Was just thinking about something (dangerous thing for me sometimes) and then I decided to make a post about it. Before I started this post I did several searches to see if it had been broached so far and I didn't find a single post about this so... I am probably not the first to think it but I might be the first to push it out for discussion, I don't know but whatever, here goes.
So Kal inserted the House of El command key into the scout ship, which activated a) the ship and uploaded Jor-El's consciousness into the ship's system and b) activated the distress beacon which of course Zod's crew detects and that's what brings them to Earth.
But I haven't seen anyone take that to the next step with respect to the next movie and the potential villain(s) so it's pretty obvious, at least to me, that
the activation of the distress beacon isn't just for the sake of MoS and Zod's storyline such as it was - it's going to be the manner in which Brainiac becomes a character in the next movie.
It's perfectly logical if you think about it:
- Brainiac simply can't be dismissed because the character is just too integral to the Superman mythos, and even in spite of this rather massive reboot of said franchise, the already noted hints in MoS towards Brainiac's existence are there
for a reason and not just fan service
- while we have no idea just how far away Zod's crew and ship were at the time they detected the distress beacon, that doesn't mean the signal isn't still traveling out there beyond the heavens and because we don't know precisely just how badly the scout ship was damaged when it crashed into Metropolis and whether or not the distress beacon is even functional anymore - it's a bit ironic I suppose since a scout ship crashing would obviously be
a precise reason that such a beacon would be activated in the first place. In fact, it should be transmitting Zod's identifier if anything like that is in use for such a signal since his command key was in use during the crash -
it wouldn't surprise me if Brainiac comes calling expecting to find Zod here along with his crew and then be amazed at finding Kal-El considering that according to the prequel comic the Sol system was never going to be someplace the ancestral Kryptonians were going to visit in the first place
- while I do believe that Lex Luthor will play a rather significant role in things, it would really need Brainiac to be a "no brainer" megahit in my opinon.
I just had a thought while typing that last sentence so I'm gonna be stream-of-consciousness here and just type out what's going on in my noggin right now:
MoS is understood by many (and even hinted at in the affirmative by Snyder and Goyer) as a "Superman Begins" style tale where we get backstory, basic character motivations, and so on. "Batman Begins" did effectively the same thing for the Batman trilogy/franchise, so there's the chance - albeit an off-the-wall one but it's there nonetheless - that perhaps Goyer and Snyder and whoever else might help out with the script/screenplay for the next movie will treat it as a more established tale like <tada> The Dark Knight which has a more established, mature, and capable Batman at work as he battles not one
but two enemies: The Joker as well as the alter ego duo of Harvey Dent aka Two-Face. It seems entirely logical to me that if Goyer and whoever else assists writing the next movie that it would be a helluvalot more of a bang for the buck situation if we ended up having Superman fighting on two fronts: Lex Luthor and Brainiac.
Yah, it's a bit crazy and off on a tangent but I'm gonna remember making this post even if it gets deleted or tossed out someday so I can refer back to it about 2-2.5 years from now.
I feel confident about the Brainiac tie-in because of the distress beacon, that much I'm 99.999% sure of at this point, and I'm pretty confident as well about Lex Luthor being a big fixture also. Guess it'll remain to be seen just what happens.
David Goyer, are you listening?