Superman has one of the deepest bags of villains in all of comics, which makes sense, considering he’s the very first superhero and set the stage for what a supervillain should look like with his stories. While not as famous as Batman’s phenomenal rogues gallery, Superman’s still contains some of the greatest villains ever made, and I’d say is vastly underrated. With the new Superman movie hitting theaters soon, everyone is excited to see which classic villains make their debut on the silver screen. However, while there are dozens of awesome Superman villains we’d all love to see in live action, there are some that just shouldn’t make the jump. For one reason or another, be they practical or ethical, these five villains should never, ever touch the screens of movie theaters anywhere.
1) Mister Oz
Mister Oz is a relatively recent Superman villain, first appearing as such in Superman (2011) #32, but in actuality he appeared much, much sooner in Superman’s mythos. Mister Oz was a mysterious man that watched Clark’s double life from some kind of other-worldly space, and was later revealed to be Jor-El, Superman’s Kryptonian father who everyone thought was long dead. Instead of dying with Krypton, Jor-El was whisked away at the moment of its destruction by Doctor Manhattan, who used him to influence Superman’s timeline, and thus the timeline of the rest of the DC Universe. The reason that Mister Oz can never appear in live action is simply because the story surrounding how he survived is way too complicated for somewhere outside of the DC comics. Bringing Mister Oz into the movies would force the directors to ask who he survived, and if he did, why didn’t he find and raise Clark? How did he survive? Obviously, tying in Doctor Manhattan and that whole plotline could never happen, and all the changes required to adapt Mister Oz to the screen would fundamentally change him so much that he wouldn’t be Mister Oz anymore, he’d just be a version of Jor-El who lived. Besides, Jor-El works best as an inspiration from beyond the grave. Keeping him alive just muddies Superman’s origin, and that’s the last thing you want to do when an origin is as iconic and well-known as Superman’s, especially with wider audiences.
2) Hfuhruhurr, the World-Bringer
Yet another villain with an unfairly unpronounceable name, the World-Bringer first appeared in Adventures of Superman Annual #1. He is a massive alien with psychic abilities with the desire to “free” people of their prison of flesh and unleash their full potential by forcing them to join the psionic hivemind known as the Union. Unfortunately for members of the Union, the onboarding process involves cutting out their brains and transferring them into tubes that keep them always conscious and forever alive. In World-Bringer’s first appearance, he removed the brains of everyone in Trudeau, South Dakota, literally tearing thousands of people’s brains out of their heads to create his sick ideal. Hfuhruhurr isn’t just someone with an incomprehensible name, he’s one of the darkest villains in Superman’s repertoire, especially considering that the disembodied nature is agonizing for the people he puts through this, and they used their psychic abilities to end their lives the first chance they got. World-Bringer had done this to thousands of brains from thousands of planets, and frankly, this style of villainy might just be too dark for the big screen. Imagine halls upon halls of actual human brains in a Superman movie. As cool of a villain as he is, this is definitely just a little bit too much.
3) The 100
Originally called El Ciento, they are an ancient group of rich crimelords who joined together to create the ultimate criminal empire. Although there were only seventyone of them, they named themselves after the twentynine associates of theirs that died prior to their discovery of a way to obtain limited immortality. They could indefinitely extend their lifespans by feeding on the negative emotions of people who specifically worked on land they owned, which encouraged them to be as vile as possible to their workers. Additionally, this granted them the ability to take on energy forms and possess others. Although the idea of immortal elites who subsist on the literal agony of the lower class would make for amazing villains for a Superman movie that focuses on his ideal of standing up to oppression, I’m not sure if the 100 are the way to go. Specifically, there are just too many of them to properly focus on. In concept they are really cool, but to handle a topic like this with so many potential villains would take a lot of work, and wouldn’t really open up the script to focus on more regular superheroics. Superman should stand up against oppression in his live action adaptations, but a movie following the 100 really risks alienating an audience by not having enough regular comic book action. As much as I’d love to see them adapted, there are other villains that fill their same role just as well with far less complications.
4) Sleez
The biggest reason that Sleez can never, ever appear in live action is because his presence alone would up the rating to R, and nobody is going to make an R-rated Superman blockbuster. For those fortunate enough to not know about him, Sleez debuted in Action Comics #592, where he used his mind control abilities to try and force Superman and Big Barda into filming an adult movie together. This man is just disgusting in all the wrong ways for a superhero movie. To really drive it home how despicable this guy is, he used to be an advisor to Darkseid, but he was so depraved that Darkseid thought he was too much and kicked him off of Apokolips. Do you know how utterly insane you have to be to make Darkseid, the literal God of Evil, say you are too evil for him? Sleez isn’t a comic book villain, he’s just a sexual predator, and no one as gross as him ever deserves to be a villain in a Superman movie. No movie with him as the antagonist can ever be approved by any executive anywhere, and for good reason. Even comic books have forgotten about this guy, so movies should never even learn about him.
5) The DNA Diktators
Mister Oz is too complicated, Sleez is too gross, but the DNA Diktators are way too stupid to be villains in a real movie that expects to be taken even semi-seriously as a form of entertainment. They are quite possibly the dumbest villains in any comic book ever, and that bar is unfathomably high. How are they so bad, you ask? Well, these twin villains were the masterminds behind the disastrous events of Superman: At Earth’s End, a post apocalyptic Elseworlds which saw an old, weakened Superman use a gun that’s bigger than him to fight armies of mutant monsters. The DNA Diktators, the ultimate villains of one of the edgiest stories ever told, are two clones of Adolf Hitler that sought to create an infinite army of man-animal hybrids and conquer the decimated Earth after they killed their creators. The story they come from are a fever dream, and I don’t think I need to explain why twin clones of Adolf Hitler being villains in a Superman movie wouldn’t work. No movie that has them in it could possibly be anywhere near good, but I would still love to see them show up in a live action movie, just to see how stupid and chaotic it would be. It’d be horrible, but hopefully the good kind of horrible.
So there we have five Superman villains that, as much as I would love to see any one of them (except Sleez) make their silver screen debut, are probably best suited staying confined to the pages of comic books, or at least animation. Superman has dozens of incredible, unforgettable villains, from Lex Luthor, to Lobo, to Brainiac, and each and every one of them deserves to headline as the villain in a Superman movie. While the villains listed here could be cool to see, it’s probably better to let the far more iconic, and far less problematic ones take the lead when it comes to movies. Comic book villains can be weird, and we don’t want to scare off new fans, after all. Still, which Superman villain do you think could never show up in live action? Let us know in the comments below!
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