Why Superman's Most Powerful Villain Will Probably Never Be In The Movies

Now that James Gunn's "Superman" proved to be a bona fide hit, the doors are wide open for Gunn to expand on that movie in the larger DC Universe. One of the best aspects of "Superman" was seeing the movie portray a large world that is already used to seeing superheroes taking on extradimensional imps and kaijus attacking the city just like a regular Tuesday afternoon. It allows Gunn and whoever comes next to imagine a DC Universe where you don't have to stop and explain everything, where you don't need funny quips every 15 minutes to joke about how weird it is that we're seeing a comic book movie.

So far, Gunn and Peter Safran have done an excellent job making the DC Universe a unique and distinct superhero universe compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making it a place that embraces weird concepts and characters like the entire cast of "Creature Commandos" or teases for Mister Mxyzptlk in "Peacemaker" season 2. With the "Superman" sequel seemingly confirming Brainiac as the villain, it seems Gunn is finally letting DC movies embrace weirder, explicitly comic book-y characters that are more than just punching bags.

Unfortunately, there are still characters we probably will never see in movies. Such is the case of Superman's most powerful villain, who is also one of the strangest and most complicated character origin stories in modern times: Superboy-Prime.

Superboy-Prime was introduced in DC Comics Presents in 1985 during the last stretches of the massive crossover event "Crisis on Infinite Earths." It is there that we are introduced to Earth-Prime, the "real world" of the DC multiverse, where Superman is a fictional hero appearing in comic books and DC Comics is just a comic book company. There we meet a 15-year-old superhero fanboy who has been teased throughout his life for sharing a name with his favorite hero — Clark Kent. Except this Clark discovers that he, too, comes from Krypton and has superpowers. He goes on to become one of the strongest characters in mainstream comics, and one of the most meta, too. Superboy-Prime is capable of literally punching holes in reality and the time stream, and he tends to break the fourth wall like Deadpool — just with a much worst attitude.

Superboy-Prime started out as a hero, one who survived "Crisis on Infinite Earths" alongside the Superman and Lois Lane of Earth-2 and Alexander Luthor of Earth-3. At the end of that story, they go to another dimension, seemingly living happy lives. Except, of course, that wasn't the case, and that dimension ended up being a torturous prison, one that drove Superboy-Prime mad and turned him into a villain who orchestrated the events of "Infinite Crisis."

As a villain, Superboy-Prime is seen as a representation of toxic fandom, a character who saw the changes made to the DC heroes he loved and became angry and resentful — ultimately becoming a sadistic villain who commits multiple genocides, joins the Sinestro Corps, and much more. Now, the idea of a Superman villain being a meta commentary on toxic fandom isn't inherently bad, and in the hands of someone like Gunn, it may even be an interesting idea. The problem is that. in order to make the character work. a movie would have to oversimplify his motivation and backstory, thereby erasing much of the tragedy of the character.

That's because Superboy-Prime was originally meant to be the exact opposite of a toxic fan. He was originally a representation of the original idea of Superboy, a send-off to that era of the character as DC moved away from Superboy in the post-Crisis reboot, just like Earth-2 Kal-L got a send-off in "Crisis on Infinite Earths" as a goodbye to the Golden Age era of Superman. 

Superboy-Prime also represented the readers themselves, the very idea of fans having a last adventure with the heroes they grew up with, getting to jump into the pages of a comic book and become heroes like Superman and the others. By having Superboy-Prime survive the crisis and go away with Kal-L, it was a recognition of the importance of the fans.

A Superboy-Prime story on the big screen needs to be more than just Syndrome from "The Incredibles." It needs to start out as the purest form of and homage to fan service, a literal fan power fantasy that eventually turns sour and gives birth to a supervillain unlike any other. Could it make for a good movie villain? Maybe, but not without too many changes and simplifications to make the character digestible and understandable to general audiences in a single movie.