The DC Universe doesn’t waste any time testing its Man of Steel. In the opening minutes of Superman, the titular hero is looking worse for wear after a fight with the Hammer of Boravia, who turns out actually to be Ultraman, a Superman clone. Ultraman isn’t the only trick Lex Luthor has up his sleeve, though, as he also unleashes a kaiju in Metropolis and starts a war in Jarhanpur to distract his arch-enemy. Luthor comes at Superman from a million different directions, and it takes several other characters agreeing to help for the hero to take down the villain and send him to jail, where he belongs.
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While Lex is going to do plenty of time in the slammer, his mission wasn’t a total loss. By entering the Fortress of Solitude and downloading the message from Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van, the billionaire gets the world to see Kryptonians for what they really are: conquerors. However, while Superman makes it clear that the contents of the message are accurate, a new DCU theory claims that the people behind it weren’t being honest when they made it.
Superman’s Parents Send Him to Earth With One Goal
The first time Superman visits the Fortress of Solitude in James Gunn’s film, he needs to recharge after suffering his first defeat. To help make the process go smoother, the robots that watch over the hideout play a message from Kal-El’s parents that explains the kind of person they wanted him to be. They tell him to watch over humanity and help guide it into the future. Unfortunately, the pep talk cuts off at a certain point because it was damaged during the journey to Earth. Superman gets the gist of what they were saying, though, and he models his entire person after his parents’ dream for him. The only problem is that the rest of the message paints a very different picture of Krypton’s people.
Once Lex pinpoints the location of the Fortress of Solitude, he heads to the Arctic with the Engineer and Ultraman, whose DNA acts as a key to the base. Lex isn’t sure what he’s going to find, but he realizes he’s hit the jackpot when he stumbles upon the message. The Engineer uses her nanotech to decode the missing parts, and once Lex hears the full thing, he releases it to the world, revealing that Superman came to rule. The Man of Steel has a hard time wrapping his head around the whole thing, but he doesn’t have time to think too much about it because Lex kicks off the next part of the plan. By the end of Superman, the titular hero moves on, embracing the lessons his parents on Earth taught him. But he shouldn’t give up on Jor-El and Lara so quickly because it’s possible it wasn’t them on the other end of the hologram.
An Evil Kryptonian May Have Hijacked Superman’s Life
The idea of Jor-El, a typically wise and heroic man, being evil is a tough pill to swallow. In the source material and past live-action adaptations, he acts as a guide for his son from beyond the grave, offering advice whenever Kal-El needs it. Gunn may have been tired of the same old Superman origin and decided a fresh direction would work better. After all, he’s talked about not wanting to see certain superhero backstories on the big screen ever again. However, there’s also a slim chance that the filmmaker is playing the long game by doing a fake-out. A theory has been making the rounds on social media that claims Jor-El isn’t the one in the video and that General Zod is delivering the message. Knowing Krypton is on its last legs, Zod could have posed as Kal-El’s father and ensured that his beliefs would live on in the next generation.
Now, there’s at least one major hole in this theory that revolves around Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-El. She grew up on Krypton, which means she knows what her aunt and uncle looked like, and since Kal-El plays the message frequently, she’s surely aware of it. To play devil’s advocate, though, Kara never mentions anything about her family wanting to conquer Earth and doesn’t watch the message in the movie. There’s a chance she just took her cousin’s word about his parents wanting him to do good, which helps add fuel to the fire because, if she didn’t think anything was off, that means she doesn’t take them as evil people. Zod is a completely different story, and if he’s still around, he may show up on Earth, ready to make Superman pay for failing to carry out his mission.
Superman is in theaters now.
Is there a chance that General Zod pretended to be Jor-El in Superman? Would you like to see the villain appear in the DCU? Let us know in the comments below!
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