Big day for comic book movie news, it seems. Hot on the heels of the Captain America casting wishlist comes this bit of news: Latino Review is reporting that David Goyer has been hired to write the new Superman movie, which will be called Man of Steel.
This can’t come as a huge surprise to anyone following word that Christopher Nolan was brought on to ‘godfather’ a new take on the character. There are a lot of people who somehow think that Goyer is a peripheral part of the success of The Dark Knight, but he’s right there with the Bros Nolan when it comes to breaking the story that everybody loved in that movie. And the Nolans really dig Goyer.
What’s Goyer’s take on Superman? Latino Review says to look to the John Byrne stories – think the Man of Steel miniseries, in fact – and the sense of modernity (sorta, I guess. Those books are from the 80s) and fun. They say that while Luthor and Brainiac will be in the script this isn’t going to be an origin story and the film will assume you know all the main characters and settings, including a Daily Planet hit hard by the internet.
Brandon Routh won’t be back, which means a new search for Superman. One weird thing that had been floating around for years now is the idea that Legendary Pictures was interested in creating a fully CGI Superman and hiring an actor to play only Clark Kent. I don’t know if this news has already broken out there – everybody I know has heard this exact same story – and I don’t know if that concept is still in play, but it would allow Legendary and Warner Bros to always have Superman in their stable and only have to worry about casting new Clarks, which is probably much easier. Post-Avatar it seems more and more likely somebody would try a stunt like this. Again, I don’t know if this concept is still on the table and Latino Review doesn’t report on it, but it’s something that’s real and been bandied about.
I’m skeptical about Nolan as the shepherd of this series, but if his job ends up being simply getting Goyer into place and then protecting his script, I’m okay with it. Goyer’s got more comic book cred than Nolan, in my opinion, and the Byrne namedrop is perfect. That was the run that got me to be a Superman fan, and for a couple of years there was some truly interesting storytelling going on in the four Superman titles. Byrne definitely left enough of a groundwork to work with – but I do hope Goyer avoids Byrne’s version of Brainiac, which was Milton Fine, a sideshow mentalist who Luthor souped up. I kind of like the robot guy who flies around in a big Terminator skull with tentacles.