Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie knows his way around the action genre quite well, with the latest example of this being the 2025 movie release of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning this past weekend. However, he has yet to delve into the sub-genre that is superhero movies, although he came pretty close to doing so. There was a time when McQuarrie was going to helm a Superman movie, and he’s now how this project would have channeled the beloved Pixar movie Up in an “epic way.”
Back when the DC Extended Universe was still going, McQuarrie pitched both Green Lantern and Superman movies to Warner Bros. Pictures. The latter, of course, would have been a sequel to Man of Steel, and the filmmaker had this to say about how his movie’s opening minutes would covered the life of Henry Cavill’s Kal-El/Clark Kent:
The first five minutes of my Superman movie… you remember Pixar’s Up? A sequence with no dialogue that covered [Krypton]. The first five minutes of the movie was a setup after which you knew exactly what made Superman tick and exactly what Superman was most afraid of and why Superman made the choices that he made. And it would have epic. In five minutes, the scale of the movie would have been absolutely extraordinary.
Christopher McQuarrie spent time sharing this vision for his Superman movie while appearing on Happy Sad Confused, where he also talked about topics like how he’s already cracked the story for Top Gun 3. I agree this would have been epic. It definitely channels the same kind of vibe of how Up (which can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription) covered Carl and Ellie’s life together. I know I’m not alone thinking it’s still one of the most emotionally-powerful openings to a movie ever.
Going a step further, McQuarrie’s idea reminds me of how Zack Snyder’s Watchmen movie used its opening credits to cover the history of costumed heroes from right before World War II to 1985 to the tune of Bob Dylan “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” In this case though, the sequence would have delved into Superman’s deeper characterization and the reason he uses his powers to protect the innocent. As far as what Supes is most afraid of, I imagine the answer wouldn’t have been something as simple as kryptonite, and instead might have been that even with all his might, he still can’t save everyone.
Alas, Man of Steel 2 never got off the ground, though we did see more of Henry Cavill’s Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both cuts of Justice League and Black Adam. Maybe there’s another universe out there where the DCEU continued and Christopher McQuarrie got to make this Superman movie, which he also described in his interview with Josh Horowitz as “fucking good.” Even though that didn’t work out in our reality, I’m hoping there will come
Meanwhile, a new era of Superman film history is about to begin, with James Gunn’s Superman introducing us to David Corenswet’s version of the Kryptonian hero in the DC Universe franchise on July 11. We’ll also send time with his cousin Kara Zor-El, played by Milly Alcock, next year in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
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