Brightburn

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 Comparison

The 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 for

purposeful murder. Brandon (the main character) doesn't

exactly have the smartest of parents either. While they are loving

and 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 Characters

The main cast really only includes the following three Breyer family members:

Jackson Dunn

Jackson 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 Denman

David 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 po...