Villain Profile: Brainiac

Here’s a Superman villain I hope they cover in movie form sometime in the near future. Brainiac, the evil bio-computer that often clashes with the Man of Steel. This Evil Cyborg is one of the few villains that can go toe to toe with Superman and walk away with barely a scratch. It takes a rare villain to actually add a term to the English language. Yep, the term brainiac didn’t exist until Brainiac the villain started fighting with Superman. Keep in mind the info I’ll be sharing is pre-New 52, so some of it might be outdated.

Do I look at the eyes or the purple brain plugs?

Believe it or not, Brainiac was born an organic life form. He was born Vril Dox on the planet Colu. He tried to use his immense intellect to overthrow his planets government. Things ended badly. Dox’s body was destroyed, but his consciousness remained intact. Because reasons. He traveled across the void in digital form and eventually traveled to Earth. He possessed a carnival mentalist, Milton Fine. Dox took complete control, taking on the name Brainiac. He clashed with Superman once or twice but was always overpowered. Fine’s body only lasted a short time, and after he started to break down, Brainiac sought newer more technologically advanced body.
          Later versions have Brainiac retooled, they keep the Colu origins, but skip over the Milton Fine stage. They depict him as a conquerer and collector of sorts, traveling around the universe, gathering knowledge. He gathers capitals of knowledge, storing them for his own personal use. His desire for knowledge puts him at odds with the Justice League. But, given his billions of worlds worth of knowledge, the resources of all the worlds he's destroyed, and a seemingly endless army of robot warriors, Brainiac has proven to be one of the most dangerous foes in the DC-verse. While Superman can take him on one-on-one, it usually takes the combined efforts of the Justice League to create the opening for the Man of Steel to take down his cybernetic foe.

So creepy.

Brainiac is an immensely intelligent organism. His intelligence is only limited by the technology of his body and environment, and his own imagination. Which is pretty limited at times. He's flown a lot of evil skull shaped ships. Try something new Brainiac! According to the DC-verse’s intelligence scale he’s a 12^th level intellect. To put that into context, the average intelligence of humans in the modern age is 6, and by the 31^st century it’s only level 9. To say he’s smart is something of an understatement. He combines his intellect with advanced weaponry and increasingly solid bodies.  He also has advanced telekinetic and telepathic powers. He can either rebuild or regenerate from most forms of damage, coming back even from being disintegrated.

Brainiac has appeared in a number of Superman and DC related franchises, mostly animated. He was primary antagonist in Superman: The Animated Series, where he was reimagined. In that version Brainiac was the computer intelligence that ran most of the day-to-day projects of Krypton. He intentionally misled the leaders of Krypton to believe everything is alright as the planet reached its final days. Brainiac rationalizes, as the center of cultural and scientific knowledge of Krypton, his survival was more important than the survival of the Kryptonian people. He escaped around the same time as young Kal-El. He spends the intervening years gathering knowledge and technology before assaulting Earth. Superman defeats him on a number of occasions but somehow Brainiac always finds a way back. When you think about it, this version is something of a foil for Superman. Where Clark Kent is a Kryptonian with none of the knowledge of his people, but has their heart and spirit, while Brainiac has all of the knowledge of Krypton but none of the heart or spirit. He's not one of those robots that gets a soul. Shocking, right? He's destroyed towards the end of the Justice League's original run along side the evil god Darkseid. He's later resurrected within Lex Luthor. Luthor actually convinces the evil robot to merge with him permanently, giving Brainiac ambition beyond gathering all the knowledge in the universe. Now Brain-i-Lex wants to do that and remake it in his own image. Brain-i-Lex is destroyed by the Flash, and afterwards Lex's ambition becomes to regain the power he had while he was part of Brainiac. He goes to some dark places.

More subtle, more dangerous.

He’s also the primary antagonist of Superman: Unbound, based on the storyline Superman: Brainiac. The film opens to the pretty graphic motifications Brainiac underwent as he was transformed from biological to bionic. They straight up pull out his eyes, gross. The basic plot, Brainiac is an advanced bio-computer bent on gathering all knowledge in the universe. The problem, knowledge isn’t static, it is constantly changing and evolving. The solution, Brainiac grabs the capital of knowledge on any given world, shrinks it down, puts it into his hall of planets, and then destroys the planet. The logical way, am I right? The citizens of the cities are made more or less immortal, and thus their knowledge remains forever. Superman is overpowered by Brainiac on his ship, but he’s finally able to beat the evil bot using the same method he used on Zod in Man of Steel. No, not neck snapping, Superman overloads his senses before breaking his face. This movie is also pretty awesome for having Lois Lane flipping Brainiac the double bird during his evil speech.

Brainiac has had only one live action appearance, in the 5^th season, and in several episodes in later seasons, of the TV show Smallville, played by James Marsters. In this version he’s once again a self-aware computer of Kryptonian origin, known as the Brain Interactive Construct. Get it? Unlike the animated version, thought, he has a plethora of Kryptonian powers like heat vision and super speed. Furthermore, he is immune to Kryptonite, being an android. Brainiac composition is a liquid metal this time round, giving him shapeshifting and weaponry similar to the T1000 in Terminator 2. He’s bent on freeing Zod from the Phantom Zone and destroying the young Superman. His plans vary from the simple, like destroying the Fortress of Solitude to free Zod, to the complex, manipulating the Doomsday monster to do the dirty work, to the insane, going back in time and killing baby Kal-El. How very Brainiac. Marsters’ is believably smart and just creepy enough to be an evil bot. He's also the most persistant of Superman's villains, appearing several times after the fifth season where he was the primary antagonist.
           Brainiac is the central antagonist of the video game DC Universe Online. In it, he's assaulting Earth with an immense mechanized army. A Luthor from the future brings back exobites, nanobot's Brainiac created to record data on individual superheroes' superpowers. To stop Brainiac's assault on Earth, Luthor releases the Exobites into Earth's atmosphere. The modified bots infect as many people as they can, granting them the superpowers of whomever was stored in their databanks. A decent explanation of how the player can make whatever hero or villain that they want to make. Brainiac, detecting his exobites, abducts everyone infected by them and puts them into cold storage. Unfortunately for him, the character breaks out, starting the tutorial level. It's a decent free-ish (main game is free, but expansions cost a few bucks) online game and I'd recommend it. If nothing else it's good way to shut down and just beat on baddies for a while.

Brainiac has been considered for a number of Superman movies, but has been discarded for other villains, mostly Lex Luthor or Zod.And I got to say that is really stupid. Don't give us the same baddy over and over again Hollywood, no matter how awesome they are. When you have guys like Brainiac here waiting in the wings, it just seems really unfair that Luthor keeps getting put up to bat.

I like Brainiac for being a rather unique villain. Usually you have the strong, or the smart, Brainiac is both. Despite being very machine like, his arrogance and hubris are usually the source of his downfall. Unusual for a computer. Usually you need to do a logic paradox to break its brain or something. Plus, his motivation, particularly the stealing cities before destroying planets, is such an unusual approach to knowledge gathering. What other evil being had thought of doing something like that? Not many. I hope to see him on a live action screen at some point in the future. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Bow and be destroyed.

 


 http://geek-news.mtv.com/2013/05/08/interview-john-noblebrainiac-superman-unbound/
 http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Vril_Dox_I_%28New_Earth%29
  http://www.guiadeseriados.com.br/2010/10/01/smallville-10%C2%AA-temporada-brainiac-e-clark/
 http://www.ilikewallpaper.net/ipad-air-wallpaper/brainiac-dc-comics/6008