After years of waiting, fans finally have a hint of some Man of Steel 2 plot details, and the movie sounds like a DC fanatic's dream. Henry Cavill's Superman notably never got a sequel to his 2012 in Man of Steel. A second Cavill-led Man of Steel movie was on the cards several times during his DCEU tenure, both with and without the first movie's director, Zack Snyder. The last of these attempts would have seen Mission Impossible filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie take on the character after his appearance at the end of Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam.
As a part of a recent interview, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie teased some key plot details about his abandoned Man of Steel 2 movie, including how the film would have opened and other DC heroes he was hoping to include. Man of Steel 2 was ultimately one of the casualties of James Gunn and Peter Safran's takeover of DC Studios, with the new DC bosses opting to pursue their own Superman movie instead of the Henry Cavill-led sequel.
Speaking on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, McQuarrie revealed that he had thoroughly thought out his ill-fated Man of Steel sequel.
He described the film's opening, saying that it took inspiration from Disney's Up in that it would have been entirely devoid of dialogue and set up Cavill's iconic DC hero unlike ever before:
"The first 5 minutes of my 'Superman' movie was...you remember Pixar's 'Up?' A sequence with no dialogue that covered that character."
"The first 5 minutes of the movie was a setup," McQuarrie described, saying that it would have pulled the curtain back on "exactly what made Superman tick:"
"The first 5 minutes of the movie was a setup, after which you knew exactly what made Superman tick, and exactly what Superman was afraid of, and why Superman made the choices that he made. It would have been epic.In five minutes, the scale of the movie would have been absolutely extraoridinary."
Elsewhere in the interview, McQuarrie disclosed some of the other heroes he hopes to include in the movie, including Green Lantern (who will finally be coming back to the big screen in this summer's Superman).
The longtime director said that the first DC character he was trying to crack Green Lantern but called the hero a "tough one" to tackle on his own:
"Green Lantern was what came to me. Green Lantern is a tough one. The power is very tough. I cracked it, and it was fun watching him learn how to use that power and giving that power a flaw, so it was not pure invincibility, and it was all there."
That is when he saw that both Superman and Green Latner could be used together, noting that he saw "similarities" between the two characters that, in the film, would have led to "amazing conflict and an amazing universe-expanding resolution:"
"I suddenly realized how they had amazing similarities, which also allowed for amazing conflict and an amazing universe-expanding resolution."
Expounding upon his Green Lantern love, McQuarrie noted that he adores the "whole concept of Green Lantern" in that his super-powered ring "has to be recharged," calling the quirk a "not a bug, [but] a feature:"
"The whole concept of Green Lantern is that the ring has to be recharged. That's not a bug, it's a feature. That's the thing that makes it so, yes, you have infinite power, but you only have so much battery life, and that can run out at inconvenient times, That, for me, solved the whole Green Lantern problem. The costume is another thing, and you can figure that out."
Man of Steel 2 was first announced following Henry Cavill's surprise return in the Black Adam post-credits scene. McQuarrie was attached to write and direct the film. Cavill was on board for the project, but plot and release details were kept under lock and key at the time (read more about Man of Steel 2 here).
The movie was ultimately canned in the DC leadership shake-up, which saw Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker James Gunn step in to oversee the future of the brand's on-screen fare. Cavill's Superman would end his tenure with five appearances as the Man of Steel, with no proper sequel to his 2012 DCEU debut ever seeing the light of day.
Why Christopher McQuarrie's Man of Steel 2 Cut Hurts So Much?
Even among those who could not wait for Warner Bros. to abandon the oft-maligned DCEU, there will be some who mourn the loss of Christopher McQuarrie's Man of Steel 2.
The Mission Impossible filmmaker, along with his movie muse/creative partner Tom Cruise, has helped define a language of action cinema over the last decade and a change, something the director would have almost certainly brought to his vision for a Superman story.
And, according to what he has said about his Man of Steel 2 pitch, he also had a pretty bang-on idea of where to take Henry Cavill's super-powered character with a potential future story.
From the Up-inspired opening to the inclusion of a Green Lantern and the tensions that followed, McQuarrie looked to have been on a pretty solid track to something exciting and unique for what would have been the start of a new era for the DCEU.
However, he never got to put rubber on the road and make the movie happen. Instead, his film was abandoned in favor of a new Superman on the back of James Gunn and his new DC Studios.
It is not all sad, though. Gunn and co. seem to be (likely completely unintentionally) putting some of the ideas McQuarrie had to use in this summer's Superman, as well as the greater DCU as a whole.
The David Corenswet-led Superman will also include a Green Lantern and focus on more of the Man of Steel's inspirational aspects. So, fans will be getting at least some of what could have been in the McQuarrie-directed Man of Steel 2; it will just be in a different universe with a different filmmaker at the helm.
