Brightburn: Ending Explained | Spoiler Talk Review

Superhero films are a dime a dozen, so naturally, Brightburn stands out from the crowd in more ways than one. This Superman story with a difference tells the tale of what would happen if a boy born with incredible abilities had the power to do whatever he wanted to.

There’s a lot to unpack from the film and throughout this video, I’ll be breaking down everything that you need to know about the film and it’s ending.

This is full spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want anything ruined for yourself then I highly suggest that you turn off now.

With that out the way huge thank you for clicking the video, I hope you enjoy it, now sit back relax and let’s get into my breakdown of Brightburn.

Brightburn Plot Recap

The movie opens on your typical archetype of the Man Of Steel story, we join an American farm based couple that are struggling to have a child. The pair are suddenly thrust into parenting when a mysterious ship crash lands one their property and the movie follows the two as they attempt to raise their son Brandon who slowly transforms into a predator of immense power.

Brandon is fascinated with insects and his encyclopedic knowledge of all things creepy crawlies makes him an outcast at school that is picked on by pretty much everyone.

One night the ship that he crash-landed in starts calling to Brandon and after visiting it Brandon discovers his incredible abilities. Now whilst in the comics Clark Kent used this discovery to realise he was here to help people, Brandon goes a bit like Ted Bundy upon discovering that his sister is actually his mother and slowly comes to the realisation that humans are like insects to him and should kneel at his feet.

Nice right? Well no amount of Batman is going to get us out of this and the film slowly follows the boy as he develops into a supervillain.

Brandon

What’s so relatable about this movie is that most people will be able to put themselves in the shoes of Brandon. How many people wished that they had superpowers growing up purely for revenge purposes and the character, though evil, definitely has a side to him that I could see in myself if I was given amazing gifts.

Brandon’s parents are torn on their son’s new career path as General Zod with his father being worried about what he could become whilst his mother wants to love and nurture him. One night she finds him speaking in tongues and levitating above his ship which is when she discovers that the spacecraft that he came in has the ability to cut him which plays heavily into the ending of the film.

Brandon believes he hears ‘take the world’ from his ship and he interprets this as meaning to take over the entire planet, which of course means first stopping by that girl that he likes house to frighten her to death and kill her mother who won’t let her speak to him.

Donning a moth mask he assaults her in her diner and instead of ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ Brandon adopts the mantra ‘when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

Brightburn Ending Explained

By the end of the film Brandon has murdered his uncle in a scene that will leave yours and the characters jaws on the floor and his father who, by the way, is played phenomenally by David Denman of Office fame, is taken into the woods in an almost of mice and men call back. Unfortunately, he discovers the hard way that Brandon is bulletproof and after failing to kill him is murdered by the boy.

With Brandon’s mother Tori, played by Elizabeth Banks, the only one left that knows the truth Brandon returns to their house to terrorise her and the police. Naturally, they make very little work for him with the character redecorating the front lawn and walls with the officer’s blood.

This is where the film really comes into it’s own for me and I imagine it’s every parent’s worse nightmare seeing what their young child could do to them if they had unlimited power and weren’t too thoughtful of the consequences.

Remembering that the ship can damage the character, Tori travels back to it and takes a shard of metal. After the two embrace and she convinces Brandon to do good she tries to stab him, however, he catches her arm and flies her above the clouds before dropping her to her death thousands of feet below.

Brandon has won and all those that know his secret are now dead but in order to appear innocent, he must make it look like an accident. After seeing a plane Brandon uses this to crash into his house and to make it look like his parents were killed in an accident.

The credits of the film then show his rise in power with the character going on to cause many accidents throughout the world as he slowly rises in prominence. Basically, you could tie this into the DC universe and no one would notice.

Brightburn Sequel Ideas

Obviously, from this we can take that nobody could stop the character and the ‘superpowers’ of the world were powerless to stop him. Whether this is what his original parents wanted is another thing completely with the interpretation of ‘take over’ being completely subjective to the character.

Brightburn Review

What I love about the psychology of Brightburn is that the character is as much a victim as he is a menace. Had he been treated better by society then he would likely not have acted the way that he did, however, because humans viewed him as just a weak kid, they picked on him, pushed him around and are the ones that really pushed him to take the steps that he did.

This story is as much a tale about how absolute power corrupts absolutely as it is about how humans are bad to each other for some unknown reason that forces us all to lash out. It’s a brilliant story that’s as much a horror movie as it is a comic book one. Obviously, I’d love to see a sequel to this as it feels like the first step into a dark universe and there’s so many ways that you could take the character.

Whilst the film isn’t perfect and I actually would have loved for it to go on longer if you’re looking for someone who’s less Clark Kent and more Clark Cu…I can’t finish that sentence because I don’t want to get demonetised, Then you will heavily enjoy Brightburn.

Overall this is an awesome film and it gets an….