10 Comic Book Movies Hollywood Didn't Have The Balls To Make

Hollywood's current obsession with insistently packaging cinematic universes has had a tangibly negative effect on creativity. One of the most frustrating things relating to this trend means that non-canonical "stand-alone" films aren't considered for production.

That is particularly irksome when you take a comic like Superman: Red Son, the reimagined origin that saw the iconic hero land in Ukraine instead of Kansas. Unsurprisingly, he is raised to be "the Champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin."

Much of the story in Red Son concerns Lex Luthor, a genius hired by the US government, and his attempts to destroy Superman, but the plot becomes increasingly complicated and features clones, nuclear bombs, time-based paradoxes, and an undefined line between good and evil. In other words: Red Son is essentially a Hollywood executive's nightmare. It's too vast and too complex.

Additionally, with the Soviet setting, you're potentially alienating a large portion of your audience. There will be those fans who only want to see Superman as an all-American hero, and those who see the treatment of the character in this light as some kind of blasphemy.

Still, one could argue that Superman: Red Son could be brilliantly utilised as a timely exploration of the relationship between the USA and Russia, amongst other subjects such as socialism. Then again, Hollywood is rarely as bold as that, a point proven by the fact that the studio system has never embraced this project.