From Krypto to Guy Gardner: New “Superman” Images Tease a World Full of Heroes & Metahumans
We’ve known for a while that James Gunn’s Superman would be set in a world where David Corenswet’s Man of Steel wasn’t the only person on Earth with superpowers. Gunn has been teasing—and then the casting announcements and later trailers revealed—that his reboot would open with Superman in a world filled with metahumans and monsters of all sorts. While Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor remains a relatively super-powerless human bound by the laws of physics (those are about the only laws he feels bound by), there are plenty of characters in Superman who have gifts and abilities (or in the case of Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho, perhaps “curses” would also apply) that, if not quite rivaling Superman, certainly will make his life a lot more interesting. These include Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific, Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl, Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, and yes, Krypto the Superdog. Add in Superman’s Kryptonian robot helpers, too, to be fair.
We’ve got a few fresh peeks at these folks in images provided by Warner Bros. Hoult’s Lex Luthor is once again Superman’s main nemesis, and he’s got his own hero shot, as it were, in an image below. We’ve also got a new look at Fillion’s Guy Gardner, a member of the Green Lantern forces with that unbeatable haircut (Fillion is a longtime collaborator of Gunn’s)—the Lanterns are getting their own HBO series, no less, and Guy will be the one to welcome them into the newly unified DC Universe. In the same shot is Merced’s Hawkgirl, a flying, butt-kicking tactical genius and one of DC’s first superheroines, a character created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Dennis Neville and who first appeared in Flash Comics # 1 in 1940 and eventually was rebooted, so to speak, by writer David S. Goyer and artist Stephen Sadowski as Kendra Saunders in “JSA: Secret Files and Origins #1” in August of 1999. And then there’s Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific, aka Michael Holt, the second character to take up the mantle of Mr. Terrific, whose skills, among many, including super intelligence—in the comics, he had 14 Ph. D.s.
The new images also include a showdown between Superman and Lex Luthor, as well as a shot from inside the Fortress of Solitude with Superman scolding his ever-mischievous best friend, Krypto the Superdog, and his robot caretaker, Kelex, a Kryptonian butler. A behind-the-scenes shot shows Gunn, Hoult, and Corenswet on set.
Another thing we know about Superman’s plot is that when the story begins, Clark and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) are already a thing. As Brosnahan teased, the film starts with Clark and Lois already romantically tangled. We also know from the trailers that Superman’s can-do, whole-hearted goodness isn’t viewed as such by some of the most powerful people on the planet. This includes the Secretary of Defense of the United States, who is officially looking into Superman’s actions.
Superman’s decency has been a central point of interest for Gunn since he started talking about his vision for the character. This is a writer/director who made his name centering weirdos and wildcards from The Guardians of the Galaxy to The Suicide Squad, but in taking on the story of Superman, he’s made it plain he wanted to focus on a superhero was deeply good, and who believed in the goodness in others, even if he’s labeled a threat, an alien.
Check out the new images below. Superman soars into theaters on July 11.
Featured image: Caption: DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio.
