Why Doomsday Will Ruin Batman V Superman

So, the Doomsday-bomb has been dropped in the first Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer, and Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and whatever superheroes aren't on vacation will be facing off against the Kryptonian supervillain as their first, unifying challenge. There are a lot of problems with including such a powerful foe so early in the life of the coherent DC Cinematic Universe, though. And while Doomsday has the power to kill Superman, he also has the power to kill the franchise. Here's why.

The origins of the planet-destroyer called Doomsday are, contrary to most villains' origins, actually pretty interesting. In the comics, Doomsday is many thousands of years old, killed and cloned countless times on ancient Krypton, and with each rebirth, he's evolved, and just a little stronger than the last time. As a result, Doomsday is constantly reborn as a more powerful foe, and sees Kryptonians as space garbage—garbage that needs to be taken out. If this bad guy is really Doomsday, he was built in a lab on Earth by Lex Luthor over a very short timespan, which is a gross oversimplification of a genuinely interesting story. New Doomsday is just a kid, and not a very interesting one at that.

Why is it that almost every big movie villain is just a negative version of the film's hero? Iron Man fought armored enemies like Iron Monger and Whiplash, and Ant-Man fought another guy who could shrink. Couldn't DC learn from Marvel's mistakes? Even Man of Steel's bad guys were just other versions of Superman with the same powers and eviler looking outfits, and everything just came down to who could punch stuff harder. Dawn of Justice is including yet another Kryptonian bad guy, and whether or not Doomsday is a freaked-out clone or a mutation of Zod, it's just more of the same stuff at a slightly higher intensity.

There are plenty of great, Superman-level bad guys that could have been included in Dawn of Justice, but DC took the easy route by making an ugly Superman. Villains like the Ultra-Humanite or Brainiac could have been a perfect fit; Ultra-Humanite is an ever-changing Earth scientist who plants his genius brain into dangerous monsters and is one of the first sci-fi bad guys Superman ever fought, and Brainiac has very strong ties to both Krypton and Lex Luthor. Both baddies are top-level dangers, but represent a defeatable level of power for a newly-assembled Justice League. Comic book Doomsday took down the Justice League with one hand literally tied behind his back. If you're gonna neuter the guy who killed Superman, just use another guy and leave Doomsday's nethers intact.

Let's just say it: Doomsday looks like a big pile of pudding in a bodysuit. Instead of razor-sharp, bony protuberances, movie Doomsday looks to be covered with dumb nubbins. He's a cross between Hulk's Abomination, Lord of the Rings' cave trolls and orcs, and one of Michael Bay's terrible Ninja Turtles. We can do better than this. Unless Doomsday starts looking progressively cooler as the Justice League beats the bones out of him, this angry sack of potatoes is going to be a huge disappointment to fans who really need an awesome bad guy to focus the film (and to collect as a badass action figure). No one wants to have to collect an action figure of Jesse Eisenberg.

The comparisons between the two comic companies' cinematic efforts are inevitable, and maybe a little unwelcomed. But there's a reason that the Marvel Universe is so successful—and it's because Marvel didn't force Thanos down fans' throats too early. There's little doubt that comic fans would love to see less powerful, more unusual villains on the screen for a while before the universe-destroying threats pop up. You don't propose to marry on the first date, DC. You work your way up to that noise, or else no one will be coming back and there will be no second date. Doomsday is the wedding ring on the hand of the DC Cinematic Universe, and we're just not ready for that kind of commitment yet.

No public sources at DC Comics or Warner Brothers have even officially uttered the word "Doomsday" in relation to this trailer yet, so it's possible that this isn't even Doomsday, but instead a guy that happens to look almost exactly like a stripped-down Doomsday. Sure, it's pretty unlikely that DC would make a new bad guy that looks so similar to an existing one, but the fact that fans are still speculating that this might be Darkseid, or—even more ridiculously—Bizarro, leaves the window open for something else. Anything else. Please, anything but Doomsday. Even if it's just Charlie from Lexcorp's accounting department after he got into some bad chili, it would be a little better than Doomsday showing up.