Superman Movie Prequel Reveals: Metahumans, Monsters & a Major Villain Exists in the New DCU

The new DC Universe is already up, up and underway by the time we’re welcomed to the city of Metropolis in Superman. “We just start in the middle of the action,” the film’s writer-director, James Gunn, told ComicBook and other outlets during December’s trailer reveal. “Superman already exists. Lois and Clark already know each other. Lex hates Superman’s guts from the beginning, although they don’t know each other personally. So we start right in the middle of the action.”

Gunn’s Superman isn’t an origin story like 1978’s Superman: The Movie or 2013’s Man of Steel, instead introducing Kal-El/Clark Kent (David Corenswet) as a Superman who is one of several superheroes in Metropolis. (The filmmaker has cited All Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely — which chronicles the 12 mythic labors of Superman over 12 episodic issues — as the biggest influence on the film.)

But what happened before the action that takes place in Superman? The official prequel junior novel, titled Superman: Welcome to Metropolis, reveals that LuthorCorp CEO Lex Luthor was behind a plot that involved “inserting a dead assassin’s brain into the metal body of a weaponized robot.”

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The novel identifies the cyborg as Metallo, who in the comics is usually John Corben, a thief whose living brain is implanted in a robot body after his death in a car crash. In the post-Crisis continuity, John Byrne’s 1987 Superman run established that Metallo was the creation of the xenophobic mad scientist Emmett Vale (who also discovered Kryptonite, radioactive fragments of the alien Superman’s home world of Krypton). Vale had Corben’s cyborg body powered by a Kryptonite heart, which Metallo used to weaken and nearly kill the near-invulnerable Man of Steel in Superman #1. Metallo’s metallic flesh was seized by Lex Luthor, who took the Kryptonite from Corben’s chest cavity to wield the glowing green rock against his archnemesis: Superman.

In Superman: Welcome to Metropolis, Metallo appears for the first time when he attacks City Hall, which is documented by Daily Planet reporters Clark Kent, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and photographer Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo). Lois took the fresh-faced Clark under her wing and warmed up to her new coworker while taking on the case of the mysterious metal robot Metallo.

The novel also reveals that Metropolis is home to a team of metahumans: Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced). According to the novel, “Guy wants to name the new team the Justice Gang but has not yet convinced his fellow team members.” (In the comics, Mister Terrific is Michael Holt, the CEO of the Central City-based Terrifitech; in The New 52’s Mister Terrific series, the super-genius was based in Los Angeles as head of Holt Industries, and his highly advanced-tech superhero base was the T-Sanctuary in the Ninth Dimension.)

The film’s toyline revealed a figure that some believed to be a Yeti, but the Step Into Reading book Superman: Friends and Foes! identifies those white-furred creatures as Abominable Snowmen — one of the species living in the Arctic surrounding Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. The book also identifies LuthorCorp’s purple-and-green-armored, highly-advanced soldiers as “Raptors,” which may be the precursor to Luthor’s Warsuit from the comic books.

Despite the film’s connections to the upcoming Peacemaker season 2 and HBO series Lanterns, Gunn said during the trailer launch, “Everything needs to stand by itself. I don’t want somebody to have to go see this movie and be relying on anything else. Now listen, once we get down the line, that may change a little bit.”

“Are seeds being planted? Yes, there’s seeds being planted, but that is never going to be the predominant thing in any scene for me. It’s always about getting to the next scene,” he said of including the likes of the metahuman Justice Gang. “What’s in the moment? How are we making this movie the best we can be? And it’s going to stay like that as much as I can possibly make it like that.”

DC Studios’ Superman — starring David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman alongside Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, and Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, with Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, María Gabriela de Faría as Angela Spica/the Engineer, Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Alan Tudyk as Superman Robot #4, Neva Howell as Ma Kent, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Pa Kent, Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord and Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr. — soars into theaters July 11.