After taking a brief vow of silence, James Gunn has officially announced that, yes, he will be directing Superman: Legacy, the upcoming reboot of Kal-El’s cinematic adventures that will launch DCU Chapter One: Gods & Monsters. As that was widely expected news, though, Gunn’s additional revelations about the movie are much more eye-opening as they reveal what the emotional heart of the film’s story will be. In addition, they may just reveal the perfect way for Gunn to correct a major DC oversight.
In a tear-jerking Twitter thread, Gunn opened up about why Legacy‘s July 11 release date is important to him, as it’s also the birthday of his late father. The filmmaker elaborated that his relationship with his dad fed into the portrayal of Clark Kent in the script for his Superman movie. Gunn proclaimed that it will center around Supes’ “heritage – how both his aristocratic Kryptonian parents and his Kansas farmer parents inform who he is and the choices he makes.”
In other words, Clark’s two father figures will no doubt be integral characters in this new version of his origins story. This is hardly a surprise when it comes to Jor-El, as previous films have always put a lot of weight on Kal-El’s Kryptonian pops, but it’s also encouraging for anyone hoping Gunn will make up for the poor treatment of Jonathan Kent in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The farmer’s pointless death remains one of the contentious and widely mocked elements of the DCEU opener.
Therefore it’s paramount that the portrayal of Jonathan in Legacy returns to the idea of Pa Kent as the man from whom Clark gets his immovable moral compass and copious amounts of compassion. Jonathan’s death will likely be a major moment in the movie’s arc so we need to really care about him in order to make this a real “Mufasa in The Lion King” scene that absolutely breaks our hearts, much like the poignant demises in Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films.
The perfect Pa Kent needs to be found, then, but luckily for Gunn, the obvious answer is staring him in the face. DC fans have been desperately hoping that a place can be found for none other than Brendan Fraser in the DCU, following the cancellation of Doom Patrol (in which he played Robotman) and the canning of Batgirl (in which he was supposed to portray Firefly). It’s not just twice that Fraser has been burned by DC either, as he also got very close to playing the Man of Steel himself in the aborted Superman: Flyby project.
In the wake of his well-deserved Oscar win for The Whale, Fraser is likely to become an even hotter property in Hollywood, so Gunn would be wise to hire him as Pa Kent, a casting that would be perfect on multiple levels, from the actors’ skill, his spot-on suitability for the role, and the meta element of Fraser’s near-miss Superman stint of his own. Let’s hope that James Gunn makes the right choice here, as he has a real opportunity to fix not just Superman’s legacy, but Brendan Fraser’s with the DCU.