Why I REALLY NEED a Cyborg movie to be made
Five years ago when talk of a Justice League film started to surface, I had never heard of Cyborg as a DC Comics character, nor did I know he was part of the Justice League in the comics.
It sounded weird at first. I had never really read a Justice League book or series, but I at least knew the classic lineup included Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and The Martian Manhunter. Why WB was deciding to go off book for this version was above my pay grade, but I filed it under “let’s wait and see what happens” and kept it moving.
Fast forward to now, after seeing Victor Stone’s brief appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Joss Whedonized version of his character in the theatrical release of Justice League, reading the first 13 issues of Cyborg Rebirth era, and watching versions of the character in Young Justice, Doom Patrol and even Teen Titans GO.
I want a Cyborg movie now. No, that’s a lie. I NEED a Cyborg movie now.
DC Films, since Walter Hamada was placed in charge of it in January 2018, has undergone an overhaul of sorts since the disastrous situation that led to Justice League, the most expensive DC Films bomb in the past few decades. Before that, a Cyborg solo movie was on the slate to be released in 2020, along with several other solo films that would have spun out of a billion-dollar Justice League theatrical run. When that billion-dollar run didn’t happen, people in charge were rightly fired and previous plans were cast aside in favor of new ones.
Now we’ve had a billion-dollar Aquaman movie, a profitable Shazam movie, a billion-dollar Joker movie, and a break-even Birds of Prey movie that starred Harley Quinn. At some point in 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 will be released in some form to the public, and then starting in 2021 for the next two years we’ll have James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, Matt Reeves’ Batman, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Black Adam, a Shazam sequel, a Flash solo movie and finally an Aquaman sequel. It’s a loaded slate, and giving Hamada the benefit of the doubt since he’s been hired, all of it is fully expected to release, especially with AT&T now on board for it.
That means 2023 and beyond is wide open. At some point Superman, preferably with Henry Cavill still in the role, will return to the big screen for another solo effort, and other projects like Ava Duvernay’s New Gods, an Amazon movie and a Trench film have been in development, but if you really want to make a big impact on the comic book movie genre as a whole and even society itself, a Cyborg movie should be greenlit in the not too distant future.
This is the part where I make my case for why that movie, which I dearly need to exist, should be made. Let us begin.
First of all, anyone who has paid attention to the Release the Snyder Cut campaign knows that arguably the most egregious act of erasure from the Justice League film was all of the backstory and development involving Victor Stone/Cyborg’s character and family. The smattering of his presence that we get in the theatrical version, played by Ray Fisher, along with his father Silas Stone, played by veteran character actor Joe Morton, seemingly pales in comparison to what Zack Snyder and Chris Terrio’s original vision for his character was in the movie. Snyder himself called Cyborg the heart of the film, and in a recent interview with Jonita Davis for The Blackcape Magazine, Fisher spoke about how he was allowed to help craft the character depth and design with Snyder and Terrio, who were intent on making Cyborg a character much deeper than a stereotype with catch phrases every few minutes.
Before May 20, 2020, the idea of seeing this come to fruition was at best a long term hope for fans that wanted to see it. Now we know that we WILL see it in Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max in 2021, meaning that not only are we going to see that fully fleshed out character depth for Victor Stone that we never got to see, but also the general audience that only saw twisted bits and pieces of it in 2017 will get to see it as well. Again, if you’ve been following Release the Snyder Cut at all, you know there’s a great deal yet to see regarding Cyborg, up to and including his mother Elinore, played by Karen Bryson. Her role was completely excised from the film along with the vast majority of Cyborg’s backstory.
Sidebar for a bit here. This has been pointed out by others that have observed the same thing, but when you take a closer look at what was removed from Zack Snyder’s original footage versus what was reshot and introduced into it, it’s disturbing how much of the black family aspect was forcibly removed from the film altogether. Not just a great deal of Victor’s scenes and his father Silas’ presence, but the entirety of his mother Elinore Stone’s presence whatsoever. That’s an awful look when you really examine it, and while we can’t say for certain what the reasoning was, it really looks like Hollywood executives whitewashing a comic book film, for the sake of trying to draw a bigger audience that they think wouldn’t buy the Stone family dynamic. Even well into the 21st century, there are people who still scoff at the idea of a highly successful black family with college graduates and doctorates in their repertoire. Sad and pathetic that anyone still thinks this way, but such is the world we live in.
This is important to bring up because that’s a big part of why there needs to be a Cyborg movie now, because of the social diversity implications and potential it has for the genre of comic book movies and the audience at large. Two years ago, I saw Black Panther three times in the theater. My girlfriend saw it four times. The first time we saw it, there were teachers that brought their entire classes of black children to the theater to watch it, and among them were many older black people dressed in dashikis and other African garb, all of whom had likely never watched a comic book movie, let alone one from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in their entire lives. It was a cultural phenomenon and struck a major chord on a cultural level for black people in terms of representation and portrayal.
But for all that Black Panther did for black representation in blockbuster comic book films, it was still largely a movie about an African civilization that had avoided the horrors that real world Africans and African-Americans dealt with for hundreds of years, in order to become the most technologically advanced society on the planet that could open its borders in today’s world and represent the best of “blackness” as it could possibly be shown. It’s what many black people including myself have dreamed we could become, but it’s not entirely steeped in realism to the actual black experience.
That is what a Cyborg movie can do, and judging from what Fisher has said about the realism that he, Snyder and Terrio were going for with Victor in Justice League, the potential for a movie about a black superhero that embodies what a black person in today’s world really deals with and feels like, is absolutely off the charts. It would have the opportunity to deal with the subject of being black in America in a way that Black Panther was really only able to accomplish in portions of the film with Michael B. Jordan’s villain, Erik Killmonger, and in Cyborg’s case, it would be about him becoming a hero that is seeking to find his place in the world, instead of becoming a villain looking for vengeance on the world that took everything from him.
I’m really not trying to bag on Black Panther, I own that movie and have watched it several times, but for the sake of really digging into what a Cyborg movie’s potential is, it’s important to highlight what it can do that the other major movie about a black superhero hasn’t done yet. Add to that the fact that Victor Stone is also disabled, and you now have a superhero that is a champion for black and disabled representation at the same time. Fisher is well aware of this and has referenced that responsibility himself.
What this all truly boils down to is that a Cyborg movie has incredible potential to tell a story that we have never, ever seen before on screen about a disabled black American superhero with feelings and issues relatable to much of the general audience in some form, fighting his way to find his place in this world as many black Americans and people in general are fighting for as well, while being a technocrat badass in the process. Indeed, you’ve got to figure that the digital age of technological advancement we live in now, makes the plot of a Cyborg movie one that could be incredibly relevant and hard-hitting to all of us. We could seriously be talking about the most socially relevant, emotionally charged, relatable comic book superhero film ever made, depending on how it is written, produced and directed.
That’s why I need it to happen in the worst way. I want to see a comic book movie where someone who looks like me(and in this case shares my name in real life), deals with issues and challenges that I, my family and friends know all too well, and takes the important subjects that we see on the news daily now regarding race relations, poverty and civil rights, and treats them with the respect and depth that is warranted for subjects that are deadly serious to us all. Yes it will have elements of escapism and comic book science, given that Cyborg is a heavily powered metahuman infused with Apokoliptian technology, but that’s the part for the little black children to see when he saves the day and shows them that people like us that comes from the same places we do can save the day just like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman can.
If you want to see live action evidence that this could have worked very well in 2017 and can still work very well going forward, watch Joivan Wade’s version of Victor Stone/Cyborg in Doom Patrol. His arc in the first season and what is currently being developed in the second season of the show are exactly what I’m talking about with respect to potential for grounded, socially relevant storytelling with a disabled black American superhero. Ray Fisher’s performance in Zack Snyder’s Justice League is likely going to echo all of that and more, and you just hope that Victor Stone really does become an integral black superhero for the masses as a result of it. DC has certainly made it clear that they wish to feature him, at least in live action and animation over the past few years, so that’s all the more reason Fisher should get his shot at a solo film within the next two or three years. Word persists that he will be in The Flash movie in 2022, so that could be another benefit toward seeing more of him on screen for certain.
It would seriously please me to no end to see those teachers bring their black classrooms back to the theater, or gathered around an Internet-connected TV at that point, to show their students the Cyborg movie as an uplifting example of how powerful and strong they can be, no matter where they come from or how difficult the world treats them. Here’s hoping it actually gets made. I need it. WE need it. Now more than ever.
