One of the all-time great DC Comics stories, 1996’s Kingdom Come, has never had a true adaptation, which makes one wonder why that is, and what it would take for that to happen. A DC Elseworlds story, Kingdom Come takes place a decade after a calamitous conflict has left the DC superhero community fractured and mostly retired, with a new, more cynical generation of heroes filling the void. However, Lex Luthor’s latest villain plot sparks a conflict among both the new heroes and the retired titans, with older versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman leading various factions of the conflict.
To call Kingdom Come legendary and high-influential would be an understatement, with the story’s portrayals of DC’s core heroes resonating to this day. And yet, despite the undeniable impact of Kingdom Come, there has never been a direct, one-to-one adaptation of the story in any medium outside of the comics. Instead, it’s more common to see various elements of Kingdom Come retrofitted into other comic book movies or TV shows, and there are some aspects of Kingdom Come’s very identity that could account for that. But does that mean the world will never see a proper Kingdom Come adaptation in either live-action or animation?
The Nature Of Kingdom Come As A Story Makes It Hard to Adapt Into A Straightforward Cinematic Universe Timeline
Kingdom Come is a lot like The Dark Knight Returns in that, by its nature, it tells a story that doesn’t function well in any mainline continuity. In Kingdom Come, the Justice League are all older paragons or a bygone age of superheroes, with the world having grown mistrustful of their peaceful philosophy in favor of harsher methods employed the younger generation of heroes. In essence, Kingdom Come is the kind of story that has a lot of unseen history as its foundation. To adapt Kingdom Come, it either needs to be an entirely standalone, Elseworlds-based movie or mini-series, or act as the culmination and likely conclusion of a larger DC Cinematic Universe.
Since the latter isn’t on the table in the immediate future, any Kingdom Come adaptation on the docket would need to really stand on its own. The beauty of DC as a comic book publisher is that Elseworlds is in its DNA with parallel realities allowing for endless variations of DC characters and stories. It’s frankly high time that DC on film and television start embracing that and allowing parallel versions of DC characters to co-exist and fans to pick and choose their favorites. Even still, the logistics of doing Kingdom Come in live-action are inherently tricky without an apparatus of the history of DC’s heroes to lead into it. That’s why elements of Kingdom Come such as Brandon Routh and David Corenswet’s Kingdom Come-inspired Superman suits and the winged Amazonian battle suit in Wonder Woman 1984 have given audiences tiny morsels of Kingdom Come without delivered the full meal.
Kingdom Come Might Work Best As An Animated Movie
When it comes to delivering direct adaptations of DC Comics story, DC’s vast library of animated movies have been hitting it out of the park for nearly 20 years. Justice League: The New Frontier. All-Star Superman. The Dark Knight Returns. Justice League: War. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen. All acclaimed DC animated movies that have directly adapted popular DC comic book stories to great effect, with plenty of other such examples.
With such a great track record of bringing beloved stories from the pages of comic books into the animated realm, Kingdom Come is a no-brainer as a standalone DC animated movie bringing one of the most pivotal comic book stories to life as an animated adventure. Indeed, the scope of Kingdom Come is vast enough to even fully warrant a two-parter similar to The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen combo, and the former’s director and long-time DC animated luminary Jay Oliva certainly springs to mind as a great candidate to helm a Kingdom Come animated movie or mini-series.
Could James Gunn (or Zack Snyder) Finally Adapt Kingdom Come?
With all of the above said, Kingdom Come also fully warrants being brought to life in live-action, as well, but the aforementioned nature of Kingdom Come as a culminating Elseworlds story makes it hard to directly plug into an ongoing DC cinematic franchise. James Gunn’s DCU seems to be taking some influence from Kingdom Come with David Corenswet’s Superman suit carrying the Kingdom Come-style S-shield, but Gunn’s Superman movie isn’t likely to be a direct Kingdom Come adaptation, and indeed, can’t be with a Man of Steel far too young to capture the elder statesman Kal-El of the story and the absence of many characters essential to Kingdom Come’s story. That isn’t to say that Gunn doesn’t have some Kingdom Come influenced plans for the DCU down the road, but it’s hard to say how much it will need to be modified from the story’s essence to account for what unfolds in the DCU in that time. When talking about any live-action adaptation of Kingdom Come, however tweaked or modified it would likely necessarily need to be, it seems that as with so many things in the DC conversation, it brings us back to the Snyderverse.
Think about it, though – with so many fans still eager to see Snyder’s five-movie Justice League story finished, putting a Kingdom Come-spin on Snyder’s known plans for Justice League 2 and Justice League 3 might be a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Fans get to finally see the Snyderverse story through to the end with one of the greatest comic book stories of all time giving it a makeover to account for the passage of time since Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the cast all being somewhat older, while Kingdom Come finally gets the epic live-action treatment it deserves. Everybody wins.
In the end, Kingdom Come being such a pillar of DC’s comic book history makes it absolutely confounding that no direct or even modified animated or live-action adaptation has ever even been attempted. Hopefully, with the foundation of DC animated movies providing the perfect apparatus for an animated Kingdom Come and framework of either the DCU or a revived Snyderverse changes that and allows DC fans to see Kingdom Come realized in all its glory.
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