So, I wrote an Man of Steel sequel outline right after the movie was released. I was hyped up, but I also wanted to get together what my vision of a sequel would be. Needless to say, they did not include Batman, and unfortunately, the announcement of Superman/Batman kinda killed it, but I don't care; I'm posting it here. It kinda sucks comic-wise too; I wrote it at one in the morning one night with no Internet connection. Regardless, I wanted to post it here.
Cast of Man of Steel completely returns, plus Benedict Cumberbatch as Lex Luthor, Matt Smith as Jimmy Olsen, and Timothy Olyphant as Metallo.
So the movie takes place a year and a half after MAN OF STEEL. Clark has settled into his job at the Daily Planet (we see his early days on the job in a few flashbacks), and in fact is watching over an actual newbie Jimmy Olsen. Anyway, we see that even though a year and a half has passed, removing debris from Superman’s and Zod’s fight along with the leveling of Metropolis is still going on thanks to the sheer scale of the battle.
Superman has tried to help out, but the owner of the government contracted cleanup company (LexCorp), Lex Luthor, has insisted that Superman stay out of it, since the debris removal has opened up quite a few jobs in Metropolis. Superman finds this odd, but ultimately agrees with Lex as the economy isn’t good and LexCorp does employ quite a bit of Metropolis’s workforce. Either way, Superman is hard at work, keeping the streets of Metropolis clean of crime, as the wreckage of the city caused quite a few newly homeless people to resort to crime.
Enter John Corben, a scientist who used to work at Metropolis Museum of Science and Industry. Now John slightly hates Superman. Why? Well, his wife was killed when the world machine was messing up the gravity. Why did aliens come to Earth? Superman. Furthermore, during the fight with Zod, Superman destroyed the museum inadvertently, leaving John without a job, friends, or family. Now, John’s definitely a genius. That’s why he worked at the Museum as a scientist. In a flashback, we see him go to the wreckage of the world machine in Metropolis where we see him swear over his wife’s corpse he’ll have revenge. We then see a few months later having a personal job interview with Lex Luthor for the scientific division of LexCorp. Lex asks him what he wants most in life now, and John answers that he wants revenge. Lex says offhandedly that perhaps the power of the aliens came from the Kryptonian metal they had.
John fixates on this, although Lex mentions he has a much better theory, pulling out a rare supply of Kryptonite. Lex gives it to John, telling him to go the site in the Indian Ocean to harvest the Kryptonian metal from the fallen world machine there; Lex believes that the Kryptonite will allow this to make it easier. John heads to India to pick up Kryptonian metal in secret, which was the black stuff that the Kryptonians used a lot in the first movie. The Kryptonite allows him to pick up, and he then makes a mech machine, similar to Iron Man, where the power core is the small bit of Kryptonite that Lex gave him. This is METALLO.
However, John has one issue with this: whereas Kryptonite weakens Kryptonians, it serves as a bonding agent with Kryptonian metal and organisms using it. It bonds with the wearer so much, it essentially becomes a living exoskeleton. As John discovers this after testing his abilities (he’s essentially Superman without flying), he swears revenge, not only on Superman, but on Lex as well since Lex was the one who sent him to get the metal.] Everything in brackets is the mystery of the movie that Perry, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy must figure out in the first half of the movie, in an investigative journalism suspense thingy. However, they never find out Lex’s involvement.
Anyway, why is this an issue? Because LexCorp’s cleanup crew in Metropolis has been repeatedly been attacked by Metallo. Now, Superman is shocked by this and in fact denies Metallo’s existence. How can there be someone who appears as a Kryptonian still alive? Thus, Superman refuses to believe reports of Metallo, leading Lex to accuse Superman publically of not caring about the people of Metropolis. Lois manages to get Lex into an interview and asks him what he has against Superman, and Lex says he doesn’t care for a protector that doesn’t protect. Lois kind of agrees with Lex and tells Lex this. Clark finally agrees to find Metallo and ask him what’s going on.
This is around the middle of the movie, where they have an awesome fight courtesy of Zack Snyder. While Superman is out looking for him, Metallo has begun an attack on the LexCorp headquarters in Metropolis. Superman finds him and they fight throughout the city, causing even more mass destruction. After a bit, it falls to a stalemate when Superman asks why he’s doing this, and Metallo answers that Superman killed his wife, and then, for the first time in the movie, shoots Kryptonite rays out of his chest, knocking out Superman. He then goes off to finish the job, tearing LexCorp’s headquarters to the ground.
When Superman comes to, he finds himself surrounded by a bunch of angry people. He quickly flies off and heads to the Daily Planet, arriving late. The office is abuzz with Superman’s loss; it’s the first time he’s ever truly had a decisive loss in a fight. The TV, on Metropolis News Network, has a press conference done by Lex Luthor. Lex says it’s a shame that the cleanup costs in Metropolis has doubled thanks to the recent fight, along with all of his innocent workers in the LexCorp building who died thanks to Superman’s reckless fight. Jimmy says that Superman could never lose a fight and Perry sighs, saying that it was a pretty clear loss. Clark gets to thinking, and says it’s the second year anniversary of Superman and Zod’s fight.
He then heads to his computer to look up numbers. Damage costs: $5.6 trillion. Civilian deaths: 212,392. Civilian injuries: over two million. Clark knew the cost, but he could’ve never expected this much. On the press conference, Lex claims that Superman has only caused more powerful aliens to arrive to Earth, mistakenly calling Metallo an alien. Lex then announces his campaign for mayor of Metropolis, saying that unlike the current pro-Superman mayor, he will fight for the removal of Superman from their city, as he brings much more harm than good. He then threatens Metallo, telling him that if he wants to fight the savior of Metropolis, the answer is Lex, not Superman. We then cut to Metallo, who is watching the conference on TV. He smiles and says that it can be arranged.
Clark goes to talk to Lois in private, saying he never knew all these people died because of him; he just thought that there was only a few hundred who died, and he still felt horrible about that. Lois comforts him, saying Metropolis needs its Superman, no matter what “Lex the Savior” might say. Clark says that he needs to find out what Metallo is, and what his green ray did to him. Lois asks him what was so bad about it, and Clark grimaces, saying it was the most pain he’s ever felt in his life. Clark then goes to ask Perry for the next few months off, and Perry is (reasonably) upset. Perry says that election season is going to be a doozy for the paper and he wants his best man on the job. Perry compliments Clark, saying he’s improved a lot in just the last two years, and Clark thanks him, but then points out that he hasn’t missed a day in his two years or taken a vacation.
Perry frowns, but allows him two months off of time. Clark smiles and thanks him. He then tells Lois on the way out to inform him on what Metallo’s doing when he’s gone. Clark heads back to Smallville to ask his mom if she had anything else in the spaceship he came with, and we have a flashback of the Kents discovering baby Clark in the ship. Mrs. Kent says that everything they found was already showed to Clark. However, Clark goes looking through his dad’s things, and finds the sliver of his House of El chip that his father had analyzed at a jeweler’s (we see the encounter with the jeweler in a flashback for more Kevin Costner.) He then dons the Superman suit and heads off to the only Kryptonian ship still on Earth: the fallen world machine in India. He lands there, and prays that his plan works.
He goes into the ship, and pushes the sliver in the chip reader. It does work, as Jor-El appears in front of Superman in a staticy image. Jor-El smiles, overjoyed to see his son once again. He says he was worried he was gone forever, and Clark says he practically is. Jor-El asks what he can help his son with, and Clark asks him if, as a Kryptonian, he has any natural weaknesses. Jor-El grimaces, and explains there is a rare green metal he must never get near called Kryptonite. Clark asks if said metal would power Kryptonian armor, what would it do? Jor-El explains the natural bonding, and then also offhandedly mentions that Kryptonian metal is derived from the Kryptonian Flying Beast. Clark thanks his father, and asks him if he had any security footage from the world machine. Jor-El uploads some security footage which shows John building the armor.
We then cut back to Metropolis. Two months have passed on Clark trying to figure out Metallo. As such, Superman has been nowhere to be found in Metropolis. Lex gloats over this, saying that Superman is clearly scared of Metallo, who has been committing small robberies instead of attacking the cleanup as before. However, Lois, along with Jimmy, have been watching every Metallo robbery from a far, trying to figure out a connection and making sure nobody innocent has been hurt. Lois had convinced Jimmy that Superman himself had recruited them for the job. Jimmy was naturally thrilled to work with Superman. However, Metallo has been doing clean robberies, and only of tech-related things. Lois and Jimmy try to figure out a connection but cannot.
However, the day of the election arrives, and Lex Luthor wins in a landslide. After he gives his acceptance speech on Election, he gets into his limo... which is being driven by Metallo. Now, remember the fact that Kryptonian metal is derived by the Flying Beast? Well, slowly throughout the entire movie, thanks to the Kryptonian metal bonding to his DNA, Metallo has becoming more and more animal-like. The Kryptonian armor enhances one’s primal instincts thanks to its derivation. Metallo at this point is actually very inhuman and is starting to be afraid of himself. He has begun walking on the all fours actually after taking down LexCorp.
Anyway, back to the limo, Metallo speeds of with Lex in the back and knocks him out in an alley. Meanwhile, Superman returns to talk to Jimmy and Lois about Metallo, asking if they’ve found a connection. Jimmy just says that Metallo has been robbing major tech stores and banks. Lois says she thinks she found a connection. All the tech stores and banks were owned in part by LexCorp. Superman then realizes that Metallo must be targeting Lex, and then flies off to save him. We then see Lex wake up in his own penthouse apartment, where he calmly says hello to John, who can only growl all his words now. Lex says it must be a shame to become such an animal, and John asks him why he didn’t go get the armor himself. Lex comments that it was simply a win-win situation. If the armor hadn’t bonded to his DNA or had any other side effects, John would’ve run back to Lex with it, and Lex could use the armor in his defense contracting. However, since it bonded to John, Lex figured that he and his projects would become a target and took advantage of it.
Every time Metallo would wreck something in Metropolis, Lex, as CEO of LexCorp, would get the money from the city for repair. Lex would then publically blame Superman for it, causing him to have guilt over it and stop fighting crime for a bit. This would allow Lex to start his master plan of going into politics, using anti-Superman as his chief platform. He’d use Metallo beating Superman (which Lex admits was a surprise) as the excuse that Superman had failed and abandoned Metropolis. Now, Lex has also been studying Metallo’s patterns and has noticed the animalistic tendencies. In his own free time, Lex analyzed some Kryptonian metal he had flown out to Metropolis and deduced the pattern of John losing himself inside of Metallo. John asks him why Lex is telling him all this, and Lex just says that he whipped something else as well. Lex looks out the window and sees Superman flying towards them. Lex says he is right on cue and then pulls a high-frequency radio out of his pocket. Lex smiles and turns it on, causing Metallo’s animalistic transformation to be complete.
As John screams, Lex tells him John was stupid to bring him back to Lex’s own penthouse, as Lex has high maintenance soundproof walls that not even Superman can hear through. Lex then explains the rest of his plan, as Metallo is currently losing all of his intelligence. Lex explains that he’s certain that Metallo and Superman will duke it out in the following minutes in their presumably final fight. They’ll fight all over Metropolis once again and cause the damage to reach $10 trillion, which Lex would receive for overpriced cleanup crew, along with completely the negative view on Superman from the public. Lex presses a button that pulls down the soundproof walls, as John is completely gone and now it is only Metallo.
Lex lets out a fake scream of terror as Superman flies in and grabs Lex. Lex sheepishly thanks Superman but Superman just gives him a look. However, Metallo won’t have this and begins chasing after Superman and Lex. However, Superman isn’t stupid and he drops off Lex at the Daily Plane, where Lois and Jimmy are ready for a post-election interview. AS Superman flies off to fight Metallo, Lex smiles as all is going according to plan. Superman then goes to fight Metallo, but he actually doesn’t want to fight. He leads Metallo out of Metropolis in a chase and into a woodsy suburb. They fight in the woods for quite a bit, with Metallo using his Kryptonite rays and trying to bite Superman as his main attacks. Superman tries to tell Metallo that he knows who he is, thanks to his own private investigation. However, John is gone entirely leaving only the animal-like Metallo!
Superman has an idea. He leads Metallo sort of back into the city, to the Metropolis Cemetery. Superman then melts the metal feet of Metallo into the ground, which he screams in pain at. Metallo tries to move, but Superman uses his heat vision to light up one gravestone: the one of John’s wife. The sight of it manages to put John back in control of his body, and in his temporary sanity, he begs Superman to kill him. Superman can’t do this thanks to a promise he made to himself after killing Zod, so John kills himself by ripping off his own helmet, tearing off his head (this is off-screen of course). Lois and Jimmy then publish a report the next day about Metallo’s true identity and how he should be viewed as Zod’s greatest victim.
Lex is in office, somewhat happy he was elected, but annoyed that Superman wised up to fighting in Metropolis. Clark returns to the Daily Planet, where Perry is glad to have him back. Clark is left to wonder who told John to use the Kryptonian metal anyway. He, Lois, and Jimmy go out to lunch at the end of the movie, when Mayor Luthor visits the restaurant they’re at. Lex congratulates Lois and Jimmy on their article, but then asks who Clark is. Clark stands up but trips over himself. Embarrassed, Lex grabs his glasses off the ground to hand to Clark but then he looks at Clark oddly, saying he looks familiar. Clark says that they might’ve been in school together, and Lex inwardly scoffs. He asks Clark what his name is and Clark of course answers Clark Kent. They shake hands and Lex leaves the restaurant. In his limo, he calls up LexCorp headquarters, telling the tech division to make OPERATION BRAINIAC top priority. He pauses, and then asks them if they could do an off-the-book background check on Clark Kent, reporter at the Daily Planet. Cut to credits.
I hope you enjoyed reading my idea, and feel free to comment below!