Warning: This article contains spoilers for Superman.
James Gunn’s new Superman movie cost around $225 million to make and is poised to launch a whole new cinematic universe — but the ending seems to have taken inspiration from one of the franchise’s most ludicrous storylines.
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During the movie’s big climax, Superman faces off against the masked Hammer of Boravia, who turns out to be Ultraman, who, in a shocking twist, turns out to be a stupider, more emo clone of Superman. It turns out that Lex Luthor created the faux-Kryptonian using a stolen strand of the hero’s hair.
While Ultraman first appeared in the pages of DC comics way back in 1964, he wasn’t a clone, he was originally a version of Superman from a parallel reality. The new movie’s take on the character — a moody, unkempt Clark Kent doppelganger — feels weirdly similar to a scene from Superman III, the widely-reviled sequel that co-starred Richard Pryor and suggested that computers have the capacity for both evil and magic.
At one point in the film, Pryor’s hacker character is forced to create a batch of synthetic Kryptonite, which basically just turns Superman into a petty dick who straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa and gets day-drunk in dive bars.
At this point, he confusingly splits into two people: the good Clark Kent and the belligerent, alcoholic deadbeat Superman sporting a five o’clock shadow. They brawl in a junkyard until Clark chokes out Superman and he just fades away like Obi-Wan Kenobi. The scene was either a potent metaphor for how we all battle our inner demons, or the producers simply ran out of ideas and came up with a fight scene that wouldn’t require having to pay another actor.
Gunn’s Superman obviously borrows a number of elements from the old Christopher Reeve series, including the main titles and John Williams’ iconic theme music. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this ending was intended to be a callback to the Reeve-on-Reeve fight, perhaps out of a desire to redo the famously lame sequence?
Come to think of it, Luthor stealing one of Superman’s hairs to create an evil clone was also the plot of the similarly terrible follow-up to Superman III, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Regardless of the inspiration, can we all admit that the “hero fights their own double” trope has become a little tired by this point?
They should have just had Superman and Ultraman hash things out and agree to grab brunch some time, like at the end of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
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