Art by Alex Ross

I’m going to get this taken care of right off the bat, this is the stupidest article I’ve ever written on this site. And I pretty much exclusively run in stupidity. I generally try to stay away from stuff like this, coming up with alternate stories that movies, books, or comics should have done. It’s just kind of fruitless, and a waste of time. I love coming up with stories. I do it constantly in my head. And while I usually spend my efforts trying to come up with original ideas for projects that I could actually do, occasionally I waste my time thinking up stories that I could never do. Yeah, of course I’ve thought up pitches for entire trilogies of superhero movies, I feel like that’s not completely crazy. But I’ve spent way too much time thinking about movies that have already been made, trying to come up with ways that I would have made it better. Which is fruitless, and pretty much just throwing my time and brain energy right in the garbage. So, inevitably, since I wrote a goddamned 5,000 word rant about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, rambling at length about how shitty it was, and how many things were wrong, both structurally and narrativly, with it, I started to think about things that could have been done better with it. Which wasn’t hard. Pretty much everything could have been done better with this flaming garbage heap of a movie. The tone’s a big problem, as is the violence and cynicism, which would require a pretty huge script overhaul to fix, but there’s one big aspect that could have been changed for the better. One giant symbol for everything wrong with the movie.

Doomsday. The inclusion of that character in this movie was baffling, led to the Death of Superman in only his second movie, and served as the baffling and ineffective culmination of whatever the hell Lex Luthor was doing. Luthor’s motivation in this movie made absolutely no sense, but I think his endgame was to discredit Superman and have the world turn against him. Why? No idea. He was just evil in this movie for no reason. But, for the purposes of this fix I would hammer in that Lex is trying to destroy Superman because of jealousy. He doesn’t like that this alien has all this immense power and didn’t work for it, and people in theory love him for it. We see Lex in this movie donating money to charity, trying to help the world for his own selfish reasons, so that people see him as a hero. So the logical way to have handled Lex in this movie would be for him to try and beat Superman at his own game, not create an uncontrollable rage monster that will destroy the city that Lex has helped with his company in the hopes that it may kill Superman…and then continue destroying the world because there’s nothing to stop it. And how would you beat Superman at his own game? Creating a better hero. Which wouldn’t be hard, since the Superman in this movie is such a jerk and appears to do very little heroing. And actually getting his hands dirty isn’t really Lex’s style, so it makes sense that he would try to make a hero, while secretly designing the hero to be able to kill Superman. And there’s one character in the comics and the movie that would have worked great for that.

In the movie we actually got, Scoot McNairy played a character named Wallace Keefe whose legs were destroyed in the Superman/Zod attack from Man of Steel, and who becomes a crazy bitter man who hates Superman and the people who think he’s a hero. In the movie Luthor finds Keefe, and offers to help him with his vendetta against Superman. And in the movie we got, Lex’s plan to help him comprised of turning Keefe into a suicide bomber during a Congressional hearing about Superman. Which in some way turned the public against Superman? In America we don’t often root for the causes that suicide bombers believe in. It was a really weird part of the movie that felt like a huge misstep, and the turning point where this movie could have gone a very different way, and been a more logical and interesting movie. And that would have been to turn Scoot McNairy into Metallo.

Now, in the comics Metallo has been several different people, and has had several different origins. But superhero movies have taken liberties with more obscure villains in the past. The villain in Iron Man 2 is an amalgam of two different villains that most people don’t really care about, and while that movie didn’t really make the villain work at all, it’s still an example of how you can change around a villain. But the basic premise of Metallo is that he’s a cyborg who runs on Kryptonite. And the plot I came up with lends heavily from Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics when the New 52 started off. Basically what I feel like would have made sense would have been to have Lex approach Keefe, and tell him he could give him the power to take down Superman. Lex could then create some sort of suit of armor, which runs of Kryptonite, and that would give Keefe back his legs, and give him abilities. The suit would turn Keefe into a hero whose power came from human ingenuity, and not alien powers. He would be this new shining knight who would be an example of what a hero should really be. All while secretly having weapons and a power source that can kill Superman. Luthor would have known this all along, and have planned it out, but no one else would. Maybe Batman. Batman would still be on the trail of the Kryptonite, trying to get it for his own purposes. And having Lex create a supposed hero would vastly change the rest of the movie.

How about have Lex secretly be creating disasters and crimes that Metallo can save people in. He would have the leg up, getting to disasters before Superman, and showing the world that he’s a better hero than Superman. And then something goes wrong. Maybe have an actual emergency happen in Gotham, not something that Lex planned, where Superman and Metallo show up at the same time. Metallo would then snap, and attack Superman, causing the disaster to get worse. Superman would then know that Metallo was up to no good, and could then theoretically go to Batman for help. But Batman would be mad, thinking that Superman was responsible for the fight and the disaster. Batman would then fight Superman, who would spend the entire time trying to explain the situation and get Batman to stop. We would cut the stupid Martha thing, and have Superman finally get it through to Batman that Lex has been playing everyone. The two would then stop fighting, and go after Luthor and Metallo. Maybe have Superman go after Lex while Batman and Wonder Woman go after Metallo, since they’re immune to the Kryptonite. I would have Wonder Woman working more with Batman through the movie, so that by the time Batman needs to take down Metallo he knows he has someone who he can count on. The two could fight Metallo while Superman deals with Lex, maybe fighting that weird secret army he has who could now be equipped with Kryptonite weapons. But in the end, heroism wins. Metallo could be stopped and brought to justice, while Lex somehow gets out from it, with no evidence showing that he was involved. That is until Clark Kent manages to write an article exposing Luthor’s plan, taking down the titan without the use of vigilante justice, and showing that punching isn’t the only way to get things done. Then end the movie with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman being pals, promising to help each other out next time something horrible happens.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. It sure doesn’t fit with the world Zach Snyder was trying to build, but to me it would have been better. And let me reiterate, this was a stupid article. It’s pointless to complain about a movie that’s already been made and released. This was a hypothetical bit of rambling about something I have no control over, and will influence no one. But it’s been running through my head like crazy since I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (They gave it this stupid name, so I’m going to refer to it by it) and I felt like rambling about it on my blog was the only way to exorcise it from my brain. So enjoy I guess?