Despite Cyborg appearing in numerous live-action and animated adaptations, several of them serving as origin stories for the character, Victor Stone still hasn't had his own Cyborg movie. Although a Cyborg solo movie was officially announced at the San Diego Comic-Con 2015, and Ray Fisher has portrayed the character in both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and its follow-up, Justice League, there has been little, if any, publicly visible momentum on the project since its announcement.
This is despite the fact that Cyborg has seen his origin story retold numerous times in popular media in the past few years. Along with Victor Stone's aforementioned DCEU appearances, he's also been the subject of other prominent animated and live-action DC series outside of the comics. Although Victor has seen a noticeable surge in popularity as a result of these appearances, beginning with DC Comics' 2011 New 52 reboot, his solo film remains one of the biggest question marks of the DCEU's future.
In spite of this slow progress, Ray Fisher has repeatedly made clear that he has no intention of vacating the Cyborg role. Nevertheless, the situation is most certainly a frustrating one for both DC fans generally and Cyborg fans in particular. Indeed, that's especially true given that Victor Stone has seen his origin story re-interpreted no fewer than three times in the past few years as part of his participation in various DC adaptations.
Cyborg's Origin in Young Justice: Outsiders
Although the Young Justice series had originally concluded its run on Cartoon Network in 2013, the show was eventually revived as Young Justice: Outsiders and made its debut on the DC Universe streaming service in 2019. Voiced by Zeno Robinson, Victor Stone plays a major role on Outsiders, with Victor's body being destroyed and later reconstructed with a Father Box by Silas Stone. However, this had the unintended effect of making Victor's mind susceptible to the controlling influence of the Father Box, and it is only through the super-powered intervention of his fellow hero Halo that Victor is able to regain control over his own mind.
The Father Box's influence would nevertheless prove to be an ongoing struggle for Victor, with Halo being called upon to once more to use her abilities to bring the unstable Victor back to his senses. Eventually, when the power of the Father Box becomes too much for Victor to control alone, his fellow heroes use the powerful Mobius Chair belonging to the New God Metron to finally purge the Father Box from Victor's system, replacing it with Mobius tech and freeing Victor for good. Ultimately, the revival of Young Justice not only offered fans of Cyborg an engaging new interpretation of the character, but the resurrected series would also prove popular enough for Young Justice season 4 to be confirmed.
Cyborg's Doom Patrol Origin Story
Prior to being added to the Justice League roster with the New 52, Cyborg had been a core member of the Teen Titans in DC Comics and has been seen in many of the team's animated adaptations, including the slapstick cartoon Teen Titans Go! and its big screen adaptation, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies. With the debut of Titans on DC Universe, his inclusion on the team's official roster would've seemed like a given. However, Victor was instead added to the line-up of the next DC Universe streaming series, Doom Patrol. Additionally, his origin story was also given a much darker exploration, specifically in regard to Victor's relationship with his father.
The series begins with Victor, played by Joivan Wade, believing that story presented to him about his mother's death in the accident that led to his transformation. However, Victor grows more and more distrustful of Silas as the season progresses, eventually even beating him nearly to death. Victor later tries to make amends as Silas recovers in the hospital, and it's here that Victor learns that his mother had survived the accident alongside him. At the urging of Dr. Niles Caulder, played by Timothy Dalton, who argues that Victor's body is more adaptable to bio-technology, Silas ultimately chose to save Victor over Ellinore, while keeping it a secret from Victor until tearfully confessing the truth to his son. Like Young Justice: Outsiders before it, Doom Patrol also depicts Victor as being at the mercy of his technological enhancements, but it's in the show's much darker interpretation of his relationship with Silas that Doom Patrol makes its most definitive mark on Cyborg's origin story.
Cyborg's DCEU Origin Story Was in BvS, But Cut From Justice League
Cyborg would finally make his big screen debut with a cameo in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Like Flash and Aquaman, his role in the film was brief, seen when Wonder Woman views a collection of top-secret videos of known metahumans collected by Lex Luthor. Portrayed by Ray Fisher in the film, Victor's body has been essentially stripped down to his head and torso, with his father, Silas Stone, played by Joe Morton, trying desperately to keep his son alive. Victor's body is eventually reconstructed when a Mother Box that Silas is studying activates and assembles Victor's cybernetic endoskeleton, with Victor now fully transformed into Cyborg. Although still featured as a core team member in the theatrical version of Justice League, Cyborg's role in the film is drastically altered from what Zack Snyder had originally intended as a result of the film's notorious reshoots.
Snyder described Cyborg's story as being "the heart" of Justice League, and played a far more central role in the Snyder Cut of the film. Justice League was to effectively serve as Victor's full origin as Cyborg, diving deep into his life prior to the accident that maimed him and took the life of his mother. Cyborg's importance in Justice League is even further illustrated with Silas Stone's death in Snyder Cut of the film, while the finale also saw Victor playing an instrumental role in the defeat of Steppenwolf. Under Snyder's direction, after he and Superman had been resurrected by a time-traveling Flash, Cyborg would enter the Mother Boxes in a second attempt to prevent The Unity from taking place. However, Victor would then be tempted to by Darkseid to side with the forces of Apokolips with a vision of his human body restored and both of his parents alive once more. Ultimately, with all of these elements of Cyborg's story excised and the character's very core role in Justice League so greatly truncated in the theatrical version of the film, it's hardly surprising that Fisher has publicly voiced his support for the Snyder Cut's release.
Why Cyborg Doesn't Have a Solo Movie
The massive reduction of Cyborg's role in Justice League coupled with the fallout from the theatrical version of the film are undoubtedly the major contributing factors to the Cyborg movie being trapped in limbo. He's certainly not the only major character from the film to see no visible forward momentum, either. Despite Superman making a facially obscured cameo in Shazam!, it was done without Henry Cavill, and his future as Superman has been in a state of uncertainty for some time now. Ezra Miller faced a similar situation with the long in-development Flash solo movie, though he now remains attached to the role following the recent boarding of Andy Muschietti as director.
Budgetary concerns have also been pointed to as contributing to the slow progress on the Cyborg film, with even Fisher conceding that the assuredly CGI-heavy film is likely to be an expensive one. Additionally, though mainstream awareness of Cyborg has significantly increased in recent years due to DC Comic's New 52 reboot and Victor's appearances in other media, the character is still, relatively speaking, more known through his relationship with teams like the Teen Titans and the Justice League. Compared to the likes of Batman or Flash, his own rogue's gallery of villains is also not as vastly known to the general public.
While Cyborg has seen a wide variety of origin stories and a rise in his individual popularity in modern times, the progress on the character's solo film has remained slow. Despite this, Ray Fisher has never shown a decline in his enthusiasm for portraying Cyborg and has expressed continued optimism for portraying the character in the future. Ultimately, what role Cyborg will play in the DCEU going forward falls to Warner Bros., but until Cyborg's future in the franchise is clarified, DC fans will have to remain content with Victor Stone's live-action and animated appearances among his fellow heroes until a Cyborg solo film finally gets rolling.
