Mxyzptlk!
General Zod was so good in Christopher Reeve’s Superman II. They should bring him back, but without Zac Snyder’s bullshit.
Sounds like I need to send you ten bucks to go watch every DC movie before I shell out, our tastes are exactly aligned. I truly hope DC can find a groove half as good as the MCU did, I’m just so invested from the Ford/Chevy choice of DC back in the day. Black Adam was always a stretch for me as a movie character, not because there isn’t meat on the bone, but he’s barely D level in awareness. B level in impact in the comics, granted, but he’s brought in strictly to provide a foil to the Shazam-verse or to provide some anti-jingoistic perspective when needed. I’ve always thought he was the DC Doctor Doom politically, and less silly, and better for it.
Traditionally it’s always, always Darkseid, but they have to work on him to distance him from Thanos (which as the DC folks such as myself have pointed out was a ripoff of Darkseid, but MCU knows how to get there firstest with the mostest, movie-wise.) Brainiac suffers from the stupid name, being pre-empted by Ultron, and also demanding CGI-only battles, which sucks. I could kind of go for Amazo if they change his name or just leave him as Dr. Ivo’s Android, he would make sense in CGI but might suffer the Transformers effect where they have to put a bunch of details on his body to make him something other than a smooth power-stealing killing machine.
If I had to go for one, probably get out a decent Teen Titans movie and then bring in Trogdor . . . er Trigon as the big bad. That would actually be novel from the MCU.
Now that would get me into the theaters, if nothing else just to check out all his majesty.
Mongul is pretty much the big bad for Supes nowadays, but man, he’s lame.
Kite Man
Huh, never heard of him, but then I’m way out of the loop.
On an odd note, this thread made me hanker to watch Iron Man 1 again, and at 1:14 they refer to the Afghan fighters as “The Ten Rings” which is way too much crossover/foreshadowing/etc. for me to deal with right now. Just a weird coincidence?
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Edit: Never mind, it was pulled forward with no idea that it would be a thing, Iron Man 1 had a 10 rings banner that made it all the way through to Shang Chi, but it wasn’t planned.
You mean after Batman v Superman there is STILL appetite for ANOTHER VS movie in DC??? Perhaps in this movie they just CGI removed all Batfleck in BvS and replaced with Black Adam/the Rock and call it a day. Didn’t even need to change the shorthand for this movie. Still BvS (Black Adam v Superman). (The cynical part of me thinks WB exec would green light this project…)
Well, uh, I kinda think you’re making a move on me here with your sexy brainiac, and I’m also kinda down with it. I’m willing to explore galactic lovemaking, just want to get that out in the open.
That said, I’m mostly about one-note Brainiac, in my canon he’s essentially Sinistar with a bit of English on the ball.
For Black Adam, Mordru (cosmic level spellcaster) would work.
I’m kind of annoyed they made Starro a joke and missed their chance with Parallax with the Green Lantern movie, as those are go-to cosmic level threats if Darkseid is off the table. (Though I’m not sure why he is off the table if that universe and its characters/actors are still being used. He wasn’t in anything long enough to be ruined by Zach Snyder. Lex, on the other hand …)
Braniac has the advantage of being super-flexible. Yes, he’s a green robot. But he can also be a green robot with a fleet of planet-destroying starship, a green robot with a swarm of nanobots capable of reshaping matter at a fundamental level, a green robot with mind control gizmos, whatever. There can be a Brainiac for every lifestyle and budget!
Brainiac has an issue with shrinkage, though.
It’s cold up there in space!
The problem with all of the above is that WB has no clue what makes a good superhero movie. They could take the best villain in DC canon, and they’d still end up with an anemic and boring CGI fest again and again.
It helps a lot to make the villain relatable. They can be mad, or crazy or utterly evil (the biggest mistake people make when talking about this, is thinking the villain needs to have a tragic backstory - nope), the point is we must be able to relate the villain to something else that we do understand (or make them pure force of nature - e.g., Joker). The MCU has got this - you can take any of the better MCU villains, and understand where any of them are coming from. The DCEU fails on this point most of the time, IMO (it’s not that they don’t try - they just very rarely succeed).
On the other hand:
Black Adam ‘s now expected opening of $60M-$62M by many measures is a solid start, and is the best domestic debut for Dwayne Johnson outside of an ensemble movie (Mummy Returns at a $68M debut was a Brendan Fraser vehicle back in 2001). Heck, Black Adam looks to even beat the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs and Shaw in which Johnson costarred with Jason Statham, that pic opening to $60.03M.
And now the JSA is sad.