User blog:AustinDR/Anti-PE Proposal: Brightburn

Decided to do something new: it is called an Anti-PE Proposal. Namely, what I intend on doing here in this is to discuss a baddie and give off the reasons that kept them off from qualifying, at least in my book. I will explain what they do, and the heinous standard, but there will be blatant mitigating factors that kept them from ultimately meeting the criteria.

What is the work?
Brightburn is a superhero horror film where it is an alternative retelling of the Superman story. Here, a couple in Brightburn, Kansas, are desperately wanting a child but are unable to have one. That is until a meteorite crashes onto their farmland. Discovering a spaceship in the woods housing a baby, the couple decide to raise it as their own. While they are grateful that their prayers had been answered, they soon realize that it is much, much more than they bargained for.

Who is he?
Brandon Breyer is the 12 year old adoptive son of Kyle and Tori Breyer. While for the most part he seemed relatively normal, his powers began to manifest. He develops superhuman speed, laser vision, invincibility...almost all of the powers that Clark Kent/Superman possesses. However, he was also noteworthy for having little too no empathy as well as his superiority complex. Problems arise when he decides to visit the house of his crush. Caitlyn awakens to find him staring at her through the window curtains and becomes frightened. The next day during PE, Brandon's class is made to perform a "trust fall" exercise, but when it comes to Caitlyn, she lets him fall, accusing him of being a pervert. Brandon then breaks all of the bones in her hand when the coach forces her to help him up. Erica, her mother, is enraged by this, and prohibits the young boy from any access to her daughter. Brandon says that he was going to remedy that slight...and he kills her mother while she was alone in a diner. The body goes missing, but it is otherwise revealed that he had taken her body and dissected it. It's kind of implied he gets off to that kind of stuff...

Brandon later threatens his aunt and counselor that he'd cause her grievous harm if she were to report to the authorities of his lack of progress. Her husband, Noah, arrives home after a night of drinking and discovers his nephew hiding in his closet. As he was taking him to his car, Brandon vanishes. Without warning, he then uses his powers to lift the back of Noah's car and drops it vertically, causing Noah's lower jaw to get nearly destroyed, it only barely hanging on due to ligaments. Brandon stoops down and takes some of his blood and draws his signature on the road.

Kyle began to connect the dots and decides that something must be done about his son. Taking him out into the woods, Kyle aims to Old Yeller his adoptive son and make it look like an accident. Brandon gets distracted by deer tracks and he makes his move. Unfortunately, the bullet bounced off the back of Brandon's head, prompting Kyle to scramble to put more bullets into the chambers of his gun. His son disappears again and after stalking him wordlessly, he fires his lasers into his father's face until the back of his head exploded.

The police are reported to the Breyer residence and expectantly, they are quickly slaughtered by the young boy. Remembering how he bled when a scrap of metal from his spaceship cut him, Tori decides to make a shiv out of the metal and tries to kill her son. Of course, Brandon stops her and flies her up into the air before letting her fall. In this, he also causes a plane carrying 200+ people to crash, and there are no survivors. A few segments in the end credits also feature him leveling cities and decimating buildings, most assuredly killing untold thousands.

Heinous standard
Doesn't have much issue here. He killed six people in gory ways as well as causing a plane carrying 200 people to crash, thus adding onto his body count. While the end credits indicate that there are more superpowered beings in this universe, at most, it is Offscreen Villainy, and their body counts are undefined.

Moral Agency
The big one. While Brandon is without a doubt murderous and has a high feeling of superiority over others, what throws his ability of understanding that his actions are reprehensible are the byproduct of his alien nature. He is compelled to committing acts of evil, and apparently was aware of this and tried to fight it until his alien side won. He seems to not understand that breaking Caitlyn's hand was a bad thing, and thought that he had the right to feel that he was special from humanity. So to sum it up...how much is Brandon deliberate in his actions when contrasted to doing what is in his alien nature?

And...he loved his parents. While he did kill them at the end, it doesn't take away the fact that he nevertheless still loved them. When his dad shot him in the back of the head, he turns around with a look of horror and sorrow on his face upon realizing that his own father would betray him like that. He could've killed them both at the very beginning but chose not to because he legitimately loved them.

Conclusion
So...yeah. He doesn't qualify. He has several terrible points to him, but it is his alien nature and his initial love for his adoptive parents that kept him from qualifying.

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