Legacies must rise to unearthly challenges as the children of Batman and Superman are charged with saving their famous fathers - and the world - in Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons.
Warner Bros. Animation's first-ever all-CG animated, feature-length film begins as 11-year-old Jonathan Kent discovers he has superpowers, thrusting the half-Kryptonian into the complicated world of Super Heroes and Super-Villains - who are now under attack by a malevolent alien force known as Starro!
It’s a race against time as Jonathan must join forces with assassin-turned-Boy-Wonder Damian Wayne to rescue their fathers and save the planet by becoming the Super Sons they were destined to be!
Jeremy Adams (Justice Society: World War II) wrote the movie, and we got to ask him about it during our recent interview for Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind's release. Taking us through how he approached this story, The Flash comic book scribe also shared some insights into what fans can expect from the CG adventure and this portrayal of Jonathan and Damian's friendship.
He also comments on whether this newly launched franchise could explore Jonathan's bisexuality and shares his excitement over getting to include Bat-Cow and Krypto in Battle of the Super Sons.
Check out what Jeremy had to tell us about his latest DCAU movie below!
I loved everything about Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons. Did that new animation style affect how you approached the story at all, particularly with the new camera angles and style of action we see in the movie?
Super Sons was such a unique enterprise because it was back when I was doing a LEGO Aquaman movie…I think that was the first time I’d worked with Rick Morales and we were just becoming friends. We were talking and he showed me the Super Sons comic book. I’d seen it, but I hadn’t read it. He told me he had a dream about doing it in 3D and something Rick likes to do is throw a hand grenade on an idea into my brain and then I can’t stop thinking about it. I read it and thought, ‘This is great. This is so wonderful. These two characters are unbelievable together and the farm boy and recovering assassin work perfectly as a team.’
Over the years, Rick and I kept talking about this story. We’d exchange ideas and we tried to get it greenlit. They said we couldn’t because they were going to do it somewhere else or something, and they kept telling us no for a couple of years. There was then just this weird window of time when Rick was involved with another project and said, ‘Can’t we just do it?’ and they finally said, ‘Sure!’ I had it already written in my mind after talking about it for years, so a day later, the outline was done as we knew what the story was. We’ve always fantasised about it being CG. I guess it’s more expensive, so we didn’t think it would be a possibility.
I didn’t cater the story to that, but I was writing it with CG in mind because it was Rick’s dream. Rick is really good at it and he knows how to get a lot out of it, even way back in my first credited project, Green Lantern: The Animated Series. This was a new version of it where the movie has a flat 2D look in a 3D sphere, so I was just super excited that Rick would get to do his dream. I’d written it and was in love with it because there’s so much of my heart and soul in this story. Then, Rick started showing me little bits of it over the course of time and I just said, ‘Wow. This is amazing.’ It was really in the facial features I suddenly noticed how much emotion can be conveyed in that type of animation.
Matt Peters, who directs, and is a huge Superman…this seems presumptuous, but we knew it was going to work. Everything was falling into place in a way that usually doesn’t happen. I’m really excited to see if people like it because I love it [Laughs].
Bat-cow and Krypto show up there; was it your idea to throw them into the mix and, either way, how much did you enjoy getting to shine the spotlight on them in the midst of everything else going on?
That was such an inside baseball that only fans of the comic books will understand, you know? I included Bat-Cow because I really love Damian Wayne. Like every comic book fan, I’m resistant to change, and I remember when Bruce Wayne ‘died’ and Dick Grayson took over as Batman with Damian as Robin. I was reading that series and falling in love with what Grant Morrison was doing. I loved Damian, but the Bat-Cow thing was so funny to me. With Krypto, I kept thinking about this scene in the Fortress of Solitude that would be really funny with them breaking in.
That was it, but then I realised it needed more. I knew it would be fun because this movie is primarily Superman and Jon Kent-focused, and hopefully, if we get to do another one, there would be more focus on Damian. Just the idea that they would break in and Robin would say, ‘That’s it? That’s all you have to do to break into the Fortress of Solitude?’ and then you hear the growl and see the eyes…it was just really cool to throw Krypto in!
Assuming you get to tell another story in that world, is Jonathan’s bisexuality something you’d like to address as he gets older and starts finding his feet as a superhero?
I don’t think that’s the story for me to tell. I’m much more interested in following the antics of the young kids and them getting into shenanigans. I could have honestly…I enjoyed it so much, I could write that forever. The adventures speak so much to when I was a kid. It’s not something I feel have the right to explore in a way. I’d much rather stay with them being kids and live vicariously through them being kids doing kid things [Laughs]. That’s one of the joys of being a dad: seeing my girls watching something I used to back in the day and getting a kick out of it. That’s what I’m really trying to do with Jonathan and Damian as we watch their friendship develop. That’s kind of what I do when I write The Flash comic too. It’s escapism where you can go on adventures. Whether you read the comic books or watch the movies…the exploratory emotional stuff is for somebody with more of a deft hand. I’m much more, ‘There’s Bat-Cow!’
In the space of this 90-minute film, you explore the dynamic between fathers and sons and build a friendship between Jonathan and Damian; it all works great, but how challenging was it to find space for that at the same time as telling this huge alien invasion story?
It’s not difficult in terms of…like I said, Rick and I have been talking about telling this story for years. By the time they said, ‘Hey, you can move forward,’ we knew what the story was we wanted to tell. I don’t usually get that much time on a particular story, so it was really gratifying to have thought it through in such a way where…I don’t really concern myself as a writer with what other people will like. I think of it as, ‘What about it will I like? What will make me excited?’ I’m not saying that in an egocentric way because it keeps me grounded. That’s how I can write by thinking about what I’d like to see. Sometimes there are notes, and that’s okay. That’s the practical element of it. In terms of shoving things together, I don’t want to say it was hard. It was really fun.
Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons lands on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray and Digital on October 18, 2022.