Martian Manhunter (Film)

*"My name is J'onn J'onzz. I am the sole survivor of a ravaged world. I will not see the same thing happen to Earth."*

Martian Manhunter is the 2nd project in the DCCU, and the 2nd project in Phase One.

## Overall summary

### Plot synopsis

Our story opens on J'onn J'onnz meditating in a hotel in his true martian form. He sees visions of old mars, peace, tranquility. Then he sees chaos, family, death, ruins. Then finally, a portal, a lab, a friendly face. Then he comes out of it, puts on his human form, and leaves for work.

Cut to an embassy in the foreign country of Bialya. We follow a very nervous looking woman, who startles upon seeing two clear bad guys, but then bumps into J'onn who says he needs to talk to her. Then the whole joint explodes, and J'onn is barely able to get the woman out in time, albeit in critical condition. J'onn has to flee before authorities arrive.

Cut to international man of mystery King Faraday! We learn that the woman was the aide to an ambassador, and that she had information related to Bialyan leadership being infiltrated by a rising group of interest, Kobra. So as he's sorting through this mess, agents of the DEO show up and try to pull rank.

While he manages to throw his weight and stay in charge, they explain this is a DEO matter because blood and tissue was found that corresponds to no known organism. While those samples are sent to a man named Hugo, Faraday complains that apparently Kobra has monsters now.

The next day after the embassy bombing, Faraday is guessing that the 'green man' was trying to kill the ambassador's assistant, who we'll call Aubrey Sparks, why not. So he leaks that Aubrey is alive, but gives the wrong hospital, so that the DEO can catch this green man.

Meanwhile, Arnold Hugo is doing tests on the purple alien blood, and reports his discoveries to Faraday first, who really couldn't care less unless Hugo finds a weakness. Hugo's a mite bit obsessed with the grape jam blood.

All the plainclothes agents at the hospital are at high alert, but they don't expect that J'onn can just read their minds. He sees that Aubrey is safe, and leaves, but after that Kobra operatives try to storm the hospital!

The DEO puts down Kobra pretty easily, and Faraday decides to requisition the DEO database to search for more sightings of this green man, because something's not adding up.

J'onn returns to his detective job in Colorado. He meets with his captain Diane Meade, who it's ambiguous if she gives him so much leeway because she's a chill boss or because she knows his secret. J'onn was investigating a possible Kobra connection to a human trafficking ring he helped shut down, but it seems that was a red herring.

Faraday has spent 3 weeks no-lifing the database and has resorted to trying to cross-references travel records with green man sightings. He gets lucky when Denver PD Detective John Jones gets a perfect match, but he keeps Jones's name to himself in case he's wrong about this hunch.
Hugo reports that the alien sample is weak to fire, and asks for authorization to conduct more esoteric experiments and Faraday's like yeah sure because he's going back to the CIA after this anyway.
J'onn hears a knock on his door and it's Faraday, who asks questions like 'why did you fly to Bialya and rent the nearest hotel to the embassy two nights before it blew up?", and J'onn really doesn't have a good answer to that. He gets even more alert when Faraday mentions that they know about his 'green friend'. Things escalate, but suddenly the agents defy Faraday's orders and burst in, flamethrowers blasting. J'onn freaks out, goes green and phases through the floor, but Faraday's the only one who saw it.
Turns out Hugo reported to higher-ups and that as far as they're concerned, the Kobra stuff is irrelevant. Priority one: Capture or kill the creature.

J'onn goes to an abandoned lab to recuperate. The sign says 'Erdel Laboratories'.

Faraday double-checks the green man reports, and as he suspected, they're all of the green man SAVING people. He even goes to debrief a stabilized Audrey, and she confirms that J'onn's the only reason she got out alive. Faraday kicks himself for not listening to his bad feeling earlier, and goes to talk to Captain Meade, and manages to convince her that he's a friend, and she tells him where he can likely find J'onn.
Faraday enters the lab, and sees a wounded J'onn in his true form, meditating.
He also sees shit-tons of oreos but that's not important.

J'onn tells him he knows he's there, and then we get J'onn's tragic backstory. Mars used to be a utopia, until a plague struck, weakening all martians' psychic abilities, and giving them an extreme weakness to fire. Decades passed, and martian scientists, developed a cure!

Except not really. It turned into a virus that transformed martians into aggressive monstrous albinos, who waged war upon the green martians. This war burned until J'onn was the last martian alive. And so he wandered a dead planet for centuries, until a teleportation experiment by Doctor Saul Erdel brought him to earth.

Erdel was J'onn's first true friend on earth, and left him this lab after he died of a heart attack.

Faraday honestly is still stuck on the 'green man from mars' thing and kind of zoned out, but he knows two things: J'onn isn't his enemy, and none of this has anything to do with Kobra. So as he's about to just let J'onn walk, Hugo walks in with some oddly-behaving soldiers and a dog.
Turns out Hugo is a capital-m Mad Scientist, and he basically just faked the capture/kill order. He also mutated the three soldiers and dog with strength and mild shape-shifting so there can be a big dumb fight. Faraday is knocked out and J'onn is captured.
J'onn is tied to a big science chair while Hugo pokes and prods him. We learn that the mutants he made are already dying, and Hugo's kind of desperate to find a way to fix the process, so he injected his forehead with J'onn juice to become telepathic.
Hugo invades his mind to try to find anything that can help him, and we see that he used to be a cop on Mars, a manhunter. And we see the despair that took him after Mars died.
J'onn reads his mind back, and learns that Hugo's tormented by fear of humanity wiping itself out, but was never taken seriously enough as a scientist to do anything about it, and in his increasing instability thinks an engineered viral strain of his J'onn juice will fix the problem.

J'onn forces his past into Hugo's mind, and shows him that this same path wiped out his people, but as long as there's life, there's hope. Hugo, feeling like someone's actually hearing him for the first time, is convinced and releases J'onn. The two remaining soldiers, desperate to stay alive, try to force J'onn back in the chair but Faraday bursts in and kills one, while the other just literally falls apart.
Hugo destroys all his J'onn sourced data and frees the test animals in the lab.
Hugo then surrenders himself into DEO custody, where J'onn promises to keep in touch with him psychically, even though since he experimented on himself, he probably doesn't have a lot of time left. Also one of the test animals is a Basset Hound that basically adopts J'onn as his new dad.
In the days following, Faraday wipes all mentions of J'onn from the records, and they go their separate ways, with J'onn feeling vindicated that he is making a difference, but wondering if he can't do more…

### Post-credit scene

"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mister Faraday. I'd shake your hand, but I'm afraid you would be vaporized."

Faraday is summoned by Mister Bones, who is Director of the DEO, and also happens to be a chain-smoking skeleton in an expensive suit.

He explains that samples of J'onn's DNA have gone missing, probably due to a mole in the DEO.

He tells Faraday that he'd like him to keep in touch with J'onn in exchange for all Kobra intel the DEO gathers, because the world being what it is, they'll probably need the martian's help later down the line.

## Appearances

### Characters

* J'onn J'onzz/Martian Manhunter
* King Faraday
* Professor Arnold Hugo
* Diane Meade
* Aubrey Sparks
* Jupiter The Dog
* Mister Bones (Post-credits only)

### Organizations

* Department of Extranormal Operations
* Kobra
* Central Intelligence Agency

### Species

* Humans
* Martians

### Locations

* Blue Valley, Colorado
* Bialya