According to reports in Deadline, Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) is in talks with DC studios to direct a new superhero film, which is based on the comic book character “Sgt. Rock” and set to star Queer collaborator Daniel Craig. The deal hasn’t been signed yet, which means there’s still time to make an urgent intervention: please don’t do this, Mr Gaudagnino.

Based on the title alone, I tried to guess what “Sgt Rock” would be about: John Rock, a handsome army officer deployed in the Middle East, is forced to seek refuge in a cave when his regiment is ambushed by resistance fighters. The explosion of a nearby grenade triggers a landslide, and he is crushed by a cascade of boulders. But this isn’t an ordinary cave, and these aren’t ordinary boulders: they were enchanted by an ancient sect of oriental mystics, and when he wakes up, he finds that he has been bestowed with the power to turn his body into stone, which he uses to clobber his enemies in the service of truth, freedom and the American empire.

Pretty compelling stuff, right? But when I checked on Wikipedia, it turns out that this “Sgt Rock” character doesn’t even have any superpowers. He’s just a random soldier. At this moment in time in particular, it’s hard to think of anything less appealing than an action film about how cool and badass the American military is. If Guadagnino really must direct a DC film, he should choose a more interesting subject – maybe an erotic thriller about the twisted relationship between a young man and the billionaire vigilante who adopts him. Call Me By Your Bane.

There are so few filmmakers today making the kinds of films Guadagnino makes (essentially, mid-budget dramas for adults) that it’s depressing to see him join a long line of prestige directors who have turned towards questionable projects with Disney and Warner Bros. After directing heartbreaking and visually sumptuous films like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins is due to release a Lion King prequel about Mufasa. It’s hard to imagine that his distinctive slow-motion shots will be quite so moving when they’re depicting dead-eyed CGI lions. Chloe Zhao also followed up her Oscar-winning Nomadland with The Eternals, a bloated, boring film which became one of Marvel’s first-ever flops. 

I watched The Eternals when I had an unlimited Odeon pass and would go to see whatever was playing in a misguided effort to “get my money’s worth”. I normally love going to the cinema alone, and a film has to be truly terrible for me to regret having seen it. The Eternals passed that threshold, although it didn’t help that I was hungover at the time and the screening room was bitterly cold. As I watched it, shivering in my seat as whatever directorial vision Zhao had attempted to impose was overshadowed by the same ugly CGI, stale banter and interminable fight scenes you get in all these films, I was struck by a desperate loneliness and the powerful sense that I was wasting my life. I’m begging you, Guadagnino: don’t put me through that again.