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One of the most popular movies by Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill Vol. 2, was probably the first movie that teased the idea of Superman being a God and the possibility of him looking down upon us as meek, confused, and weak.
The thought always seemed interesting that what if the all-powerful superheroes like Superman, Hyperion, or Thor would just discard all their moral values and start looking at humans as something that deserves no special treatment and they would enjoy their power at the cost of human lives! Although, we have many storylines in comics where we saw superheroes abandon their values and go all-out on the world with evil intentions, seeing it on the big screen was quite an experience.
In the movie Brightburn, we see a similar story where an alien crashes on Earth and is adopted by a couple in a small town. However, unlike Kal-El, Brandon Breyer of Brightburn has zero interest in justice and truth. He doesn’t want to save the earth, instead, he wants to take it. There was a DC storyline called Injustice, where Superman becomes cruel and a killer, but in my opinion that is different – In Injustice, Superman changed because of a tragedy, but here Brandon Breyer is evil by nature and he accepted that. In fact, I found Brightburn is similar to Alan Moore’s Miracleman. In Miracleman, Alan Moore presented a world where the world is run by inhumanely and insanely powerful people and how the world would be if these super-powered people did what they like to do! Brightburn used the ideas and ran with them.
Superman or Kal-El always struggled with his powers and his sense of morality. However, Brandon Breyer didn’t even bother and started enjoying his powers. Superman became sad when he learnt that he is from a different world and Brandon, on the other hand, became angry.
It takes courage to launch a movie with such a story where the world is still into the fabulous and positive world created by the Marvel cinematic universe and to some extent, DC cinematic universe. A movie like Brightburn will barge into your mind and tease you and you may like the possibility of superheroes being an absolute evil. The movie even teased the possibility of an evil version of Wonder Woman! (Remember, the witch that kills with a rope?)
Related –
Who’s Wonder Woman – A Feminist Icon and a Superhero or Just a Female Superhero?
All in all, while fans are still hung on Avengers: Endgame, we witnessed the birth of a new genre: Superhero Horror and we can only expect that we will get to see more of it.
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