Superhero films seem to be supplying nearly 90% of all film related rumours the last few years and most of them involve SUPERMAN or BATMAN. This story is no different.
Last week the news hit that Zack Synder’s top choice for the villain of his SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL, Viggo Mortensen, turned down the opportunity as the role of General Zod. With this news a number of people have been named as purposed bad guys. The newest name in the mix is Michael Shannon (MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE THY DONE?).
Now Shannon is a fantastic actor that has skated the outer limits of Hollywood for years but SUPERMAN could be the film that thoroughly breaks him through. Of course no one knows who Superman will be facing as the man has a varied and wide rogues gallery to choose from including Lex Luthor, Doomsday, Livewire and Parasite to name a slim a few. Like with Batman though you can make an educated list of characters and here’s ours:
BRAINIAC
It is a sentient computer program from Superman’s home world, Krypton and is also one of his most dangerous foes. This program travels the universe finding civilisations and extracting all of their knowledge and then terminates the race but not before taking the planet’s greatest city/town/settlement to shrink it down to a tiny size and keep it in a museum like environment. He does all this because the knowledge has more worth if he is the only keeper of it.
Brainiac has been featured in many of the cartoon variations and was played by James Masters in SMALLVILLE. But a part from the drivel that is SMALLVILLE he has never seen a live action incarnation.
MR. MXYZPTLK
This funny looking man is a magical imp from the fifth dimension that can do whatever he can think of. He is also one of Superman’s biggest villain but prefers to have fun with Supes’ than try to kill him. Also since he is a magic based being Superman is just as vulnerable to him as Kryptonite. His only flaw is that he is easily tricked into saying his name in reverse which imprisons him back in the fifth dimension for 90 days.
We again have only seen him in SMALLVILLE and the terrible, terrible SUPERBOY series back in the 80’s. The only possible reason that he might not be in the new film is because of the magic element but you never know what Nolan, who has come up with the basics of the story, have up his sleeve. Also Michael Shannon would be perfect for the role and could even pull off a Heath Ledger like performance.
PARASITE
In Post-Crisis comics Parasite was a man that worked as a janitor at the super science, S.T.A.R Labs. Of course working in a place like that screams accident waiting to happen which does and turns him into a creature that can suck the energy from every living being.
Parasite is my pick for the film even if he does seem more like a sequel villain but a lot of cool stuff could happen with this character.
Now the reason that I didn’t choose Lex Luthor, Zod and others of that ilk is because I think Luthor is tainted, he has been misused from the Richard Donner days and especially in SUPERMAN RETURNS and Synder has stated that it has nothing to do with the latter film. Also Zod is too iconic from SUPERMAN 2 and with word that Mortensen has declined the invite to the party the character probably won’t be used.
Now the above is only theory and my opinion of the best choices but again it could be someone completely different, we just have to wait and see.
