Making a great Superman movie is like trying to DJ a wedding for both Metallica fans and Swifties. No matter what you do, someone’s walking out angry. It seems like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning‘s director knows that struggle all too well. Speaking on the Happy/Sad/Confused podcast, Christopher McQuarrie opened up about why nearly every Superman movie since the ‘80s has struggled to capture the magic. And he didn’t mince words.
“The problem with Superman is when they constantly are trying to create bigger and bigger and bigger obstacles for a character with infinite power,” McQuarrie explained. “Donner understood, and all the best sequences in Superman understand, that Superman’s greatest obstacle is himself.”
Since Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman, filmmakers have been stuck in a creative tug-of-war with the character. Do you make Supes a god among mortals or just a Kansas farm boy with abs carved by Kryptonian genetics? Go too far in either direction, and the audience tunes out. He’s either too perfect to relate to or too human to feel like Superman.
You can see that battle play out in every post-Donner attempt. Superman III (1983) gave us Richard Pryor as a sidekick. Superman Returns (2006) tried to copy-and-paste Donner’s style but forgot to include excitement. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) had the grit but not enough joy, while Batman v Superman doubled down on existential dread and got lost somewhere between symbolism and smashing Doomsday. Heck, even Christopher Reeve couldn’t save The Quest for Peace, and that man was Superman.
Christopher McQuarrie revealed he and Henry Cavill actually had a pitch for Man of Steel 2—one that would’ve tackled Superman’s fears and inner conflict. “Henry had a take on that,” he said. “I suddenly realized how these two characters had these amazing similarities, which also allowed for amazing conflict and an amazing universe-expanding resolution.”
And here’s the big sell: “The first five minutes of my Superman movie… was a setup after which you knew exactly what made Superman tick, and exactly what Superman was most afraid of, and why Superman made the choices that he made, and it would have been epic.” Imagine Pixar’s Up. No dialogue. Just raw storytelling. That’s the kind of emotional clarity fans are starving for in a Superman movie.
Of course, Man of Steel 2 never happened. Instead, Warner Bros. did a factory reset and booted Cavill out. James Gunn stepped in with Superman (2025), starring David Corenswet, and promised a hero filled with “hope, justice, and joy.”
Sound familiar? Whether Gunn was inspired by Christopher McQuarrie’s scrapped vision for Superman or just stumbled onto the same idea, the goal is the same: Make the character someone we actually feel for. Not just a guy who can punch a black hole, but someone whose biggest fight is with himself.
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Before his exit as Superman, Henry Cavill expressed a desire to reimagine his Man of Steel as a joyful character. “The most important thing, which I will be aiming for, is for the audience to leave the cinema and to feel like they can fly, to feel like they can protect, and to feel like they want to give to everyone else. That would be my goal,” he said in an interview with ScreenRant. During a live recording of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, he also added, “I’m so excited to tell a story with an enormously joyful Superman.”
Sadly, we’ll never get to see that Superman.
