Man Of Steel: Five Possible Spinoffs

Earlier this weekend, Russell Crowe baffled the comics press a bit with an announcement via [...]

Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Jor-El (Russell Crowe) in Man of Steel

Earlier this weekend, Russell Crowe baffled the comics press a bit with an announcement via Twitter that he'd been inundated with questions about a prequel to Man of Steel, set on Krypton and starring him, and that he would be amenable to it, if fans could put enough pressure on the studio to bring it to bear. "A lot of you are asking about a KRYPTON prequel, if that's something you feel strongly about let @Legendary pictures know your thoughts," Crowe tweeted, adding that while it's not something he's particularly fixated on himself, he would be amenable to it were it to materialize. That idea got us thinking, as we are wont to do, about what spinoffs we might want to see set in the universe of Man of Steel--assuming, of course, that the next film isn't (as we fully expect it to be) simply a sequel to the movie we already have. What we realized is that, frankly, the movie gave us the broad strokes of a lot of things, but not a ton of details. We could easily see them filling in those details with any of these...

world-of-krypton

World Of Krypton After The Man of Steel, writer/artist John Byrne reinvented Superman's homeworld with the 1987 miniseries World of Krypton. Rather than writing this one himself, he worked with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola to craft a science fiction-influenced version of the world that varied wildly from the version fans had seen in the pre-Crisis era. It's a bit of a mix between this era and the Birthright look spearheaded by Leinil F. Yu that eventually made its way to the screen, so there's a bit of a comic book precedent for such a film to exist--and whether they could get Crowe to star in it or not, it might be interesting to see whether a DC Universe animted feature film could be made out of the Byrne/Mignola four-part miniseries or even the graphic novel collection by the same name, which featured a bit more background information. Added bonus: the massive Kryptonian robot/armor that Superman used to trek from the Fortress of Solitude to Metropolis after returning from the dead (a story that influenced the filmmakers and that Henry Cavill has repeatedly acknowledged affection for) first appeared in this volume.

supergirl

Supergirl Why was that capsule on board the Fortress-ship empty? Whatever happened to the Girl of Tomorrow? It could be interesting to find out. For fans who didn't buy their Man of Steel tickets at Wal-Mart, or who didn't pre-order their Blu-Ray on Vudu's website, you might not know that there was a Man of Steel Prequel digital comic, featuring Kara Zor-El, which took place thousands of years in Earth's past, when the girl who would be Supergirl was in charge of a space mission like the ones described in Man of Steel. However, it wasn't a hostile environment on Earth that caused their trip to go disastrously wrong and give Krypton one less outpost; it was the presence of Dev-Em, a murderer she had helped to put away. Set loose on her craft by members of the Kryptonian council unwilling to put him to death, he murdered most of the crew, leaving only Kara alive in the hopes that he could kill her when she awoke from stasis. Once she did, though, they were so close to Earth that the yellow sunlight of our star had started to give them powers and their fight brought down the craft. While one figure emerged from the downed ship to walk the Earth, it's not totally clear which one it was...or whether they could possibly have survived the thousands of years between when the craft was buried in the ice and the present day. The only hint as to which one of them "won" the fight? Natives in the far north who painted the House of El sigil on the insides of their teepees.

AMY ADAMS as Lois Lane in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “MAN OF STEEL,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Lois Lane, intrepid reporter We've said this before and will say it again: Lois Lane is more bad-ass than Superman is. Now, in the context of Man of Steel, they've put a lot of time, effort and energy into making sure we all know that Superman is pretty bad-ass, too, but at the heart of Lois's character is a doggedness and a toughness that says, essentially, that besides Batman she might be the one character in the DC Universe who could find a way to beat Superman in a fight without the benefit of powers. Add to that the fact that she's an award-winning, risk-taking investigative journalist and that we're at a time in our culture where there are very few of those, and you've got a potentially really interesting character to base at least a solid B story in the next film around.

smallville32

Smallville Of course, this title would be basically an impossible sell, but there's certainly something to be mined from the stories that took place before Clark was "officially" Superman. Wandering the countryside without a costume or supervillains, he'd likely have been more Superman-like than what we saw in Man of Steel, a film in which a novice fighter was put up against nearly impossible odds and there were steep consequences for it. Again, it's hard to imagine they'd do this since we just spent ten years essentially getting that story--but if they were to do a Smallville film, the potential for introducing new characters and concepts that could pay off down the line is pretty great.

Batman/Superman #1 Preview

World's Finest This, of course, is the film that everyone wants to see. More than Justice League, even, we get people commenting on our social media sites that they want to se Superman and Batman onscreen together, basically as soon as humanly possible. In fact, so much so that if they were to do a second Man of Steel film before they started into any other DC Universe movies, we'd argue a Batman cameo or at least a hint of one in the post-credits sequence would be a truly fantastic move. This one hardly counts as a "Man of Steel spinoff" since Batman is such a powerful franchise in its own right, but we'll allow it--partially because it's our list and we can do that and partially because of the couple of Batman-related Easter eggs we saw in Man of Steel that clearly suggest Clark Kent isn't the only guy with daddy issues considering a second job in tights.

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