This text incorporates spoilers for “Superman.”
Superman’s archenemy is, unquestionably, Lex Luthor. However the issue the flicks have at all times run into is that Luthor is a traditional man; one punch from Superman and he is mud. So how do you make Lex stand toe-to-toe with the Man of Metal? Historically, there have been two choices: Both put Lex in a go well with of armor, or give him a superpowered enforcer.
Superman motion pictures have at all times gone with the latter, and James Gunn’s new “Superman” is not any totally different. Lex’s (Nicholas Hoult) muscle is Ultraman. Sure, the rumors have been true, Ultraman does seem in “Superman” as a key villain. Nevertheless, he is a bit totally different than the comedian guide model.
Throughout “Superman,” Ultraman stays silent and wears a full physique black go well with, with a goggled masks resembling Doomsday’s.
Warner Bros./DC Comics
However the hints to his true self aren’t refined. He has the identical powers as Superman (David Corenswet); flight, energy, warmth imaginative and prescient, and many others. He additionally wears a “U” insignia on his chest, mirroring the “S” adorning Superman’s costume. Lex can also be in some way capable of get into the Fortress of Solitude with Ultraman, though it solely opens for Superman’s DNA signature. Within the third act, Ultraman and Superman crash into the bottom collectively. Ultraman tears off his ruined masks, revealing Superman’s personal face staring again on the hero.
See, Lex managed to get his fingers on a strand of Superman’s hair from a battle scene. He used it to make a (a lot much less clever) clone of the hero. To not fear, although, as a result of by the top of the movie, Ultraman is thrown right into a black gap; exhausting to image even somebody as robust as him getting back from that.
There may be precedent for an evil Superman known as Ultraman in DC Comics. Nevertheless, within the comics, Ultraman is the Clark Kent from a parallel universe (“Earth-3”) the place the Justice League are villains known as the Crime Syndicate. That Ultraman has appeared in another DC motion pictures and TV, similar to the 2010 animated movie “Justice League: Disaster on Two Earths,” the place he was voiced by Brian Bloom and characterised as a mob boss with superpowers. (“Superman by way of Tony Soprano,” the film’s script says.)
This Ultraman is as a substitute a part of a protracted pattern of evil mirrors to Superman in “Superman” motion pictures.
