Decades ago, Marvel Comics head Martin Goodman saw the success that DC had had in reviving superhero comics, especially with Justice League, and ordered Stan Lee to do the same for his company. The result was the Fantastic Four. Oh, how the tables have turned. Now DC is the one taking the cues from Marvel. After stalling the development of the Justice League film for years, DC has finally set a firm release date for it: summer 2015. This comes on the heels of the massive success of The Avengers, and the movie will go toe-to-toe with the sequel to Marvel’s juggernaut.
So this is exciting news, right? …Right?
Well, it might be more exciting if DC’s handling of their superhero movies up till now hadn’t been a near-total mess. Marvel did something extraordinary, successfully implementing a years-long plan to roll out each individual superhero that was a part of their signature team with their own films, culminating in the big team-up this year. It was brilliant and extremely comic-booky, creating a fully-fledged universe through each of these movies. DC wants to do the opposite, introducing their cinematic universe and characters in one film, and then spinning each of those heroes off into their own featured stories.
DC made a stab at imitating the Marvel method with Green Lantern, which went awry when that film was terrible and everyone hated it. Now, it seems that Man of Steel might lead into a Justice League movie, though it’s unclear at this point. DC really is at a disadvantage here. They’ve started and stopped so many times that it’ll be hugely confusing for the non-geek audience to understand. Batman will be rebooted for this film (which was necessary, since the faux-realistic world Nolan created for his iteration of the character wouldn’t work with powered superheroes), making this his third major cinematic iteration.
There’s more than a few obstacles for anyone to create a good film. Here are what I see as the three biggest ones. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the guy DC has turned to for the screenplay, Will Beall, has only some episodes of Castle and Gangster Squad under his belt. We’ll see how he tackles these problems.
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28 Comments
Could the solution to point 2 just be a synchronised attack on multiple fronts?
It could! Of course, if that attack comes from a legion of anonymous drones, then it’ll look way too much like Avengers. Like I said: Legion of Doooooom!
i think Green Lantern was a good movie! so many haters for that!
he is my fav DC character! that guy can imagine up anything!!!
the Green Lantern animated series is a cracking show
Warner and DC sure know how to create great animated shows, they need some of that thinking in the Justice League Movie.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said there.
Why John Stewart as green lantern, wouldn’t it make more sense having Hal Jordan, He has already bin introduced to the movie world, and was a part of the original league, I’d also want Aquaman!!
Hal Jordan is boring. I’m not clamoring for Aquaman myself, but there’s a good chance he’ll be in the film.
Kyle Rayner would be awesome. I’m not a fan of John Stewart though.
I believe if that movie comes out, ordinary moviegoers will not understand the origin of all characters.
Do they really need to? (I assume that by “that movie,” you mean my proposed one that starts with the team already together)
If the writers leave out Aquaman, there will be an uproar. They have to have the “Big 6″; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman. These characters were the forerunners for everything that we know about superheroes today. The seventh spot on the JLA was often substituted for Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Cyborg, or another character to promote some of the lesser known DC characters and to give them a chance to have a potential solo storyline.
Batman – Christian Bale.
Superman – Henry Cavill.
Wonder Woman – Gina Carano.
Green Lantern – Ryan Reynolds.
Flash – Ian Somerhalder.
…Aquaman – Robert Pattinson.
Martian Manhunter – Dwayne Johnson.
Director : Zack Snyder.
Producer : Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas.
Executive Producer : Thomas Tull.
Music : Hans Zimmer.
Before they worry about anything, Warner Brothers needs to get their own Kevin Feige. They need one person in charge of all the superhero properties guiding them along. And it needs to not be Geoff Johns or any of their current crop of editors or writers. And not Nolan, who you can tell really doesn’t care about superheroes.
They also need to make it fun.
Agreed, agreed, agreed, and agreed.
This is a little tricky at the moment considering his public persona but wouldn’t the logical choice for a DC shepherd be Kevin Smith? Put him in a similar position to Millar over at Fox and let him be the consultant. Granted Hollywood hates the man and rightly so but he is so passionate and knowledgeable about the DCverse that he seems like he might actually do a good job, and from everything we heard his superman script was actually good. I havent been able to shake this opinion for some time.
Whatever they do, they should just return Batman to the way he was in the comics/animated series (world’s greatest detective, master fighter and stealth ninja) not the Batman in Nolan’s eyes.
The Batman in Nolan’s eyes never quite made it into the Batman we know from the comics. I think Nolan intended it that way, telling his own version of the character. You can see with The Dark Knight that his Batman character was still struggling to actually BECOME BATMAN, the one we all wanted and were so familiar with. Then the movie ends, and Bats is on the run. TDKR picks up 8 years later, and we never get to see the real full-on detective, fully prepared and 3-steps-ahead-of-the-game Batman. I feel thats a real loss in the Nolan-verse.
Just have the core members Justice league already assemble from the start.
Did you even read the article? That’s what the writer suggested.
I think the problems that you mentioned pretty much sums up why the movie will only be a modest hit. Some people will go for the curiosity but the movie will fall off quickly. The answer for DC was to introduce the characters in various mediums at the same time. Using animated films, comic books, novels and yes movies (even if it means delaying the Justice League) DC had the opportunity to make a truly epic movie franchise. A friend of mine has written a shared universe story that does just that but it required re imagining the characters and their origins. The fact that DC has not invested the time will almost certainly prove a fatal flaw for the movie.
[ramble mode ON] Some general thoughts on the subject. Well, we don’t need individual origin stories. When you think about it, most of us who read lots of comics (or used to, at least) started reading at some point we didn’t know the characters’ origins. They are always being re-told with added details and the such. So, we honestly can have a movie that just introduces them as established characters, and later movies would then be in charge of presenting origin stories, just like we had in our comics, say, “timeline”. Another thing: I’d suggest that, for this film, they start with the origin of the least known character – say, in you example, Dr Light. She becomes the hero, then she can’t face a particular menace and then the other, more known characters come up in her help. It’s the easy way, actually, and I’d like to see more than that, but that might just be impossible in any other way. About the need of all these characters: it just has to be dealt with in a number of fronts. None of the main characters can be in more than one place at the same time. Imagine an Apokolis invasion and there you have it, a “multiple menace”. The problem, of course, would be introducing Darkseid and all the other villain players as well. They’d have to make it a 3h movie to give it context. But honestly? I wouldn’t care. If they come up with a 3h piece, but without that feeling some recent movies have of having let half of the need explanations on the floor of the editing room, I’d be happy with the final result. On another issue: being PC is currently, for reasons I’ll never understand, a need in family movies. So they’d have to cast a black guy as Green Lantern (it’s just not enough to cast a black guy as Martian Manhunter, because he’s actually an alien, of course). Also, if there are at least five males, there’s gotta be at least two-three females. I don’t know about Dr Light, but sure Zatanna, maybe Hawkgirl (name?) or even Barda, if the Pokolips story ever comes up. Expect to have someone Asian and/or Latino as well. I’d be all against this whole PC thing, but they seem to need it. Also, I can’t help but think Aquaman sucks, he just doesn’t work in almost any context. And what about humor? It seems, for more reasons I’d also never understand, they “need” to force-insert jokes and humor in just about every superhero movie ever. I didn’t like Stark’s constant quips in Avengers at all, I honestly think they should have gone without at least half of them and still make him funny – not a bad-sitcom-within-a-movie the way it turned out to be. I’d really go completely without the need for jokes and the such, but it seems to be a necessity these days. How would you solve it? [ramble mode still ON, but I'll stop now]
I think they should start with a batman-superman movie. they are the most popular characters in the comic book world. In that film, start a relationship between the two and maybe from there near the end of the film hint to starting a super group. And from there start the justice league. (sorry hard to type all this from phone).
The Avengers made the average person care. That’s what this movie will be missing no matter how they handle these issues. We watched Iron Man grow and, at the same time, watched SHIELD really develop (in the first Iron Man, they were still acronym-less). In every movie we saw some sort of faint interaction with future or past films. All of that built to one big movie where we actually cared about each character. The difference between these two movies is this:
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The Avengers made the average person care. That’s what this movie will be missing no matter how they handle these issues. We watched Iron Man grow and, at the same time, watched SHIELD really develop (in the first Iron Man, they were still acronym-less). In every movie we saw some sort of faint interaction with future or past films. All of that built to one big movie where we actually cared about each character. The difference between these two movies is this:
Would you rather make several friends, individually and then go to a party with them? Or just jump into a party head first without knowing anyone there? Chances are, the first scenario will be more enjoyable.
Batman – Sam Worthington
Superman – Henry Cavill.
Wonder Woman – Kate Beckinsale
Green Lantern – Ryan Reynolds.
Flash – Jared Pedalecki
Aquaman – Ryan Gosling
Martian Manhunter – Denzel Washington
Director : Zack Snyder.
Producer : Christopher Nolan
Music : Hans Zimmer.
Why havent we had any Justice League news\gossip this week!!!!!!!
come on!!! someone right somethig :)
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I think the biggest issue is one word:
BATMAN
Batman is by far the most popular character right now and Nolan’s version just doesn’t fit with the rest of the comic world with its gritty realism. So how do you retain the success of Batman while putting it in this comic book world with super humans? The next Batman, whether in JLA or as a Batman reboot, is going to be heavily critiqued.
I agree with number two big time. Introducing will be hard. I think that they need to start the Marvel way and get it going now with individual movies for some of the members starting with Man of Steel. The only problem is it seems too early to reboot Batman and the Green Lantern.
Yeah the Superman issue is a problem – let’s face it, he doesn’t need any of the JLA, he’s basically all of them in one. Otherwise I think most of the issues can be easily overcome. Look at the comics.