right now and didn’t see it. It’s also true that there is a similar plot point in Creature Commandos, the animated HBO series that is the first project set in the DCU (except for two or three episodes of Peacemaker and a handful of scenes from The Suicide Squad… or something; Gunn is making this really confusing). The bad guys are a bunch of online “incels” who think there shouldn’t be any female superheroes but also simp for some Amazonian goddess who uses them as her foot soldiers. It’s as dumb and grating as it sounds, and it’s a big part of why I didn’t make it past the second episode of that train wreck. I was actually surprised that James Gunn wrote it because it was so awful; not that I like all his work, but at his worst, he was never as cloying or obvious as that. But if he did it in Creature Commandos, it’s entirely possible he did something similar in Superman. Cosmic Book News also suggests that it’s Gunn’s way of getting back at the people who got him canceled at Marvel over his extremely dark jokes; if that’s true, I don’t think it’s going to work because this seems to be a very different scenario unless he does some really out-of-character stuff with Superman (which I don’t think would surprise anyone, even his biggest defenders).
As for the rumor itself, it sounds pretty bad. I’m not entirely against using online outrage against Superman as a plot point, but I think it has to be a minor thing, an element of a larger storyline, and it has to be taken seriously – not with a goofy hashtag that feels more like a bad joke than anything else. You can do a story where the world turns on Superman, and social media would be a part of that in the modern era, but make it have real weight, which playing it for laughs takes away. Also making it weightless is having Lex Luthor be the mastermind of the online hate campaign using – Good Lord – type-writing monkeys in an alternate universe. What even is this nonsense? Aside from how ridiculously stupid the notion of evil mutant monkeys who post angry messages on social media is, the fact that the outrage is manufactured lessens the impact of Superman losing the world’s trust. Who cares if it was all fake from the beginning? (Oh God, Gunn is going to have someone call it “fake news,” isn’t he?) It also undermines the idea that Lex Luthor is creating alternate universes, or at least finding them and using them for his own purposes; this is a potentially cool storyline, but if he uses them for internet shit posting, it becomes exponentially less cool. The more I see and hear about Superman, the more worried I become – and the more assured I am that Jurassic World Rebirth is going to demolish this and The Fantastic Four: First Steps in July. (Talk about a “Whoever wins, we lose” scenario.)
Let us know what you think of the new Superman rumor in the comments!
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Comments (2)
It’s infuriating. They call themselves rebels and even give themselves names like Rage Against the Machine, then they shill for every establishment body there is, telling everyone to shut up and do what they’re told. “Stick it to the Man by following orders and accepting everything they say, word for word.”
The scene actually sounds kind of funny. Like a comic book scene really, but it also shows the fragility of it all when people finally decide to punch up, instead of left or right. The people in charge of media, academia and everything else have looted, ripped off and underserved the people. This is why I am not interested in Cross talk. Call out media heads, studio heads, banking heads and take them down by exposing their corruption.
This is also the very reason I lost interest in sports, shows and movies and music for the most part is because all of them are on the take and there is not a shred of rebellion. All these rockers and rappers acting tough but never challenged a celebrity or a financial king or an oligarch. Even posers that say they are fighting oligarchy won’t name specifics besides the very typical.