So I’m happy to go to book club with Homelander, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because Homelander impressivelygreat and terrible, just as a nova, a monster wave or a hydrogen bomb has these qualities. He is the merciless final boss of a story in which there are no credible heroes in sight. That is what convinces us. Later, we can see that he is lonely, childish and tormented, despite having unparalleled powers… that he is, if not sympathetic, then at least understandable. Few people would choose the life that made him so strong but so cruel. And what could be better suited to Mortal Kombat, a tough universe in which we sometimes say, half-jokingly, that there are no good guys?
After careful preparation, we began work. Hitting the right tone was key. “Does this feel like Homelander?” Our guiding question applied to everything: poses, movements, sound effects, facial expressions, hand gestures, even the position of a shoulder or the angle of a dangling foot. Homelander’s central emotion is a bottomless contempt that he tries hard to hide in order to keep up appearances. Watching that mask slip is the core tension of the show (and its most perverse joy), and we strove to maintain that here.
