Christopher McQuarrie Opens Up About His Scrapped MAN OF STEEL 2 and GREEN LANTERN Plans - 'It Was F–king Good' — GeekTyrant
Years before James Gunn was brought in to hit the reset button on the DC Cinematic Universe, Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie had big, exciting, and (by his own account) 'f**king good' plans for Superman and Green Lantern.
But despite his vision and his established chemistry with Henry Cavill, none of it ever saw the light of day. Following the release of Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2018, McQuarrie approached Warner Bros. with a pitch for Man of Steel 2 , an idea that would also connect to a new Green Lantern reboot.
At the time, Cavill had just crushed it as Fallout 's villainous CIA assassin, August Walker, and the two were eager to collaborate again.
In a recent conversation with Josh Horowitz, McQuarrie kept his Superman cards close to his chest:
'I'll never tell. I'll never tell, but boy was it fing good. It was f**king good.'
But McQuarrie left us with one tease, a peek into what Man of Steel 2 could've been:
'I will tell you, the first 5 minutes of my Superman movie was...you remember Pixar's Up? [It was] a sequence with no dialogue that covered that character.
'[It] was a set-up, after which you knew exactly what makes Superman tick and exactly what Superman was most afraid of and why Superman made the choices he made. It would have been epic. The scale of the movie would have been absolutely extraordinary.'
Well, I would'e loved to see that. He went on to open up about the Green Lantern side of the story, revealing a creative approach that tackled one of the character's biggest challenges… his seemingly limitless power.
'Green Lantern was what came to me. Green Lantern is a tough one. The power is... I cracked it, and it was fun watching him learn how to use that power and giving that power a flaw, so it was not pure invincibility.'
He added:
'The whole concept of Green Lantern is that the ring has to be recharged. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Yes, you have infinite power, but you only have so much battery life, and that can run out at inconvenient times. That, for me, solved the whole Green Lantern problem. The costume is another thing.'
McQuarrie wasn't focused on flashy suits or overdone CGI. His priority was character:
'I realised, don't worry about the costume, worry about the character. How do you give that character tension and stakes? Also, how do you do it with Superman?
'Henry had a take on that, and I suddenly realised how these two characters had amazing similarities, which also allowed for amazing conflict and an amazing universe-expanding resolution.'
Unfortunately, McQuarrie's ideas were shelved. Even when Cavill briefly returned as Superman in Black Adam , WB reportedly reached out again, but the clock had already started ticking on Gunn's Superman reboot and that door quietly closed.
We'll never see McQuarrie's Superman take flight, but it's hard not to wonder what could've been. With the Mission: Impossible saga behind him, maybe one day we'll see him jump into the superhero world and play in that sandbox.
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