In 1962 DC unveiled a superhero team like no other: the Legion Of Super-Pets.
However, this unlikely ensemble (led by Clark Kent’s pet pooch Krypto The Superdog) vanished from DC Comics continuity for more than 30 years, eventually returning in 2017 – only a year before animated adaptation DC League Of Super-Pets was announced.
But for writer/director Jared Stern, the journey to making the film began much earlier, when he visited the animal shelter his wife volunteered at.
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“You’d see the adorable kittens in the front room who you knew would get adopted straight away”, he told Zavvi. “But then you’d go to the back and find the senior pets and ones with disabilities, who would have a harder chance of finding a home.
“They basically lived at the shelter and even though they were well taken care of, it was sad to see. I have no idea how it came to me, but one day I thought ‘what if these pets got superpowers?’
“These animals were powerless and relied on our help – a miracle like that was the only way they’d be able to leave the shelter.”
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At the time Stern was working on the screenplay for The LEGO Batman Movie, his deep dive into DC canon making him aware of an all-animal super team within the comic book universe. But his entry point into making the film came before he read the original comic books and watched the
animated TV show, meaning that when he signed up, he had to research the decades-long history.
“The canon is really interesting – the earlier stuff is very heavily gag driven, but the modern interpretations are often as dark as a contemporary Batman story! We worked really closely with DC throughout and they gave us the license to do whatever we wanted with this source material.
“That freedom meant we could pick and choose aspects from every age of the comics, while making sure this remained its own thing. I was honestly surprised by that freedom, especially when we were putting a new spin on the Justice League.
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“When I first started, I was thinking it should be limited to Superman, being a more contained story, but in meetings DC kept encouraging me to play with more of the world than I ever expected I could. So suddenly Lex Luthor came into the fold as the villain, and things snowballed from there.”
In the film all members of the League Of Super-Pets are taken from the comics, with the exception of one: Vanessa Bayer’s PB, a pot-bellied pig who becomes Wonder Woman’s pet.
The creation of this character was a nod to one of the earliest issues of the Wonder Woman comics: “In the comics it’s a kangaroo who’s associated with Wonder Woman – but here all the characters are found in the Metropolis animal shelter, so finding a kangaroo there would be stretching it, even for this movie!
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“I fell in love with the idea of a pig: you sometimes see these piglets get adopted, then they grow too big, and the owners don’t know what to do with them. I thought that’d be an interesting thing to explore.
“Plus, there’s an early Wonder Woman issue where she flies on a pig and an animated episode where she turns into one. The more we thought about it, the more it worked!”
The League Of Super-Pets here are led by Krypto The Super Dog, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, who assembles the team after Lex Luthor kidnaps the entire Justice League. We may be seeing Johnson later this year as another towering DC figure, anti-hero Black Adam, but for Stern there was no other choice for Krypto.
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“In our movie Krypto is a little cocky and why wouldn’t he be? Dogs are man’s best friend and he’s Superman’s best friend, so he flies above all other pets.
“Dwayne is obviously great at being the cocky hero, but he’s perfect for this role because he has a vulnerability and sweetness underneath that. When you meet Dwayne, that’s the big thing – he looks like a superhero, but he’s gentler than he looks!”
There were many challenges for Stern when it came to adapting the Super-Pets comics, but none were bigger than finding a fresh take on Batman, especially right after he’d already written a new version with his LEGO Batman screenplay.
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“That was the biggest worry. I love the character of LEGO Batman that Phil Lord and Chris Miller created, it was a perfect cartoon Batman that I loved writing for – how the hell could I possibly do better than that, or at least find a unique angle to the character?
“My way in was realising that when we’re introduced to Batman in the first LEGO Movie, his big thing is that he’s so cocky, which is of course perfect for Will Arnett. So, we decided to go in a different way and make our Batman more haunted.
“This is a guy who’s seen some things and we know he’s been through a lot as a child. As I was writing and trying to put a voice to this guy, it kept becoming a Keanu Reeves impression – he has such a specific voice that would help emphasise the funny side of a guy who’s seen some s**t!
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“So, our Batman is a haunted weirdo and most importantly for our movie, a guy who would benefit from having a pet.”
As DC League Of Super-Pets is primarily aimed at young audiences (although Stern promises us that “a flying dog fighting an evil guinea pig is just as badass as a guy who got bit by a spider taking on a dude with octopus arms”), the other issue was finding a new and family friendly spin on classic superhero origin stories.
We may all know how Superman came to Earth or what happened to Bruce Wayne’s parents, but children might be experiencing these characters on-screen for the very first time: “You can take nothing for granted.
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“Young audiences might not know that Superman came from another planet – even introducing Krypto The Superdog, the most die-hard fans will know his origin already but a new generation of moviegoers probably won’t.
“There’s a lot we had to service: we want to introduce and reintroduce these characters, but we don’t want to shortchange any of them either. By the end, we managed to make sure everybody was included in a fun way.”
Stern may have now scripted two camp superhero movies the whole family can enjoy, recapturing the spirit of earlier comics, but he thinks that diversity in the genre is still needed on the big screen, pointing to several gritty recent efforts.
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“I love that there’s a variety of stories getting told – this movie co-exists in the same space as a Fincher-esque detective film or a paranoid ‘70s style thriller, or even a western like the last Wolverine movie!
“I grew up with the Christopher Reeve Superman films (the second one left me scared of men with nicely cropped beards to this day) and the Tim Burton Batman movies – two completely different takes on those heroes that co-existed together. I wanted to make something the whole family can enjoy, but there’s also so much more room to tell darker stories now which is fantastic.”
It’s a cliché that a superhero sequel is much darker than the original, so perhaps the Super Pets will return in a more brooding form a few years down the line. Until then, the latest DC adventure will deliver comic book thrills for the whole family – and what could be a bigger thrill than a flying dog fighting an evil guinea pig?
DC League Of Super-Pets is released in UK cinemas on Friday 29th July.
