Hero? Villain? Monster? Why DC’s latest leading man keeps us guessing

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As filmmakers build new universes out of iconic comic book stories, an inevitable crossroads is reached: to continue to mine what you know, such as Batman, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, or to step into something wholly new.

The latter choice is risky. It paid off for Marvel Studios, which turned Guardians of the Galaxy from a second-tier comic book line into a blue-chip movie asset. DC Studios is making a similarly bold choice in following up its iconic Superman reboot with a story from the dark depths of canon: Clayface .

The title given to this opening chapter of DC comic-to-movie stories is “Gods and Monsters”, a sign that the franchise’s creative lead, writer/director James Gunn, intends to put a very specific spin on the screen: after Superman, in many interpretable ways as a god, we meet Clayface, at first flush, almost certainly a monster.

“What James Gunn and Peter Safran are building at DC is really exciting,” says 36-year-old Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries, who is playing the dual roles of Clayface and his alter-ego, actor Matt Hagen, in director James Watkins’ adaptation of the story.

“The notion of being able to have different worlds that have their own identity and their own place, on merit of storytelling purely, is admirable, and I have great hope for that to continue. How it all ties together is for greater minds than mine to answer.”

Clayface – whose original name was Basil Karlo – was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger for Detective Comics #40, published in 1940, and his creative DNA came largely from the early silent film era, and the canon of early movie monsters, such as Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera , and Frankenstein , played by Boris Karloff. (Basil Karlo? The homage was hidden in plain sight.)

Kane, of course, had created Batman, and was the author of some of DC Comics’ darkest canon. True to form, the original “golden age” Clayface was a failed actor driven mad when he discovered his magnum opus, a horror film titled Dread Castle , was being remade without him.

“Whilst you have an awareness, as I do, of the long history of this character and the sense of responsibility and privilege to be able to bring that into live action for the first time, at a certain point, you have to take ownership over it and tell the story that you are telling,” Harries says.

“So, [screenwriter] Mike Flanagan wrote a keystone blueprint that is the story that we’re telling,” he adds. “I would grapple with that to the point where I felt like I had enough of a hold of it that then I would be able to branch off and go back and look for inspiration or anything that might inform and aid the script that Mike had written.

“That might take form and shape and many different guises, and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be the comic books, but it’s something that I was aware of. I continue to feel a real sense of privilege to be part of that lineage and to be able to bring that into live action for the first time … you are having a conversation in some way, shape or form with 80 years ago.”

At the heart of the story is Clayface’s face.