Surprise Man of Tomorrow Brainiac Casting Could Create A New DCU Twist
Will Brainiac bring a bunch of DC lore along with him?
Who is the greatest DC villain? If your answer was one of the baddies from Batman’s rogues' gallery, that makes a lot of sense. The Riddler, the Joker, Catwoman, and the Penguin are all perhaps more memorable than Superman’s foes like Darkseid or even Lex Luthor. (Plus, who even remembers Metallo?) But, with the 2027 Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, one Supe villain might be finally getting his due.
And, thanks to some surprising casting, one comics-famous Supe villain, Brainiac, will be appropriately creepy as hell. Actor Lars Eidinger has been confirmed to be playing Brainiac in the 2027 Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow. But who is this actor? And will this casting finally make Brainiac cool?
Lars Eidinger in 2025.
According to director James Gunn, Eidinger was chosen after a “worldwide search” for the right actor to play the character. While some movie buffs will recognize Eidinger for this work in All the Light We Cannot See or the more recent film, White Noise, it’s not like he is a household name.
And, in essence, that’s actually what makes this casting so smart. On paper, Brainiac is an enigmatic DC villain, but a literal mastermind, and also a physical force who can best the Man of Steel in a brawl. So, in many ways, it’s good that Eidinger isn’t a very famous Hollywood actor. This means it will be easier to accept him as Brainiac.
But what should we expect from Gunn’s take on Brainiac? On some level, as an outer-space android, Brainiac’s primary dastardly deed is to shrink entire cities down to a size that makes those cities super-tiny. In classic Superman lore, it’s Brainiac who shrinks Krypton’s city of Kandor, making it, more famously, “the Bottle City of Kandor.”
The classic version of Brainiac’s original scheme.
The implications of that concept on the new DCU could be huge. If the new Brainiac brings with him a Bottle City of Kandor, then it follows that we could get some Kryptonian contemporaries of both Superman and Supergirl. Because the 2025 Superman gave us such a big twist with Jor-El and Lara, will we find that all other surviving Kryptonians are as callous toward the human race?
In short, if Brainiac brings back a bunch of Kryptonians, thanks to a shrunken city, he might not be the only villain in this movie. And, if that’s the case, the surprise casting of Lars Eidinger might be hiding another twist that we can’t yet predict.
