Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, everybody reading this will be aware of The Avengers, Marvels movie that spent six years and four movies (five movies if you include The Incredible Hulk, but most people don't) in gestation and narrative development. The build-up was what made the final product so much more satisfying: wed spent years waiting for this culmination of years worth of work and, thanks to Joss Whedon, it didnt disappoint. Needless to say, Marvel pulled off the plan to perfection. DC Comics, on the other hand have seen the success of The Avengers and want a slice of the superhero team pie and intend to do so by releasing a Justice League movie. Fans of DC will no doubt be happy that this film is being talked about, although rather than taking advice from the tried-and-tested Marvel plan, it seems theyre going to do it the other way round, instead introducing the team with the Justice League movie and then doing single character spin-offs from there. Now, Im all for a Justice League film, but only if its done right and, with the greatest of respect to DC, this is doing it wrong. Here are just a few reasons why, from the point of view of a regular cinema-going film fan, and not a comic book aficionado.
1. Nobody Really Knows Much About Them
Lets be perfectly honest, how many of your average-movie goers knew who The Avengers was made up of before their individual movies were released? A big reason why a lot of people who dont already have an interest in comic-books went to see The Avengers is that they had already seen the previous Marvel movies and knew about the characters and grown attached to them. The origin stories of each of those characters had already been explained. Now, imagine if they had just made The Avengers without any of the build-up movies. Outside of people who are into comic-books and superheroes, nobody would have understood why The Hulk does what he does, or how Captain America has become to be some kind of super soldier, or why Tony Stark is so rich, or how Thor has managed to come to Earth. This would have either had to be explained during the movie and take up a lot of screen time, or just not be explained at all and simply confuse people. Each character should have their own individual origin story, rather than having them all crammed into one movie that then tries to share focus - and which will invariably give the most focus to known properties like Batman and Superman.