- Please note that this is Brightburn Wiki's page on the main proagonist of the movie. If you are looking for an article on the town of Brightburn, Kansas, then you should head to Brightburn (town).
| Brandon Breyer
aka Brightburn | |
| |
| Species | Extraterrestrial |
| Age | 12[1] |
| Sex | Male |
| Height | 5ft 3in |
| Weight | 110lbs |
| Professional Status | |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | Himself |
| Previous Affiliation | Breyer family |
| Residence | Brightburn, Kansas |
| Personal Status | |
| Relatives | Tori Breyer (adoptive mother, deceased) Kyle Breyer (adoptive father, deceased) Unnamed Father Unnamed Mother |
| Education | Ultralliance Squad Hq. |
| Powers | |
| Special Abilites | Levitation/Flight Heat Vision Superhuman Strength Superhuman Speed Near-Invulnerability Low Regeneration Technology Manipulation Telekinesis Fire Manipulation |
| Appearances | |
| Film | Brightburn |
| Portrayal | |
| Portrayed By | Jackson A. Dunn |
- "I want to do good, Mom. I do."
- ―Brightburn
Brandon Breyer is a troubled and disturbed tween and an extraterrestrial male from an unknown planet who serves as a supervillain and the titular main protagonist/main villain of the 2019 film Brightburn.
He originally came to Earth from outer space and landed outside of Brightburn, Kansas, where he was discovered by Tori and Kyle Breyer. The couple longed for a child, but were unable to conceive on their own, so they took the infant, named him "Brandon," and raised him as their own. However, upon the onset of puberty, Brandon develops superhuman powers and quickly devolves into a psychopathic murderer. He then adopts the alter-ego of Brightburn, dons a red costume, and begins to terrorize his adoptive hometown, much to the dismay of his adoptive mother.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Brandon is discovered by his adoptive parents.
The extraterrestrial child who would become "Brandon Breyer" was discovered by Tori and Kyle Breyer when his spacecraft landed near their home in Kansas. Wrapped in a red blanket, they took the infant child in and raised him as their own.[2][3]
From infancy to adolescence, Brandon grew up loved by both of his parents. He was told that he had been adopted but his parents kept the truth about his alien origin from him. His childhood was relatively normal, however, he never suffered any kind of injury such as a broken bone or even bled. Yet he grew to be a nice and friendly boy though by middle school, his abnormally high intellect and social awkwardness caused other children to view him as strange and refused to spend time with him. Furthermore he was shunned, bullied and mistreated by the others during class.[1]
Powers manifest[]
At the onset of puberty, Brandon started began to hear voices in his sleep and he also began to sleep-walk. One night, he sleep-walked to his family's barn where he aggressively tried to open the cellar but was woken out of it by his mother before he could. He freaked out as he didn't understand how he had gotten there but his mother Tori settled him down and brought him back to bed.
Soon after, his abilities and powers began to develop. For instance, when he attempted to start up the lawn mower, he accidentally threw it across the field. He approached it as it was still running and moved his hand in the path of the blade and saw it get dented while his hand didn't suffer a scratch. Later, when he was eating breakfast, he bit down on the fork and bent it out of shape.
Brandon's behavior also started to shift a bit as he began getting more moody with his parents and then stalked and stared at his crush Caitlyn in her room before quickly returning back to his parents miles away with his newfound speed. She had seen him and that caused her to deliberately avoid catching him through a trust exercise at school. Brandon felt humiliated and got angry when Caitlyn called him a pervert in front of everyone. That made him squeeze her hand so hard that he broke it. His parents then got called in where he was suspended from school and he was kicked out and he was called an animal by Caitlyn's mother Erica. As his parents led him out, he shared a angry glare with her.
Later on, he sleepwalked back to the barn just as before but was able to use his newfound strength to break the chains and get to the ship. Once he did, he began to float over it and went through a strange state that made him speak a unknown language. Discovering him, Tori tried to snap him out of the trance, causing him to fall and cut his hand on the metal of the spacecraft. Wondering who he really is, Tori explained to Brandon about how they found him and how they raised him. Brandon became incensed that his mother lied to him, went back home, and destroyed his family's photographs, screaming at her and his father about how they lied to him. Afterwards, he ran outside and began to speak the alien language whereupon he discovered that the voices were telling him to, "Take the world". Brandon then screamed as he unleashed his heat vision.
Shortly after, he surprised Caitlyn in her room and quickly told her not to scream. He had brought her flowers as an apology for what he had done to her. He then told her that he had learned that he was very special and said that she was the only one who knows how special he is and then proclaims that the rest of the world will know too someday. She then frightfully explained to Brandon that her mother told her not to talk to him. He then told her that he would 'take care of that' and then left her house to hunt her mother at the diner where she worked. He donned a red hood and a cape as he scared, terrorized and cornered Erica before he pounced and hid her away in the barn.
Brandon continued his daily life as if nothing happened, and went to counseling with his aunt. She asks him about how he is handling the truth about being adopted and Brandon tells her that he is handling it much better as he now realizes that he comes from something 'superior' and isn't from around a meager place like Brightburn. When asked if he feels bad about what he did to Caitlyn, he tells her that sometimes when bad things happen to people they are for a good reason. This begins to make his aunt feel uneasy about his behavior and she tells him that everything he says or tells must be shared with the sheriff. Brandon then gets uneasy about it and tries to tell her not to do that, but her aunt persists that it's her job.
After the day was over, he then visit his aunt to again convince her not to say anything to the sheriff, but she told him that she still has to. He then pretends to leave and continues to stalk her while wearing his mask and cape. But before he could do anything, his uncle returns home, and he tries to leave the house but ends up getting caught by him in his closet. Brandon tries to lie and say that his aunt had been helping him with homework but his uncle grabs and pulls him out the house to take him home. However Brandon starts getting upset of how his uncle is treating him, calling his mask creepy and telling him that he's lucky that telling his parents is the least he could do to him. When he tries to throw him into his car, Brandon pushes his uncle and makes him fly into the garage door. His uncle then tries to get away from him by driving away but Brandon bashes himself to the side of the car, causing it to break down. As his uncle attempts to start it back up Brandon hovers in front of him, scaring him before moving to lift the car up in the air and dropping it back downwards, causing his uncle to break his jaw on the wheel and bleeding out. He arrives home, ridding himself of his shirt as it had some blood on it, telling them that he had been playing soccer but had been teased and bullied by some kids, which neither of his parents actually believe.
After his parents visit the hospital after getting news of the accident with his uncle, they return home and tell him that his uncle died in the hospital. He expresses no remorse about it or seems very sorry. His father becomes upset and suddenly grabs Brandon, heatedly asking him if he had killed his uncle. Brandon screams and pushes his father off him with a powerful enough force to cause the wall to nearly shatter. While Brandon is showering, his father searches his room to find any evidence that he was involved with his uncle's death and found his bloodied shirt. Brandon then comes and finds his father in his room, asking whats wrong. His father hides the shirt and lies by saying he wanted to apologize for lashing out on him. Brandon vaguely accepts his apology and his father then leaves, sneaking the shirt away to show his mother.
His father invites him to go hunting out on the woods and he accepts the offer, excited to go off hunting with him. As they are leaving, his mother embraces him and tells him that he will always be her baby boy before kissing him goodbye. When Brandon was looking over a pair of deer tracks, his father was behind him, aiming his rifle at his head. Then he shot him but the bullet did not kill him and but bounced off Brandon's head like a dud. Brandon quickly gets up and looks at his father with sadness and betrayal as he watches him trying to frantically reload his gun. He then disappears just before his father could try to shoot him again and his father begins to run away. Brandon begins to stalk him in his hood and cape before finally pushing him down. His father tries to apologize but Brandon grabs him by his jacket, and then angrily unleashes his heat vision at him, burning him clean through his head, killing him.
After he killed his father, he then takes his phone and answered the call from his mother. He listens as she quickly says that his father had been right about him killing his uncle and about everything else he been doing before revealing himself to his mother. She then asks where is his father and he bluntly tells her that he is gone. When she asks where he has gone, Brandon tells her that she knows where. She then frightfully asks him where is he now and he replies "I'm home". He then proceeds to crush his father's phone in his hand as he hovers high above their house.
Brandon then flies into a brutal rage as he crashes into and nearly destroys the house in attempt to scare his mother. However the sheriff arrived along with a fellow deputy officer. As the sheriff calls out to his mother, she runs out and attempts to tell the sheriff they need to leave, but Brandon dives down to the sheriff with incredible speed and force that it kills him. The officer and his mother then run back into the house and attempt to hide from him. Brandon then stalks the officer for a few minutes before surprising and brutally attacking her, leaving the officer to bleed out and die.
He then tries to search for his mother, just missing her as she escapes the house. He then crashes out of the house and finds her running for the barn where she goes to his spaceship to find that was where he had hidden Erica's body showing that a dissection had been performed on her. Tori rips out a shard from the damaged spaceship. She eventually calls out to Brandon and he reveals himself. His mother then speaks to him, apologizing for not being the mother he wants her to be. She then removes his mask to see his face before telling him that she knows there is still good in him. Brandon's face softens and he sadly tells says "I want to do good mom... I do". They then hug as his mother tearfully reminds him that he will always be her baby boy while bringing out the shard from the ship to stab him. Just as she is about to Brandon quickly catches and grabs her arm, forcing her to lose the shard and looks at her with sadness and betrayal identical to when his father tried to kill him. His mother tries to apologize but Brandon goes into a rage and grabs his mother before flying them through the barn roof and high into the sky. Brandon looks at her one last time as they let each other go, watching as she falls down to her death. This moment could symbolize how Tori is letting go of Brandon as a son and how Brandon is letting go of the last bit of humanity he has left in him. He then turns to see a plane approaching and Brandon proceeds to destroy it and cause the debris to crash into his house in order to cover up the deaths of his parents and make everything that happened that night seem like an accident.
Brandon then goes on a spree of terror and destruction through the town and surrounding areas with the media giving him the moniker "Brightburn".
Personality and traits[]
- "You're one of the only people in the world who knows how special I am."
- ―Brandon to Caitlyn Connor
Brandon without his mask.
Brandon Breyer appears to be a boy of few words. He is reclusive, having made few friends at school, and he spends most of his time drawing mysterious symbols in his notebooks.[2] He is also smart, talented, and curious about the world. However, as he begins to develop his supernatural powers, his personality undergoes a dark metamorphosis and he constructs his "Brightburn" identity.[3] When asked about the differences between hornets and bees, Brandon explains that hornets place their babies in other hives in order to allow them to be raised by the hive and eventually take over it. This most likely hints to his origins and why his ship keeps telling him "Take the world".
While it is clear that the alien race that Brandon comes from is of a malevolent and conquering nature, it's not entirely clear if Brandon's increasingly psychopathic and sociopathic behavior and extreme cruelty are common among them.
As Brightburn, Brandon is described as a "vicious predator,"[3] and becomes increasingly vindictive and cruel. He crushes the hand of his crush who was accusing him for being a pervert and sadistically torments a waitress before killing her. As his powers grow, he becomes more narcissistic and outright murderous, as he was responsible for the deaths of two hundred and sixty-eight passengers aboard a passenger jet. His drawings also seem to indicate he has developed somewhat of a god complex.[2]
Brandon's also a master of scare tactics. His Brightburn mask giving him the look of a demonic being. This was most effective at night, where his eyes appear black with glowing red pupils.
Brandon usually targeted victims who had angered him in some way. Either if they've bullied him, insulted him, ordered him or he felt outright betrayed. As he started seeing himself as superior and kill anyone who had the audacity to order him around.
Despite being of extraterrestrial origin, Brandon appears like any ordinary human child, and seems to age similarly. Though his exact age is unknown, he is at the onset of puberty,[3] and possesses short black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. Some uses of his powers turn his eyes red.[2]
A reoccurring theme is that Brandon has a progression of outfits. In the beginning of the movie, he is dressed in a white robe possibly signifying innocence and inexperience. As the movie goes along, his shirts start including hints of blue. Brandon wears a white and blue stripped shirt when he kills his first victim, Erica. From then on, he progresses by wearing more red. Nearing the end of the movie, he wears a red and dark blue vest.
Powers and abilities[]
As an alien, Brandon is gifted with many different powers and abilities that seem to grow in number as he leaves childhood and becomes a pre-teen. Powers that make far stronger and resilient than the average human being. So much so that he could be viewed as a living god.
Brandon just before using heat vision.
- Superhuman Strength: Brandon is much stronger than the average human. He has enough strength to lift cars and other heavy objects with relative ease. His strength also allows him to easily crush things as he crushed both a girl's hand and a phone by tightening his grip on them. He is also able to break down and through solid walls and even whole buildings with little effort.
- Invulnerablity: Brandon has shown that he is immune to human diseases as he has never been sick a day in his life. He also is so resilient that he can't be physically harmed. Bullets bounce right off him and blades can't penetrate his skin.
- Regeneration: Brandon healed from the cut he got from his own metal.
- Flight: Brandon has the power to levitate and fly through the air at will. He can fly to practically any height and at incredibly fast speeds.
- Superhuman Speed: Brandon is so fast that he can travel miles of distance in mere seconds. He can often use this speed to appear in multiple places in an instant and move without making sound.
- Heat Vision: Brandon can shoot red energy beams from his eyes to melt and cut through any surface. Right before he uses this power, his eyes glow red. He can also use the glow from his eyes as a form of intimidation.
- Telekinesis: Brandon seems to have the power to move objects with his mind as he used this to pull a metal door off its hinges without appearing to physically touch it and caused a laptop to open by itself.
- Umbrakinesis: Brandon can cause the area around him to become pitch black to where nothing can be seen.
- Technopathy: Brandon can also influence the workings of technology at will. Other than telepathic link with his ship (through which its programming imprinted his sinister purpose on the planet) and causing electronics to malfunction, it's unknown whether he can warp machinery around him.
- Electromagnetic Disruption: When Brandon uses his powers, he can make electrical devices and machines around him begin to malfunction or short out. Light fixtures dim and blink, cars engines die and electronics have gone haywire in his presence though he seems to have control over it.
- Fire Manipulation: Brandon caused a massive forest fire.
Weaknesses[]
As powerful as Brandon is, it has been proven that he is not completely invincible.
- Brandon's Spaceship: The metal alloy that the ship is made of has been shown to be the only thing that can harm Brandon. After falling against a sharp end, Brandon had gotten his hand cut. His mother had also removed a shard to use to try and stab him with to try to kill him. The ship also seems to have a psychic link to Brandon that is so strong that he is unable to resist its call and power.
Equipment[]
Brandon as Brightburn.
- Brightburn costume: After the development of his superhuman abilities, Brandon begins to don a costume when he assumes his alternate identity. His costume consists of a red hood with eyeholes cut out as well as a bottom portion also cut out. The bottom portion has shoelaces intertwined together. The back of the hood is similar to the front in being a portion cut out with shoelace sew through. He also wears a blanket he was wrapped in when he crash landed on Earth and uses it as a cape. The design was based on a wasp.
Victims[]
Brandon has killed a total of 274+ people. This is a list of all of the people he has killed:
- Erica Connor
- Noah McNichol (Uncle)
- Kyle Breyer (Father)
- Sheriff Deever
- Deputy Aryes
- Tori Breyer (Mother)
- 268 passenger jet passengers
- Many more in the credits montage
Trivia[]
See also: Superman mythos in Brightburn
- In addition to his similarities to Superman, Brandon also bears some likeness to Andrew Detmer from the 2012 superhero found footage film Chronicle. Like Andrew, Brandon develops powers, but, due to the circumstances of the society around him, slowly descends into darkness until he eventually becomes a supervillain.
- It's possible the people of Brandon's home planet sent him to conquer the Earth. Most likely, the race he comes from are extraterrestrial beings who conquer other planets throughout the entire universe.
- In Kyle's dream it was shown when they brought Brandon.
- Only part of a spaceship in which Brandon arrived can hurt or even kill Brandon, but only Tori knew that.
- Considering Brandon's deep interest in insects in the beginning of the movie, one could surmise that the extraterrestrial race he hails from could likely be insectoid in nature. The wasp symbolism may portray this race's ability to create an identical copy of the indigenous sentient species of a planet to better infiltrate and integrate with, as a wasp may do with the beehive. In this case, Brandon is the wasp(alien designed with a human disguise) infiltrating the beehive(Earth/humanity).
- It's implied Brandon is 'activated' like an unknowingly or unwilling sleeper agent during the seizure he has in his bed near the beginning of the film.
Appearances[]
Notes and references[]
Notes:
References:
- ā 1.0 1.1 Brightburn
- ā 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3
ā BRIGHTBURN Official Trailer #2
- ā 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Brightburn Official Movie Website (About)