‘Brightburn’ Trailer Wonders What Would Happen if Superman Were Evil

There have been plenty of Elseworlds and What If comics over the years that have taken basically every hero and villain we know from the comics and given us the inverse version. One of the more interesting of those is Superman: Red Son, where baby Kal-El's ship lands in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas, and thus Superman becomes the embodiment of the ideal Communist.

The new film Brightburn takes this twist on the Superman mythos one step further with a super powered kid crash landing in America's heartland, but with a much more skewed moral compass. Elizabeth Banks takes the child in and as he comes of age, his super powers begin to reveal themselves, as does the fact that he appears to want to use these powers for evil rather than good.

It's a fascinating concept, one that could work under the right circumstances, but overall this looks like fairly weak sauce. It's written by James Gunn's brother and one of their cousins, and directed by a guy whose only other feature film credit is something called The Hive. It could be good, stranger things have certainly happened, but don't bank on it. If nothing else, it can't possibly be as bad as Aladdin is going to be, which opens Friday opposite Brightburn.