Could Darkseid even work in a movie without character being changed?

Rage is the wrong word. He's capable of bigly outbursts but he's quiet and subdued. He's more of the quiet contempt type than a sperging tantrum thrower like some dickhead like Atrocitus or Volthoom

The ONLY way they can make a Darkseid work is if they properly introduced the New Gods both as a concept, then as the two factions

If you really have to change things to add depth, reveal some history that makes a Darkseid look sympathetic

For example, perhaps Apokolips was a dying world that Darkseid saved by harnessing the Omega force which turned him into the monster he is, and while sure, everybody is miserable, the alternative is they'd be dead.

Then you can make New Genesis start off looking basically like MCU Asgard, a nice shiny place with happy good looking people, but they’re a bunch of cunts too, and it turns out that after the High Father saw how powerful Darkseid had become to the point of saving Apokolips, he began to fear Darkseid would attack New a Genesis for them not helping Apokolips in its time of need.

So the High Father ordered Darkseids newborn son Orion to be kidnapped as a hostage to ensure Darkseid won’t invade. A few years later peace negotiations result in the high father handing over his own son Scot Free to Darkseid as a hostage

That could work, normies would eat it up no problem. Maybe have his wife die as well like canon do to the early scuffles between the two for extra brownie points

I don’t know much about the anti life equation in comparison to the Infinity gems

Could they really have a similar format in films? How are you supposed to “find” an equation? Don’t you only have to do it once too?

>Darkseid is pretty one-note in terms of evilness.
Darkseid maybe overrated but he is not one note.

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Depth isn't necessary, it's all about execution.
Audiences loved Thanos because he had some good lines, some good fights and some memrable moments like the snap.

The key to getting Darkseid right is making a good first impression. He's not just any world conqueror, he's THE world conqueror. He's literally the god of tyranny.

youtube.com/watch?v=F_ahX7sjoas
Something like this.

I'm not sure if you need the two factions. Apokalips still works without New Genesis, New Genesis doesn't even have to exist.
>Darkseid is the big bad and he has his squad of sociopathic minibosses oppressing the masses with fire and assrape every day
>Hushed whispers of escaping to the fabled New Genesis all around the planet on some kind of space underground railroad
>Scott Free doesn't fit in with fucks like Kalibak and shit, longs to escape the clutches of Granny
>Grows up in close quarters with Big Barda, who is picked for the Furies
>Seduces her with the idea of freedom
>Dreams get shattered when they're told New Genesis is just a lie perpetuated by Darkseid's court
>Flee to Earth and join the justice league instead
>Post credits teaser has Izaya watching his son's mother box create a boom tube on Earth. He, Bekka, Lightray, Orion, and so forth look on and confirm New Genesis is actually a real thing. Camera pans out to lush, verdant landscape, confirming the rumors passed around on Apokalips
>Sequel explores the political fallout between Darkseid and Izaya because of their whole "let's trade sons" arrangement

this shit writes itself

I think it's very easy, actually to do that while keeping his core, although it's still be different from canon Darkseid. Just make him 100% devoted to eliminating free will, pushing the argument the suffering and such only exist due to free will and under Darkseid's sole will the universe will flourish.

Usually, in his canon take, even the "law" he envisions is inherently negative with people under him talking about dying and suffering for him while getting nothing out of it. Remove that aspect and make him 100% impersonal "Freedom is evil, my absolute control is good" and you still have him as an obvious villain but would allow to get some people to say "you know, he has a point."

Also, they need to do a scene with Darkseid sitting on a couch. You can fashion it like a small jumpscare, even.

>Superman comes home from the Daily Planet
>opens his door
>"Hello, Kal-El"

It's a perfect way to establish him. Few other Superman villains violate his private life like that.
And to it in such a way that shows he gives absolutely no fucks.

Maybe make it so if you’re under his control, you experience no pain and receive pleasure and happiness simply from following that control

So Darkseid wants a universe of mind slaves living in squalor for his empire, but they’d love it, even as they break their backs in the mines of Apokolips

The anti-life equation is stored deep within the collective unconsciousness of humanity.
>Darkseid comes to earth to find it
>a sonny sumo or Billion dollar Bates cameo
>they divulge it to him like they're whispering a secret to him
>boom. Anti-life equation halo

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that's dumb. That should be his argument but he doesn't care if you feel pain or not, once you're in his thrall you're merely an extension of his own will.

>Audiences expect villains with depth
I disagree. It was always about execution. Joker didn't have depth outside of "hmm planned chaos". It always been about execution of the character/villain. Threat, unique dialogue, unique mannerisms, unique design and plot all add up to being a good villain. Can a villain be relatable? Yes but it won't take you far enough. I'll argue that Iron Monger from Iron Man 1 was a good villain but he failed in having a lackluster design in his Iron Monger armor to make him truly memorable.

This, but keep his rage as a form of disdain for the sheer stupidity of the lesser minds he seeks to subjugate.

"You were given free will, what what did you do with it? Did you make wise choices? No. You killed each other over transitory philosophies, you squandered your resources and covered your eyes as all of the consequences of your poor choices gained ground on you. Freedom of Choice will see you extinguished by your own inept lack of foresight. And the fact that you think you deserve it anyway is nothing short of hubris. Its maddening."
"You have proven you can't be trusted to make your own choices. So I will have to make your choices for you. All of you. You won't be happy, because you won't be anything. But its better than continuing as you are now."

Stane also had the problem that he was a late reveal villain, so he didn't have a lot of time to actually revel in his villiany and build that persona up with the audience. I think that a addition to your list is that the villain needs to have a significant amount of screentime throughout the film, giving them a presence with the audience that rivals that of the protagonist.

We’re talking about how he’d possibly be sympathetic or have depth. Wanting to enslave the universe and not giving a shit about how much pain it causes has le generic big bad written all over it

For Darkseid to work best, you need to begin with a Mr. Miracle movie. Mr. miracle escapes to Earth, Darkseid sees how much Earth is Thriving in the platonic sense (as in it does what it was meant to do). Darkseid hates this and wishes to conquer and subjugate it. that's all the motivation he needs. Darkseid doesn't comprehend things like real happiness, growing and living life. He comes from a stagnant world of endless suffering, he sees how much Earth thrives and it pisses him off, not even because he can't have that (Darkseid doesn't wish to thrive, he could if he wanted to but he'd rather live in his stagnant hell and be somewhat complacent in the sense of growing as a person) but because it's so disgusting to his hellscape-aligned senses. He lives in his shithole empire of constant suffering, so he thinks EVERYONE should live in his shithole empire of constant suffering, because that's all he knows and all he ever wishes to know, and all he wishes anyone else to know. And what he cannot reshape into his own image of hell and stagnancy, he will destroy. what Darkseid cannot have, Darkseid will destroy. That's his motto, after all. Have him say it, loud and clear.

I think this is a fine characterization for him that would work well in a movie.

Throw in Godfrey for the positive spin (a la Young Justice, but maybe not as a political talking head), and I think this works as well as MCU Thanos.

Feels like all the posters ITT have some high minded philosophical reasons for Darkseids villainy

Not sure if it works as well in a superhero movie, sounds like audiences would easily be confused about why grey man is so evil

He's not sympathetic though. Why does he need to be sympathetic? Characters like Anton Chigurh and Hannibal Lecter are compelling but they aren't sympathetic.

They tried making the characters of Apokalips sympathetic and literally every single fucking person on this board hated it. What's different now?

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I feel like the New Gods would legit need a GoT style TV series to even approach working as a concept. You might be able to make a movie about Mister Miracle or the Forever People, but the various aspect's of Darkseid's regime would go unexplored unless you shoved them all together in a movie and develop none of them,

You don't have to explain every damn thing I wrote to people. you can just have him see Mr. Miracle on Earth and sneer with disgust when he sees so many people being happy and living life, and declare that this disgusting planet must be conquered. you dont' (and shouldn't) make like Star Wars and spend multiple movies saying how the bad guy turned bad, just do a 30 second thing where he looks pissed and states his goal.

>Cinematic Audiences expect villains with depth like MCU Thanos.
You mean turning him into a Captain Planet character?

Not all villains have to be sympathetic villains to be memorable, interesting, or cool.

Darkseid, being the ultimate big bad, has permission to be on the side of evil just for the sake of it.

He wants to eliminate free will in the universe and have all wills merely be an extension of his own. He wants dominion over all sentient things.

A character asks him why. What does he get out of it. What's his reason?

His response? Why do rivers flow? Why do stones fall? Why do fires burn?

It's their nature to do so, and so they do so.

And Darkseid's nature is to conquer all. Just as he acknowledges that his enemies' nature is to futilely try to stop him.

In the end, maybe Darkseid holds free will in such contempt that he doesn't believe even he himself has it. After all, everything he does, he does because it's his nature to do so.

This could also play into the climax. In the final fight with Orion, Darkseid tells his son that since Orion is prophesied to kill him, if he does so, it proves Orion himself is a slave to his nature and has no free will. So, Darkseid still wins.

>Not all villains have to be sympathetic villains to be memorable, interesting, or cool.
Yeah, they can be complete wastes of time instead.

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One-note villains can work as long as they're scary enough. Darkseid needs to be terrifying.

Yes but would end Up like a troll, he would seem like DIO from jojos parte 3 to the audience and would be way weaker than his cómic counter partes , and would lose his Edge too

The fuck is wrong with people? So every villain needs to be a cry baby, even the top dogs? Have you ever heard of a movie monster? All you need to do is make Darkseid legitimately scary. Make him like Hannibal Lecter with god like power. Make him be able to get into peoples heads before they even see him. It's the whole point of the character.

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>For Darkseid to work best, you need to begin with a Mr. Miracle movie.

I think it would be awesome if they did a Fourth World/New Gods movie with an ensemble cast, but primarily focusing on the two traded sons, Orion and Mr. Miracle. But everyone from Highfather Forager would be involved, much like a Star Wars movie or something. The premise would be that New Genesis and Apokalips have stood at an uneasy truce for years since the trading of the sons, with a condition of this truce being that Apokalips would cease efforts to attain the Anti-Life Equation. But Darkseid never intended to honour the truce forever, and was simply biding his time. Now that the moment is opportune, New Genesis intel shows he is mobilizing his forces again, and his target seems to be an unremarkable planet of mortals called Earth.

You cannot quantify or comprehend Darkseid. Darkseid is.

Nobody was confused over why the bad guys in the Dark Knight trilogy were evil ,and they all had deep philosophical reasons for being evil. Except maybe Scarecrow/Crane.

For a modified film plot, I thought this would be a cool idea.

>previous films set up Mister Miracle, Barda and Orion on earth, who talk about Apokolips and New Genesis history
>justice league gets involved when the war between New a Genesis and Apokolips spills over onto earth, where Kalibak leads Parademons to try and conquer the place when they hear Scot Free, Orion and Barda are there
>when Kalibak is foiled by the justice league, he’s captured and just tells them Darkseid cannot he stopped
>a boomtube opens and the justice league is worried, Kalibak looks joyful for a second because he thinks he’s getting rescued
>then two red lasers come out of it at angles and slowly, painfully turn Kalibak into dust
>when the justice league ask what the hell that was, Scot Free tells them “that was his father”
>the anti life equation is locked behind the source wall, which protects the Source, the essence of existence and creation
>the source wall only appears every 15 million years or some shit, and Desaad the head torturer scientist has found out it’s coming soon
>Darkseids plan is to harness the omega force to blow a hole in the source wall, threatening creation itself in order to get the anti life education and enslave all sentient creatures
>cue huge battle on the source wall and the space around it for flying heroes, also spaceships

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This. Make Darkseid an overwhelming force of nature. An inevitably that can't be stopped only delayed. Watching the justice league or whoever goes up against Darkseid overcome those impossible odds are what's gonna set him apart as a villain.

They were just crazy though. Darkseid isn’t meant to be insane

2014 Thanos (who was the main antagonist in Endgame) was one of the most one note MCU villains to date and audiences loved it.

>He's a detached dictator who wants complete subjugation of the masses

It goes deeper than that. He's literally the Platonic ideal of the concept of tyranny. If the New Gods ever do hit the big screen, they really do need to emphasize this idea of personification of abstracts, rather than portraying them simply as aliens from another dimension.

Would be cool for a final battle against Darkseid to be Endgame style but also to have the villains fighting with the heroes because come the fuck, even the villains don’t want Darkseid to win

Merge his origin with Libra

>Abused kid, lost his mother at a young age and was beaten by his father
>become completely obsessed with outer space and the concept of maintaining absolute balance with all things
>steals Starman's cosmic rod plans and builds a device to merge himself with the universe
>he ascends to a higher plane after his body is torn apart and becomes cosmic energies
>Manifests as a deity in literal hell
>Returns to Earth a now much smarter, more powerful, and eviler person with armies of hell

Heres what the DC should do
>superman movie where he meets kyle raynor GL and Martian Manhunter
>batman movie where he meets Wally west
>wonder woman movie
>aquaman movie

>they come together in an adaption of the new 52 justice league origin story line
>lex Luthor destroys the philosophers stone, that was introduced earlier in the series
>superman almost dies in the x pit

JUSTICE LEAGUE 2
>15 years from today darkseid has taken over the planet
>superman is held hostage in some space ship
>darkseid is moment
>batman and wonderwoman die at the hands of darkseid
>the superheroes defeat darkseid and Wally west uses the speed force to go back to JL 1 and they kill darkseid and stop lex from destroying the stone
>post credit scene is dr Manhattan moving the philosophers stone onto Batmans computers in the batcave

Go fuck yourself.

no to literally all of that

Dude just read the origin Jack wrote for him in the original run of New Gods. Also Mcu Thanos is nonsensical, Disney is fucking ruining Marvel like a frog in a slowly boiling pot.

I always imagined Darkseid motivations would be something similar to the Reapers from Mass Effect. An ancient and primordial evil whose ultimate goal is restore order to a chaotic universe. The reapers did this through a mass culling of intelligent races but Darkseid seeks to do it through complete subjugation of all sentient life across all realities.

youtu.be/_lsCotK95Yw

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>Post Justice League
>Steppenwulf, disgraced and beaten, is left with no recourse but to return to the home that cast him out: Apokalips
>Marches through the courtyard of his master's hall seeing all forms of fascistic debauchery
>Reaches the throne, hidden from the viewer, and prostrates himself before it, begging his unseen lord for mercy, and the resources he needs to conquer Earth and avenge himself upon these upstart "heroes."
>The shadowed master of Apokalips stands up and approaches him, and Steppenwulf begs for instruction on how he may regain favor in his eyes.
>Full reveal as he speaks only three words
>"Die for Darkseid."
>Omega Beam
>Cut to black
That simple. You know, assuming JL hadn't been such dogshit.

So make him not Darkseid

This is late 90s-early 00s tier of a comic book adaptation getting literally everything wrong.

>this
now kalibak is a fine choice for sympathy villain

All I know is I wanted the whole “S stands for Hope” thing to come full circle.

I wanted Darkseid to win, and get th anti life equation, but it doesn’t work because he can’t destroy the hope that superman created

Corny, sure, but I love it

A major theme of the film would of course be free will vs. subjugation, with New Genesis valuing the will, and Darkseid seeking to eliminate it. But New Genesis itself is imperfect, perhaps being held back by antiquated ideas of Highfather and his ilk (exemplified by how the New Gods of Supertown disregard the Foragers who live beneath them). So, another theme would be the innovation of youth, with some of the younger characters, like the Forever People, not seeing eye-to-eye with their elders. At the core of the movie, you'd have Orion, who is constantly struggling with the fear that the darkness and rage he feels inside of him will take over despite his noble ideals, and Mr. Miracle, who grew up through every sort of torture meant to break his will and reform him into an acolyte of Darkseid, but instead, trained his mind on being able to escape any predicament and endure any pain without losing hope, never letting his mind be caged even if his body is, despite him and Big Barda constantly being recaptured and sent back into incalculable torment after every successful escape (in fact, maybe sometimes Granny Goodness purposely let him think he escaped just to recapture him, in order to give him false hope and break his spirit. Orion, Miracle, and Barda's struggles would each represent some form of the conflict between freedom/will and determinism/oppression.

The Fourth World movies would run parallel to events in the other DC movies, with Darkseid being both the big bad of the New Gods films and the Justice League films. However, though characters from the Fourth World would appear in the other DC films to help the Earth heroes fight off Darkseid's invasion, each series would be self-sufficient and could be understood without having to watch the other. It would just add to the coolness factor of seeing how things link up if you do decide to watch both series. And also, while Darkseid would be the final boss of the Justice League, you would realize how much larger a figure he is when he isn't just a JL foe, but is part of his own mythos independent of the Justice League. And even though he's a big deal to the League, from his perspective, his fight against them is just one element of his multi-pronged master plan. Darkseid ends up being Superman's ultimate foe, but from Darkseid's perspective, Superman is a worthy opponent, but just a distraction; his ultimate foe is Highfather.

>embiggen

Is that a cromulent word?

Darkseid worked thematically in Legend. Just bring that same vibe back and make him Space Satan and you have Darkseid.

>MCU Thanos.
>depth

you said adapt him for a movie. This is the most hollywood origin that could ever be made or him

Is that Doom?

yeah the source wall first appeared in xmen vs teen titans or something marvel vs dc

I just finished this run last night, holy shit what a ride. That half-machine-man planet issue was a trip and a half

too much like thanos

Darkseid should be one-note, if it's a note so deep it makes the audience shit their pants

darkseid isn't evil. darkseid IS.

Darkseid is low budget thanos though

I think they should do the opposite of Thanos. Darkseid should seem sympathetic at first, but you'd see his true colors halfway through. He's done that before, like with Secret from Young Justice.

At the same time the New Genesis gods could be lofty and hard to trust. I remember Orion's face would turn monstrous when he was pissed off. They could play that up to make his loyalties doubtful until the last act.

I could see this dialogue:
>Orion: How did you get the Justice League on your side?
>Darkseid: I simply told them my story. That my planet was subjugated ages ago. I lost my mother to a mighty tyrant.
>Orion: And you neglected to mention that this tyrant was you.
>Darkseid: Yes. You feel that was an important detail?

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I genuinely liked your idea, user. I doubt we'll see it, but I think it is legitimately a good way of going about it.

>with depth like MCU Thanos

Thanos, who had no depth until Infinity War and even then it got butchered through Disney dumbing it down to "lmma do genocide due to universal lack of resources, it's benevolent but crazy okay "?

>For Darkseid to work best, you need to begin with a Mr. Miracle movie

I don't agree with that. It's only necessary if you want to strongly establish Apokolips from the inside.