My first thought was, since they're slapping together that Joker thing with Joaquin Phoenix and without Batman why couldn't they make a Luthor movie without Superman? And then I remembered a couple of books I read. One was Luthor by Brian Azzarello that traces Luthor's life story and features Superman floating outside a window and not saying anything. The other was Paul Cornell's run on Action Comics that focused on Luthor searching for a black power ring that would give him power over life and death. That also didn't feature Superman much if at all. So obviously it can be done.
The two ideas would actually start out the same and then diverge. Now, going on my thought of making the next Luthor a black guy basically think about if Tony Stark had grown up a poor black kid in a bad neighborhood. Like, say, Detroit.
So the opening scene we see this little boy like 10-12 and he's running through a rundown neighborhood (like, say, Detroit) and being pursued by a bunch of older boys. He winds up in an alley where the old kids confront him and call him names and stuff. One kid takes his backpack and there's some weird device in it. The older kids ask him what it does and he cautions them not to turn it on. But of course one does and immediately gets electrocuted. The boy uses a remote in his pocket to turn it off and pick the thing up and then asks the others if they want to be next. No one does so they take off running.
Cut to a big lecture hall many years later where a now-grown Lex Luthor is explaining that he's never liked bullies and now you have the biggest bully ever in this "Superman." (You don't have to actually show Superman's face, just some blurred images of the suit and cape.) And so LexCorp has evened the playing field...
Big reveal then of a hideous Superman clone (Bizarro). Lex has his pet demonstrate his strength and speed and freeze breath. But eventually like the ED-209 in Robocop, Bizarro starts going out of control, throwing people around and stuff. (Maybe worse if it's an R-rating, but just broken bones in a PG-13 film.) Lex finally uses a remote to trigger some explosives in the monster's neck to kill it. (Or again less gory if it's PG-13.)
And now is where the two ideas diverge.
Idea 1: Brainiac Lives
After the disastrous meeting, Lex goes to his lab to try to figure out what went wrong with the clone. While he's there, he gets a call from his space research team that they're picking up a weak signal in space. It soon becomes clear there's an object coming down in some remote place. Lex has his security people stifle any news of this to the media so he can hopefully get there first.
He then goes to his private plane where his assistant is waiting. His assistant LOIS, an android who looks like Lois Lane. The LOIS should be an acronym standing for something like Living Operational Information System. (The android Lois idea comes from the Black Ring story.) They fly out to some tropical jungle, where LOIS carves a route and demonstrates her skills on a few of the local animals.
They eventually come to a crashed spaceship. LOIS and a few security people go in first, though Lex insists on coming close behind so he doesn't miss anything. There are scribbles of alien languages and artifacts and stuff like that.
As they're exploring they're assaulted by some big ass alien monster. LOIS shows off her guns (like Gatling guns built into her body) to take the thing down. There are a few other dead aliens too. None of them who look human like a certain Kryptonian.
Lex is drawn to the ship's nerve center which is a big, fancy computer. He figures out how to disconnect the central unit to take it with them back to Metropolis. He leaves some security people to watch the wreck so they can salvage more of it later. There are some government flunkies who ask about what happened at the meeting and then about the wreck, but he gets rid of them with a mixture of bribery, flattery, and threats.
Lex holes himself up in his lab again, only now it's to study the computer from the ship. Once he gets it powered on, he finds a log of all its travels to various worlds in the galaxy--including Krypton. Lex starts to realize just how ancient and deadly this thing is. (Which a sane person would turn it off and smash it to pieces, but he sees an opportunity for knowledge and power beyond comprehension.)
LOIS comes back later to check on him and says that they've begun salvaging the ship and so far there's no interference from any big blue boy scout. Lex barely acknowledges this and then triggers something in the computer so that a green face comes up and identifies itself as Brainiac. (Maybe that's an acronym too. Or something that sounds like "Brainiac" but is an alien word.) Lex starts to ask it what it was doing and how it ended up here and it says that it was on a mission to preserve all the cultures of the universe when there was some disaster (meteor shower, storm, malfunction?) that caused it to crash and now it needs to continue its mission.
Lex isn't interested in its mission so much as using its knowledge to advance his agenda. He browses some of the technology Brainiac has encountered that's millions of light years from anything even he dreamed possible. But when he gets to the Kryptonian section he starts to recognize the similarities between that stuff and the man flying through Earth's skies. And so he starts looking into technologies that could be used against Superman.
Over the next few days Lex is hard at work in the lab. Brainiac pesters him about continuing its mission but Lex blows it off. What's it going to do, right? Well we see (but Lex doesn't because it's when he's asleep or not around) that Brainiac is assimilating technology around it, including LOIS.
Lex calls another meeting a few days later to demonstrate his latest big thing. Some really advanced weapons and shit. Like before everything is going pretty well--until Brainiac takes control of the whole building. When Lex tries to override, Brainiac sics LOIS on him. Lex runs for his life but not being an idiot he has an escape plan for an emergency like this.
He winds up going down in the sewers and ending up in his old neighborhood. Then we reveal the other half of that first scene. Young Lex went home triumphant only to find his mother's apartment burglarized and her dead. Shortly thereafter he had to go live with an aunt. Again he feels like he's lost everything but like then he's not going to give up.
Like Tony Stark in the cave, Lex gets to work on a suit of armor in some old dump where he used to work. (This would be a good place to work in a cameo by John Henry--Steel--as someone Lex knows from the old neighborhood who's also into science and engineering.) What Lex comes up with would be a primitive version of the Rebirth "Superman" armor he wore for a while:
Meanwhile Superman has shown up at LexCorp's headquarters but the building's systems have stopped him cold. (And again we don't really need to see his face; some grainy news footage would suffice.) So this looks like a job for Lex Luthor!
In his new armor Lex goes back to the headquarters and starts to take on the defenses. He has to take down LOIS and then confront Brainiac's central core, which has turned Lex's lab into something like the crashed ship's control center. Brainiac congratulates Lex's determination but says what a fool he is to have come in that armor.
Brainiac assimilates the primitive systems of the armor but then realizes too late that the armor's systems were a Trojan horse. Lex encoded a virus into them that is attacking Brainiac. The more advanced Brainiac could fend it off, but the virus gives Lex the time he needs to deactivate Brainiac and the rest of the building's systems.
And so Lex has saved the world where Superman failed. Saved it from himself really, but who's counting? At the end Lex is confronted by journalists (maybe the real Lois Lane) and gives them some fiction to put him in a good light. Then to set up a sequel we reveal that Lex still has some of the technology from Brainiac.
And now Idea 2: Hope
So we pick up after the disastrous meeting where Bizarro beat up and/or killed a bunch of people. Lex goes to his office and calls his top scientist onto the carpet. She is a woman we'll just call Dr. Jones for now. Dr. Jones has MS or Parkinson's or cerebral palsy or something like that necessitating her to use crutches to get around. Seeing her, he can't bring himself to fire her. He tells her in no uncertain terms to find out what went wrong or else she won't be so lucky the next time. She absorbs the abuse and maybe dishes a little back at him, which he secretly admires.
After a late night of working, he's getting in his limo and sees Dr. Jones hobbling along. It's much too late to get a cab and so he offers to give her a ride. They talk a little about his growing up in a bad neighborhood and making something of himself and her losing the full use of her legs and yet still making something of herself. They don't kiss, but there is romance in the air.
A couple of days later Lex has to brush off some government flunkies like in the first idea. Then he gets a call from Dr. Jones and goes to visit her in the lab. She's done a complete coding of Bizarro's DNA and identified a few sections where the cloning failed. she's also identified some of the genes that gave him superpowers. Lex sees the potential of this right away. If they could recreate those genes and plant them in someone he or she could have superpowers! And it could probably also cure diseases, like MS or Parkinson's or cerebral palsy.
Lex and Dr. Jones begin working on this project and spending a lot of time together in the lab. They share dinner together and talk and bond. Lex has never really been in love but now finds himself falling for Dr. Jones.
When they run some successful experiments on rats in the lab, Lex and Dr. Jones make out. (If it's PG-13 then it's just kissing but if it's an R rating then they could actually fuck.) Not for purely altruistic reasons, Lex encourages Dr. Jones to try the gene therapy on herself.
At first not a lot happens, but slowly she starts to build up strength until not only doesn't she need crutches but she can lift a car over her head like a certain other person famously did. Soon she's developing super speed, hearing, X-ray vision, and heat vision or freeze breath or whatever. She and Lex are out to celebrate when they see a mugging and Dr. Jones breaks it up.
It's fairly easy then for Lex to encourage her to don a costume and adopt a new identity: Hope. Soon she starts doing all the stuff Superman does: break up robberies, rescue people from burning buildings, and get cats out of trees. With his media connections, Lex makes sure everything she does is getting plenty of exposure too. Now you see the dark side of this, right? He's making Superman yesterday's news for a superhero he controls.
Everything's going great, right? But then all the sudden Hope is trying to rescue something when her powers fail. Someone is killed and she's hurt. In the lab Lex examines her and administers another dose of the gene therapy. Hope soon has her powers back, but when Lex meets her as Dr. Jones, she's acting differently. A waiter brings her the wrong thing or spills something and she nearly breaks his neck. Lex wants to examine her, but she refuses.
Over the next few days, Hope starts going off the rails until she starts raging through downtown Metropolis. And again in some grainy news footage we might see that not even Superman can stop her!
Lex decides he has to take this into his own hands. He gets into some Kryptonite-powered armor he developed to fight Big Blue that looks sort of like this:
Later, Lex goes to visit Dr. Jones in the secure facility she was put in. Her superpowers are all gone now and she's back on crutches. He thanks her for taking the blame for the experiment, not mentioning to the cops how he helped her with it. And he promises that he's still doing everything he can to find a cure for her. They share a tender moment and then Lex leaves. As he's leaving he sees Superman up in the sky and promises himself this isn't over.
[Luthor creating a new superhero to upstage Superman has been done in the comics before though I don't remember which specific ones who wrote them.]
So there you go. Two more great ideas that will go unused while DC/WB continues fumbling around with their "cinematic universe." Put me in charge and we'd already have a half-dozen hit movies! Or they'd be bankrupt. Probably that.
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