If there is one villain that Superman fans have wanted to see the Man of Steel face off against, it’s Brainiac. We’ve seen other major Superman villains multiple times like General Zod and Lex Luthor, but Brainiac is a major antagonist for the hero that we have never seen on the big screen. James Gunn’s sequel to 2025 Superman, Man of Tomorrow, will change all that being the first film to feature the villain, and with the news that German actor Lars Eidinger will be playing the role we are inching closer to watching the epic showdown in theaters.

This leaves the question: what exactly will this version of Brainiac be like? Super hero movies are known for using different versions of characters, and comics have been around for so long that most villains have multiple iterations and versions based on the story-arc or the creators at the time, and Brainiac is no exception. The villain has been around since 1958 as an android that collects planets in bottles, and while that is version most commonly associated with the antagonist, his backstory, appearance, and level of prominence has been changed and altered many times throughout the years.

Some versions have shown him as an organic being, while others have shown him as a fully robotic android that gets destroyed at the end of one comic but is repaired with a new robotic body by the next issue with the tagline that he was, “the villain that won’t die”. He was even briefly known as the alias Pulsar Stargrave at one point and rose up as not just a Superman antagonist, but a villain to the entire Legion of Superheroes.

As the years went on, the Bronze Age gave us a version of the character that was even more robotic, cold, and determined to kill Superman as Brainiac was made to believe that Superman was born with the sole purpose of being his enemy. The robotic version was the characterization all throughout the 80s until Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was a major DC story-line that was used to retcon and reset many different heroes and villains stories.

One common plot thread throughout Brainiac’s early years was that Lex Luthor (currently played by Nicholas Hoult and confirmed to be returning for Man of Tomorrow) has either attempted to team up with or restore power to a damaged Brainiac. In the story-line Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Lex went as far as being Brainiac’s host body and dying at the end of the story due to the robot taking control of his body. This story was the final end of both Lex and Brainiac, as they both die at the end of the story. While I don’t see this being what ultimately happens to either of these characters in Man of Tomorrow, I would imagine we see some sort of version of this story come to fruition given everything we’ve learned so far about the sequel, not to mention the obvious inspiration for the title of the film.

In the 90s, the character was once again revived and has more interactions with Lexcorp as well as adding the Superman Doomsday to his arsenal in The Doomsday Wars, using the creature who once killed Superman as a weapon. This version of Brainiac was more evolved and not the same cold, ambivalent robot from the 80s but now had psychic powers and instead of being destroyed and rebuild over and over again, he was depicted as nearly indestructible. I could keep going but as you can tell there are already a ton of different versions of the character and that continues all the way up to modern day. Even in the New 52, Brainiac is referred to as “the collector of worlds” so despite all the different versions of the character, the origins of the bottle collector of cities and worlds has been maintained into today’s depiction.

Over the years the villain went from a practical villain that used nothing but intellect and technology, much like Lex Luthor, to an all powerful telekinetic mastermind that had both impossibly high intellect and unnaturally strong resilience. Regardless of which version Gunn goes with one thing is for sure, it will not be an easy fight for Kal-El because he is a villain that prefers to use intellect and alien technology to fight rather than his physical prowess, which is where Superman excels.

So, with all this information and all these different versions of the characters (we’ve only scratched the surface of all the different versions and story-arcs), it will be interesting to see what Gunn does with the character. In a recent threads response, Gunn himself teased what we can expect from his version in Man of Tomorrow and by the sounds of it the director is well aware of how many versions there are and we are most likely going to get a blended amalgam of 60 years of the character. According to Gunn:

“I love aspects of many versions of the characters, from the 1950s [Otto] Binder stuff to the surprisingly scary [Marv] Wolfman stuff to the animated versions and up through the truly creepy and wonderful, current Absolute Brainiac”. – James Gunn via threads

So while we still haven’t received too much specific information of the character and most likely won’t for a while considering Man of Tomorrow isn’t coming to theaters until 2027, this gives us at least some sort of contextual starting point for discussions on what both fans and the creators alike would like to see from the character in the film. Gunn is known for his more eye catching and colorful set pieces and character designs, with aspects of the characters heavily influenced by the source material but also given a modern spin. It will be very interesting to see both how the character looks in the film and what we can expect from the story going into the sequel, but I wouldn’t anticipate a first look at the character for at least another year so until that happens we can all start reading up on the decades of the character’s backstories and get familiar with all the different routes Gunn could possibly go for the villains first theatrical outing.

Are you excited to see Superman face off against Brainiac in Man of Tomorrow? Make sure to let us know your thoughts down in the comments!

Source: Comicbook.com