FEATURE: Why Lois Lane Deserves a Solo Movie

Or at least, that’s what could have been, if only Man of Steel was a Lois Lane film.

Amy Adams’ approach to Lois was refreshing, and what the movie does with her character is great. When we meet Lois, she’s on assignment in the arctic, covering the discovery of an object beneath the ice. Clark saves her from a Kryptonian security drone, and later, she uses her ace investigative skills to track him down. Giving Lois all the character goals was a great idea, and having her learn Superman’s secret identity so quickly was a stroke of genius.

But as we all know, Man of Steel, good though it may be, is a film that struggles with tone. It wants to give Clark flaws, it wants to develop Lois, Zod, Jonathan, and Martha, and it wants to do it all with a somber sheen. That’s fine, but Clark Kent on the run, a man with no goals or ambition, isn’t interesting. 

What is interesting? Having Lois track that broken man down and convince him to be Superman. 

Clark as a character has always been as strong or as weak as his Lois. Heck, they even made a television series about that dynamic. They are a comic duo like no other, so shifting the role of protagonist to Lois could serve two purposes. First, we’d get to see Lois further developed; not as the love interest, but rather a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist first and foremost. Second, we would finally get to see a Superman film from the bystander’s point-of-view. Past films have flirted with this concept but never committed to it fully. How cool would it be to have a film where Clark literally can’t save the day without Lois’ tracking down the bad guy? 

In a 2016 interview with DigitalSpy, Amy Adams said this about the role of Lois: “I love playing her, I love everyone I work with, but sometimes it’s tricky because I feel she’s in service of the story instead of the story serving the character.” The way to fix that? MAKE. A. LOIS. SOLO. MOVIE.

There are dozens of possibilities for such a project, and Lois has had her fair share of solo comics in the past. But I would start by asking this: what’s it like to be the superhero’s hero? What’s it like to work 9 to 5, come home, and see that guy who just saved 50 people from a mass shooting nursing his wounds? That’s a superhero movie we’ve never seen, one I’d love to see, and one that Lois Lane rightly deserves to lead.