Whatever your feelings on last November’s Justice League, it’s hard to argue that Steppenwolf was an underwhelming first villain for DC’s finest heroes to fight, despite a strong vocal performance from Ciaran Hinds. While his formidable nature didn’t really come across in the truncated theatrical cut of the movie, there were clearly plans behind the scenes for him to be very different.
If you don’t believe us, just check out this intriguing bit of info from an old issue of Hollywood Magazine which has now resurfaced online. In a feature on the film, the text casually mentions that “Steppenwolf survived a battle with Doomsday” prior to his conflict with the Justice League. That’s news to us, as the event’s never referenced in the pic itself.
Perhaps this was a detail that was ditched along with much of Chris Terrio’s original script, if those rumors that Geoff Johns rewrote most of it are to be believed. Either way, you can check it out for yourself down below:
This certainly fits in with what we know about Steppenwolf. After all, he was a fearsome conqueror of worlds in the ancient times, until he was defeated by the combined peoples of Earth and exiled by the ruler of Apokolips, Darkseid. So, he could well have gone toe-to-toe with the Kryptonian deformity at some point.
But how could Steppenwolf have met Doomsday thousands of years ago when Lex Luthor only created the beast in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice? Well, director Zack Snyder’s confirmed that the much-derided CGI troll was not, in fact, “the real Doomsday,” with the true brute apparently still out there somewhere.
Of course, his past history with Doomsday wasn’t the only thing that changed about Steppenwolf over Justice League‘s tempestuous production. Multiple pieces of concept art have shown us that the design for the villain was originally very different, too, which explains the shoddy CGI used to bring him to life in the finished product.
