Superman Movie - Catching Up On "Man of Tomorrow"

Today, James Gunn, Director and Writer of the next Superman film - Man of Tomorrow - released this still of Nicholas Hoult in some very familiar looking armor.  

This unleashed hordes of people who think they're clever and have never picked up a Superman comic, never watched a Justice League cartoon, walked down a toy aisle, etc... to flap their arms and ask if Gunn was ripping off any of the man franchises in which people show up in power armor, especially the video game I have never played, Halo.   

Look, dumb dumbs, this armor first showed up in a comic in 1983.  It's been adapted and changed by artist after artist since then - to the point where a few details remain common, but the general idea is that Lex, like Tony Stark, is constantly fiddling.  And, by the way, not one of you blinked about all the armored guys in the *last* Superman movie, so what are we even doing?

There are many exhausting things about fans of just the comic book movies who never read any comics, but the "this looks like something I know already!  You copied!" schtick is just the most tedious of the behaviors - right behind the boneheaded misogyny and racism. 

The most idiotic part of the comments is that Gunn promoted the announcement of the movie with this image:

But I guess remembering things for a few months is too much to ask.

I still remember standing in Waldenbooks and looking at Superman comics and seeing the "war suit" for the first time and thinking it was cool as hell.  And that was the early-days version designed by George Perez.

For a while in the comics, Lex has sort of a costume - that collared super-spy number with the jetpack.

I think of the armor as the next logical step from the 70's-comics-ish-ness of that look (which I love, btw.  This was Super Friends Lex, after all).  And this suit was kind of how we used the color wheel to make Lex Superman's opposite, visually, too.

And, as I said, that armor has had a lot of iterations.  But it's never been in a live-action movie.  It *has* appeared on CW's Supergirl show, however it was worn by the always foxy Brenda Strong playing (checks notes) Lex's mother Lillian.*

I have no real preference for any particular version of the armor.  I don't even have one I dislike.  When the Lexosuit shows up, we're just all happy to see it.  

Lex from the JLU cartoon

Anyway, glad to see the suit showing up in the film.  I feel like we've never had a Lex in a feature film who would make sense as the guy who would create this armor, but Gunn and Hoult's take is 1000% that Lex.  After all, if you need to prove you can out-brawn someone, stop outsourcing your efforts and just do it yourself.  A little of the 'ol 1A you can deploy yourself.

It's also a perhaps unintentional nod to how close Lex really is to our Tony Starks and Bruce Waynes in comic land.  If he weren't such a heel, he really could save the world.  

*Strong is only five years older than Jon Cryer, who was, frankly, an amazing Lex Luthor.