Director Zack Snyder was once asked about an ongoing DC movie universe, while promoting Man Of Steel back in 2012. In his answer, he characterized Superman as being the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the DC catalogue, and that once Superman was properly dealt with on film, everything else would fall into place. Snyder set that jewel brilliantly with Henry Cavill’s first outing as Kal-El, and Warner Bros. soon unveiled a multi-year slate of DC movies, including standalone titles and Justice League.
As anticipation continues to build toward what can only be described as beyond fever pitch for the next instalment in the DC universe – Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice – fans are seeking clues as to what the overall DC roadmap might look like.
Enter Henry Cavill, who has been doing the promotional rounds for his other franchise-opener, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Predictably facing as many questions about Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice as the film he is actually promoting, Cavill addressed the curiosity about DC’s masterplan.
“There’s a big plan in place at WB for the whole DC franchise, so all of this stuff ties in. They’re not thinking from movie-to-movie, they’re thinking from a big tentpole type thing and each story has its own story, which is attached to the major issue. Yeah, there’s a big plan.”
What Cavill is describing here, in understandably broad strokes, sounds very much like any other cohesive movie universe – including that of Marvel – but, look closer, and apply the context of what we have already seen, and this becomes a glimpse of something incredibly exciting.
[zergpaid]Firstly, there’s the idea of “the major issue” to which the whole thing is attached – suggesting an overall ‘big bad’ that casts a sinister shadow over each franchise instalment. There are several candidates for this, many of which have been rumoured by fans – Doomsday, Darkseid and Brainiac included. We can see that Doomsday is certainly on the horizon, because the corpse of General Zod is seen in the Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice trailer – being wheeled into some kind of storage/scientific facility.
The source material has Doomsday as the creation of a Kryptonian scientist, who seeks to build the perfect weapon, but finds that he is out of his depth. The weapon – a terrifying killing creature – is jettisoned into space, only to crash land on Earth. It later wakes, and ultimately kills Superman. The presence of the corpse of General Zod in the film suggests that Lex Luthor (possibly in manipulative cahoots with Bruce Wayne/Batman) will use his scientific resources, as well as the Kryptonian resources brought to Earth in Man Of Steel, and the Kryptonian body of General Zod to build a weapon designed to fight Superman – leading to the creation of Doomsday.
Published: Aug 13, 2015 06:59 am