Brightburn - a podcast by Chris, Sean, Jeremy | Force Fed Sci-Fi

from 2019-05-27T10:56:52

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The Force Fed Sci-Fi team decided to check out the film Brightburn this past weekend in theaters and we wanted to share our thoughts! We'll look at the Brightburn cast and characters, the Brightburn Superman comparison, give our Brightburn rating, and more! Since at the time of this posting, this film has just been released, we have to give a *Spoiler Warning* ... so continue at your own risk!
Brief Synopsis and the Brightburn Superman ComparisonThe marketing for Brightburn made it pretty clear what this film was going to be about - a pre-teen who develops his powers, but doesn't turn out to be the usual hero and instead uses his powers to murder and terrorize.

This film though has a blatant Superman comparison. An alien space pod crash lands in the middle of the U.S., a boy develops powers that include super strength, flying, and laser/heat eye vision. Sound familiar? Well I suppose if you aren't a comic book fan, you may not know, but this is exactly like the Superman origin story.

 There are some obvious differences since
the main character turns out to use his super powers forpurposeful murder. Brandon (the main character) doesn't
exactly have the smartest of parents either. While they are lovingand nurturing towards him, they make poor choices. If he
had Clark Kent's parents, then maybe he would have turned
out as a hero (probably not though). We'll get more into
Brandon's parents in the next section.

 Brightburn Cast and CharactersThe main cast really only includes the following three Breyer family members:

Jackson DunnJackson Dunn as Brandon Breyer - Dunn hasn't really done much in his career, which is to be expected as he is young. However, we surprisingly learned he made a brief appearance in Avengers: Endgame as the young Scott Lang as the team were (unsuccessfully) experimenting with time travel. That movie aside, Dunn does a decent job in this film. He delivers convincing performance as his character discovers his powers, but at a time in his life where he has not matured and does not deal with anger well (the people around him don't exactly help his situation either.

Just for kicks (and because I love the movie) this is the clip that Jackson Dunn is briefly included in for the Avengers: Endgame film (he appears around 48 seconds):Elizabeth Banks, photo by Gage Skidmore

Elizabeth Banks as Tori Breyer - Despite Banks'character of Tori being a bit flawed as in being in complete denial about her child, she delivers a good performance as Brandon's mother. As we identify in our podcast episode, Banks is actually a decent diverse actor. She can be cast in a comedic, horror, and even action-like role and does a decent job usually. In this film's case, her character just completely denies the fact that her son is a killer and murderer (the pieces of the puzzle blatantly fit, which the father has no trouble identifying).

David DenmanDavid Denman as Kyle Breyer - Denman as the father Kyle Breyer delivers a modest performance. The story more so focuses on Brandon and Tori most of the movie, and Kyle is including slightly. At least his character realizes early that his son has become dangerous as he is discovering his super power abilities. He's not too smart though when he goes and tries to murder his son in the woods. Prior to trying to murder Brandon, Kyle even says out loud that his son has never been sick or has even gotten a cut. So you think trying to murder him with a rifle is going to work? As you may guess, right after his self and ill-advised decision, Brandon does not hesitate to use his laser-eyes to burn a huge hole through his father's face.
Possible Sequel and/or Brightburn UniverseIt's pretty obvious if you're paying attention enough to recognize the door being left open for a Brightburn sequel, and more likely a Brightburn Universe.

The first clue is when Banks'character does a Google search for meteors that landed on the same night Brandon's...

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