How would you reboot Superman?

[Jackalope89]

I'd combine the Superman & Lois debut (of him in suit and all) with the origin of Clark being a naturally good and hopeful guy that goes into the suit when powers are required. But he does that of his own free will, not because of "destiny" or being told to do so, but because he wants to. And have his parents as good people to. That they don't tell him to ignore people in trouble (looking at you, Man of Steel), but to do what he thinks is right.

[DochaDocha]

I'd also prefer animated, but assuming it's going to be live-action, I'd give some general guidelines like make it so Superman likes what he's doing and is good at it. Maybe he's not Thor cocky, but as much as I liked Man of Steel apparently all of the self-doubt didn't hit it out of the park with the fans. Also, don't rush into getting him into a relationship. Normally, I think putting Lana in the first movie would be a waste of time since we 100% know that won't go anywhere far, but who knows. The first two seasons of Smallville resonated well with fans, a combination of 1) people not knowing Lana wasn't the end game or 2) people not caring Lana wasn't the end game.

[Marvel Man]

An animated Superman Smashes the Klan?

[superduperman]

VILLAIN: Brainiac. Bruno Manheim is selling illegal guns made by Luthor. Luthor makes an appearance but doesn't really do anything.

SUIT: The Earth One suit.

ORIGIN: Yes but it's snippets of flashbacks. Jor-El discovering the planet is in danger, council doesn't believe him, puts Kal in a ship, ship is found by Kents, discovers his powers, saves child as a teenager, shown ship and learns origins.

He's a freelance reporter working overseas. When him and a group of other reporters are taken hostage during a war, he has to rescue the others before they are executed. When he comes back to the states, he decides he can't keep using his powers in secret anymore because he nearly got caught. He moves to Metropolis, gets a job at the Planet, and operates as Superman openly. Brainiac, looking for the last survivor of Krypton, sent out various probes to different life sustaining planets. The one he sent to Earth records the broadcasts of Superman's activities and sends a signal out to Brainaic. Brainiac's ship shows up on Earth and tried to take Metropolis and captures Superman. Superman has to both escape Brainiac's ship and keep him from stealing Metropolis. For the purpose of toys and merch, Brainiac sends an army of robots to subdue Metropolis that look just like the 1980s robot version of Brainiac. Luthor, after seeing Brainiac try to take Metropolis, decides it's his duty to protect Earth from all alien threats. Including Superman. Blaming Superman for Brainiac coming to Earth in the first place. The movie ends with him developing the green and purple armor he wears.

One day I may post my script for a Superman reboot.

[Superlad93]

Just like with The Batman I feel like I've seen, heard, and read all of the reboots for these guys. Like, what's the super inspired new way in on Bruce for The Batman? He's unironically angry and socially awkward? I mean, I heard it's a pretty well made and acted movie, but outside of think pieces and Twitter hot takes proclaiming something about the subtext of the film, what was really new. The answer is that it's granular.

I feel like the same can be said about a Superman movie. The only answer that feels like it will yield something at all legitimately new is if you move on from Clark (and Bruce).

A friend really hit the nail on the head when they expressed that part of the appeal of the DCU was the fact that it was filled and strange. This idea of starting the universe from zero where it has basically nothing in it is counter to what it's good at. Marvel already did that far better than DCU is designed to do.

I mean, could you imagine a Superman movie that was like Jupiter's Legacy (but good) and The Multiversity: The Just? A world fully settled into the idea of superheroes not as sideshow oddities, but god-celebrities that shift the social landscape by just existing.

The DCU on screen should feel more like Lord of The Rings or Game of Thrones rather than Marvel phase 1. We should have this universe unfold for us as we see just how differently it has formed from our own.

This is where pushing the legacies forward really helps. They then become our eyes and ears-- the rookies-- while allowing this world to retain its grandness.

[captchuck]

I would return to the original series with Clark working as a reporter, Jimmy with a camera, Lois in danger. Lots of action, some humor, nothing dark. Keep it simple and have fun.

[manwhohaseverything]

I'd probably adapt Hernan Guerra from Gods and Monsters. It could be a one off like Joker.

I would love that..

You mean a la Spiderverse?

Spiderverse,incredibles,iron giant,batman phantasm..etc.I wouldn't say it has to be 3d though.Good quality animation and attractive artstyle is the only factor that is a must.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Just like with The Batman I feel like I've seen, heard, and read all of the reboots for these guys. Like, what's the super inspired new way in on Bruce for The Batman? He's unironically angry and socially awkward? I mean, I heard it's a pretty well made and acted movie, but outside of think pieces and Twitter hot takes proclaiming something about the subtext of the film, what was really new. The answer is that it's granular.

I feel like the same can be said about a Superman movie. The only answer that feels like it will yield something at all legitimately new is if you move on from Clark (and Bruce).

A friend really hit the nail on the head when they expressed that part of the appeal of the DCU was the fact that it was filled and strange. This idea of starting the universe from zero where it has basically nothing in it is counter to what it's good at. Marvel already did that far better than DCU is designed to do.

I mean, could you imagine a Superman movie that was like Jupiter's Legacy (but good) and The Multiversity: The Just? A world fully settled into the idea of superheroes not as sideshow oddities, but god-celebrities that shift the social landscape by just existing.

The DCU on screen should feel more like Lord of The Rings or Game of Thrones rather than Marvel phase 1. We should have this universe unfold for us as we see just how differently it has formed from our own.

This is where pushing the legacies forward really helps. They then become our eyes and ears-- the rookies-- while allowing this world to retain its grandness.

Basically DC has to do its own thing rather than fail at following Marvel.

[Riv86672]

Well The Batman came out recently and it got me thinking how should Superman be properly rebooted into the big screen. If you leave it to me I just do an adaptation of Morrison's first Action Comics arc. Superman and the Men of Steel. What about you guys? What can be done to make him popular again?

I’d make him less grim and gritty. MoS really lost track of who Clark really is and represents. There’s no freaking way Pa Kent would have filled his son’s head w. so much negativity to the point where he forces Clark to watch him die rather than help.

And I would NOT do another origin story.

[godisawesome]

Since the thread is inspire by The Batman movie… I’d also make a “Year Two” Superman story, where things are clearly mostly established, but still a bit rough, and the characters are a bit trepidatious about the status quo their moving towards.

For the non-Superman scenes, I’d go ahead and make it a Smallville/Lois And Clark-style story, where Lois and Clark are equal leads going through a genuine investigative journalist story alongside some vague screwball romance moments.

They and Jimmy Olsen are all splitting a comparatively cheap three-bedroom apartment made that way by some of the shenanigans Metropolis goes through. Lois was almost a military intelligence officer before she dropped that career after exposing some of her peers for bad behavior and is a hardcore and genuinely great investigator… who needs to work on writing her stories well. Clark is an established and somewhat successful “Editor At Large” who writes well… but, a bit like Chris Cilizza in real life, has a reputation as a bit of a lightweight in actual substance. Jimmy is an amateur photographer with more balls than training… but has a nose for finding out the wired and crazy stuff, and setting Lois and Clark on it… as well as ‘shipping the two of them very hard, consideirng they both keep trying to deny their attraction to each other.

For villains and conflicts…

Lex, already established as a rival to Superman and a frequent suspect of Lois and Clark’s investigations, has made contact with an alien entity, Brainiac, but is concealing the fact they made contact months before and are up to no good. This Lex is a calm, cool scientist and businessman, a bit like a fusion of Rosenbaum and Brown’s Lexes, but with a quiet version of Tony Stark’s aptitude and Loki’s cunning. Lex is pretending to be an over ambitious “sucker” for Brainiac in order to discover more of his technology and knowledge, but is secretly plotting to betray him, and even though Brainiac is no fool, this Lex will succeed. He also has a history with both Lois and Clark from before Superman’s arrival, as he once dated Lois and was Clark’s childhood friend in Smallville.

Brainiac here is presented at raw data hijacking the world-wide web for his entire CPU power, and using Lex’s tech specifically to create “avatars” and proxies to carry out his plan. As such, he has a human avatar of a “digitally possessed” Milton Fine, and numerous drones to call on, all while constructing his skull ship and preparing to steal Metorpolis and destroy Earth. Now, conceptually, this may sound like “Alien Ultron,” but it’s made clear that this Brainiac has an entirely different personality and a much cleverer plan, as even his mechanical drones don’t fight Superman, but instead his and Lex’s proxy…

Metallo, who’s a variation of his STAS version: a combat platform designed by Brainiac with Lex-Corp resources, powered by Kryptonite (which he treats as normally to precious to expose unless in an absolutely perfect scenario), and driven by the brain of mercenary John Corben, who Lex manipulated into volunteering, and continues to control by holding the ability to transplant him back in a human body of he succeeds in capturing Superman for Brainiac.

Lois and Clark uncover Metallo’s origin through investigative reporting, as well as Brainiac’s skull ship, with Lois also tracking down Corben’s kids when Superman asks her to so he can try to make an appeal to Corben’s humanity when Brainiac’s plan is exposed. Metallo is convinced to join Superman in fighting Brainiac after *almost* killing him, and together they destroy Brainiac’s skull ship, while Lex successfully backstabs the Fine avatar to imprison a copy of Brainiac for his own uses…

…but a sequel hook makes it clear that while Lex has gained a valuable asset, deep, deep, deep in space, Brainiac Prime, the source of the data signal for this film’s version of Brainiac, ascertains that Superman is the last free Kryptonian, and begins the long journey towards Earth in a far larger skull ship…

[JAK]

I love what others have said about not going over the origin again. I'd like to do half that: tell his origin from after he hits Earth, but save anything about Krypton for the second movie, as a way to introduce a space-themed adventure.

1st movie: Golden Age, 2nd: Silver Age space, 3rd: wormhole jump in time and it's the 80's, etc. Sort of an "all eras in one" take.

[Matt Rat]

Superman and the Authority trilogy.

Just not with Zach Snyder. He'd give us the 5G version. Gleefully.

[bat39]

I've been thinking about this a fair bit too, ever since watching Reeves' The Batman.

So here's my take, inspired largely by Morrison's Action Comics run, along with the original Siegal/Shuster stories, the Fleischer cartoons and STAS.

We start with an extended pre-credits scene, which begins with a guy in a hoodie walking to a printers, showing him a sketch of the familiar S symbol and asking him to print it on a blue shirt. The next scene is intrepid reporter Lois Lane undercover at a night-club, trying to get dope on a corrupt local politician who's working with a gangster. She's found out and they abduct her and take her to a green car...which is then stopped by a man in a costume (the suit is basically the Siegal/Shuster suit with the symbol from the Fleischer cartoons...but it looks very makeshift, like something put together manually), who rescues Lois, gets the crooks out of the car, and then smashes it up with his bare hands. Later at the Daily Planet, Lois is talking about her ordeal to Perry White and a bunch of other reporters, some of whom are skeptical. Lois strikes up a conversation with Clark Kent, who's just joined the newspaper. He asks her what she's going to call the mystery man once she writers an article about him, and she says that because of the S and what he can do she'll call him ''Superman''. Clark, secretely, is a bit taken aback but looks happy about it.

At this point we get the titles (either just the title or an opening credits sequence which will highlight news reports and footage of Superman's actions all over Metropolis). We then jump forward to six months later. Superman has become a familiar figure in Metropolis, though there are few decent photos of him and he's still a mystery-man. He's also a controversial figure - denounced by some as a vigilante, a 'freak' and a menace, while others admire his ability to use brute force to solve problems that the authorities can't. We get to see Superman's usual MO - Clark investigates a story about a tenemant that's been constructed with substandard materials due to municipal corruption and is a massive health hazard. As Superman, he goes, evacuates the slum, and demolishes it single-handedly, forcing government intervention. We also snippets of some of his other activities - stopping armed robberies, beating up a wife-beater, smashing up a drunk-drivers car etc. There are political debates about him in the media and the Metropolis PD has been ordered to form a task force to hunt him down, though many cops secretely admire him, not least Inspector Henderson and his right-hand woman Maggie Sawyer. In the meantime, we see Clark going about his daily life, working at the Daily Planet but always in Lois' shadow - developing a crush on her and admiring her spunk and determination and amused (and a bit frustrated) to realize she's infatuated with Superman. We also see that he has dreams about an alien world under attack.

The US military, specifically Lois' dad General Sam Lane hires renowned scientist Lex Luthor to investigate Superman, since the military suspects that he might be an alien. We learn that the military has the pod that brought Superman to earth, which we're told was discovered in Kansas ''over 20 years ago''. Lex has been hired to investigate if Superman has any connection to the alien pod.

Superman fights a giant robot causing trouble in Metropolis. It's his first real challenge but he's able to destroy it. The robot was deployed by Luthor and was a test to gauge Superman's power levels and also map his DNA against samples taken from the rocket, which confirm that Superman came to earth in the rocket. Luthor also tests the alien cells against a small glowing green rock he found embedded in the exterior of the rocket and notices that it causes the cells to degrade...he theorizes that the rock is a weapon that can be used to weaken and even kill Superman. So he develops a battlesuit, powered by the radiation from the mineral, which Sam Lane's hotshot and xenophobic subordinate John Corben is chosen to pilot.

Lois, in the meantime, who has a stormy meeting with her dad, confides in Clark that her sources say that her dad is in Metropolis working with Luthor and apparently has an alien ship in his possession. This leads Clark to have a flashback to when he was a teenager, and his adoptive parents told him about how they found him in a rocket, swaddled in the red blanket (which became his cape). They were just about able to get him and the cape from the rocket before the military showed up. Clark heads back to Smallville and meets his parents. He confides his fears that the world may soon find out that he's an alien and that they'll reject him, while his parents try to reassure him.

Clark heads back to Metropolis when he hears sightings of another 'robot'. It's Corben, wearing the ''Metallo'' suit, who manages to defeat Superman in combat, captures him, and takes him to the secret base where Luthor and Sam Lane are. Luthor is able to experiment further on Superman, harvesting more of his DNA and his biometrics, which enables him greater access to the ship. Under the influence of the torture from the kryptonite, Superman has more fragmented memories surface of an attack on his homeworld, Krypton and of his parents, Jor-El and Lara, putting him in the ship.

Unknown to Luthor, his activating the ship's systems alerts Brainiac out in deep-space that the ''last Kryptonian'' is on earth. This triggers an invasion of earth. As Brainiac's drones attack the military base, Superman is able to escape. Instead of running away however he fight and destroys some of the drones, saving some of the soldiers there, as well as Lois (who had arrived at the base earlier suspecting that her dad had something to do with Superman's abduction). However Superman is no match for Brainiac's more powerful and aerial drones (his power is at Siegal/Shuster levels...though he's steadily becoming more powerful at this point he still can't fly). Metallo attempts to fight some drones but is seemingly killed. Superman also recognizes the drones and the tech as being what attacked his home planet in his vague memories from his infancy.

Brainiac demands Superman in return for sparing the earth. Lane and Luthor are ready to hand him over but have no means to do so since Metallo is 'dead'. Superman however agrees to surrender himself, not because he believed Brainiac but because he feels the best chance of fighting Brainiac is within his ship. Lois insists on going with him and stows away on the ship sent to retrieve Superman. Brainiac and Superman come face to face, after Superman is restrained and weakened due to Brainiac replicating Krypton's atmospheric conditions. Brainiac explains his own origins to Superman - he's an alien intelligence from the planet Colu who crashed on Krypton and was discovered by Jor-El. He allowed Jor-El to believe that he'd 'invented' him and over the years steadily infilitrated Krypton's information systems, its politics and every aspect of its society. Brainiac gathered all the intelligence that it could on Krypton, and then triggered its destruction. Jor-El discovered Krypton's impending doom but Brainiac ensured that he would be discredited. However, Jor-El, not trusting Brainiac, had secretely developed a rocket to send his infant son Kal-El to earth, even as Brainiac's forces launched an attack on Krypton to prevent anyone else from escaping. Brainiac mentions how this is his standard MO - studying a planet, gathering date of its collective knowledge, and then eliminating it, which he's about to do to earth (since its a primitive planet and he can do with it what he took years to do on Krypton). Brainiac taunts Superman, claiming that in earth's atmosphere and under its yellow sun, Superman should have the powers of a God, yet he restrains himself, using only a fraction of his powers to intervene in ''petty concerns'', afraid of showing his true alien nature.

Lois is able to free Superman and he's able to disable the controls to restore earth's atmosphere to Brainiac's ship regaining his powers and takes down several of Brainiac's drones within the ship, though his costume is damaged. He finds an old Kryptonian relic in Brainiac's ship, a battlesuit that can be 'reformatted' based on the wearer's thoughts, so he puts it on and it transforms into a new suit (which resembles the Rebirth suit from the comics). Superman, finally unleashing his full power, is able to destroy Brainiac's fleet threatening the earth, as well as his ship. Brainiac, before he is destroyed, reveals that he's merely a drone and that there are dozens of him out there in deep-space.

In the aftermath, Superman is hailed as a hero almost universally for the first time. He finally gives Lois an interview, revealing the full story of his alien heritage, which he's now learnt from Brainiac, to the world. We see him tell Jonathan and Martha on the farm that while he'll always be Clark Kent, there's now a whole other side to his life that he needs to explore and make a part of him. He retrieves his rocket from the military which he takes to a cavern in the Arctic where he's retrieved other alien technology from the wreck of Braniac's ship and his forces and is slowly building the Fortress of Solitude. He activates the ships system and meets the holographic recording of Jor-El and Lara for the first time, ready to embrace his alien identity. But he's gained a boost in confidence as Clark Kent as well, as he asks her out.

A post-credit scene reveals that Luthor retrieved some of the alien tech as well, and he's recovered the comatose and badly damaged body of John Corben, intent on transplanting his brain to a new kryptonite powered cyborg body...

PS: Apologies for the long post...got a bit carried away, lol

[Yohei72]

No more origin story, pllleeease. Everyone knows the story, let’s get on the highway already. Lex Luthor finally done right on the big screen, not as a hammy comedic character (“Smallville” got him right, in my opinion). A relaxed, charismatic, friendly neighborhood Superman, not Cavill’s brooding, one-note version (Chris Reeve got him right). And leaning into the crazy, big science fiction ideas: Brainiac, baby sun eaters, Cyborg Superman, parallel universe Nazi and/or Soviet Superman, that kinda thing. Beyond that, all I need is good writing, directing, acting, and they can do whatever plot they please.

Bizarro could be fun, but if he isn’t executed well, could easily come off as ridiculous in a bad way.

EDIT: Oh, and to stake my position on the defining issue of our time: no red trunks; they just always looked silly. A red belt kinda thing looks great; something is needed to break up all that blue. But why wouldn’t he have different versions that he rotates? I even liked the New 52 collar; he could wear that in a scene or two.

[Yohei72]

Just not with Zach Snyder. He'd give us the 5G version. Gleefully.

Ugh, such a terrible director. Four DC movies, all of which underwhelmed critically and commercially, and some fan folks are still clamoring, “Bring back the Snyderverse!” Madness.