Justice League Film: A Guide To Making It Work
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I am a movie buff. I follow shows like AMCs Movie Talk via YouTube on a daily basis. I also check IMDb every day as well. Lets face it in the culture of cinema; one of the most talked about things Ive read about this year is a Justice League movie. This, of course, would be Warner Bros' answer to last years mega-hit The Avengers. This film by itself went on to gross $623 million domestically and become the highest grossing film of the year. We have to be honest, myself included, Warner Bros has not made the best films when it comes to their DC properties. Trying to bring Catwoman, Green Lantern and Jonah Hex in stand-alone films, have all failed in the process of establishment. Catwoman took $100 million to make but only ended up making 40% of its budget back in its total box office run. Green Lantern was made for $200 million but as visually stunning as it was; it only made $116 million total at the box office. Jonah Hex is yet another one. It was made for $47 million and only ended up making a paltry $10.9 million altogether. Even Watchmen, one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time, fell short coming to the big screen. While it was made for $130 million, it grossed much less, $185 million total. Making back the money they put out to make it, yet still not a huge financial gain from one of the most celebrated studios in Hollywood, so once again it is viewed as a failure. All of this continued until 2005 when Christopher Nolan birthed a realistic look at a superhero in our world. Yes Im talking about Batman Begins. The film took the studio $150 million to make and they made $374 million of that single film alone. By itself it did better than all four of the movies listed above in its entire run. By that alone, we dont even have to go into the success of its sequels, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The 2006 film, Superman Returns, while it wasnt a huge hit; the argument could be made it was still a moderate hit. The film was made for $270 million and grossed altogether a total of $391 million. With that, we keep hearing nothing but good things about this summers Man of Steel. Its even been rumored that this will be the Iron Man of the DC Universe. This could very well be the start of the DC Shared Universe, which would ultimately lead up to the Justice League movie, just as Iron Man was used to lay the groundwork for what would become The Avengers. Weve also heard rumors about a possible Batman reboot before the JLA film. All that we know about this reboot so far is that its not an origin story. Rumors about even turning the Arkham Games into movies have been made. So, how do you make a proper Justice League movie without actually ripping off Marvels formula for the post-credit scenes? Im gonna explain just that in a second. Numbers dont lie. Its easily notable that Batman and Superman are most recognizable properties to the DC Comics film universe. These are the properties that not only started the company and put DC on the map, but these are the properties people are most likely to see. The Justice League is also made up of these other core members: Green Lantern (whose film was considered a flop), Wonder Woman and The Flash. Lets start with Wonder Woman. People may know the name but still dont really know the character. Back in the 70s, Linda Carter was popular for giving the character life on the small screen. However, it must not have seen that much success because it was sold to another network after only one season. ABC, the shows original network, sold the property to CBS for additional seasons. However, only two more seasons were produced not much to boast about. The first season of Batman: The Animated Series served with more episodes than Wonder Womans total run altogether clocking in at only 60 episodes. Not to mention the failed attempt at the now-cancelled 2011 Pilot, starring G.I. Joe: Retaliations Adrianne Palicki. So how about any success with The Flash? How about his television series? Well, his show debuted in 1990 and only ran for 22 episodes. So its clear that alone they dont have the strength to make it. Thats because theyve never been done correctly. So this is my take on what they should do. Be honest, why did the Nolan take on Batman do so well? They actually brought celebrated moments from the characters mythology to the screen rather than just taking characters from the mythology. They studied the source material. They actually studied it. Thats how you have to do it and still bring that dark, realistic tone to it. Lets say for the purpose of this scenario Man of Steel is the start of the DC Shared Universe. Now, youve introduced this new Superman to completely set the tone of the universe. Which if you read the comics, the DC universe is completely shared. These characters are actually close within their source material, so thats what we have to do in order to correctly bring this story to the big screen. With this being 2013, lets say were gonna do a Batman reboot in 2015. This Batman has no ties to The Dark Knight Trilogy whatsoever. He is a new character, set up in a new world. You have to do something big to continue what Nolan did for those films. So, lets make Arkham Asylum into a film for this to work. Bringing it to life as best as we can and getting it as close to the video game storyline as possible but still at the same time making it our own. In the video game, towards the end we see Professor Hugo Strange which leaves us wanting more. Translate that same formula to the big screen. As Strange is on the verge of spilling Batmans secret identity in comes Superman to lead into the next film, a live-action version of the Worlds Finest. For those who are unfamiliar with the Worlds Finest, let me bring you up to speed real fast. Worlds Finest was a Superman-Batman team up comic that ran from 1941 to 1985. So, pretty much this introduces the idea of the team up for Batman and Superman to work together. You still have that whole Dr. Strange thing that left us hanging from the Batman reboot, dont we? No worries. Batman and Superman take care of him within the first 20-25 minutes of the film and ultimately find out he was a small pawn working for Brainiac. So, we spent the majority of the film seeing Batman and Superman trying to fight off Brainiac, only to discover he is planning something bigger than just what the heroes think. Lets face it: every good film has a main plot and a subplot. So we would take this film and make it a subplot to tell the origin story of Wonder Woman and towards the end of the film introduce the Wonder Woman character to both Batman and Superman. This would be taking the traditional Worlds Finest idea and molding it into the Trinity. The Trinity is a concept similar to the Worlds Finest, just featuring Wonder Woman. This concept was introduced in June of 2008 and ran until May of 2009. The artists and writers still occasionally will revisit this concept and idea from time to time. So why would it not make a great film? It takes the star power of Superman and Batman, while also introducing the origin of Wonder Woman. Could one even argue that by this logic we are killing two birds with one stone? Now that weve introduced three out of five of our characters needed. The next film to proceed would be the Justice League. The beginning of the film would showcase the Brainiac aftermath from The Worlds Finest/The Trinity film. Superman knows that it wasnt the end and wants to be ready for his return, whatever it maybe. In response to this, he studies cities from all over the world and upon his findings comes across Central Citys Barry Allen aka The Flash and Coast Citys Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern. He explains the situation; they meet and devise a plan to take down Brainiac. Now, remember how we said Brainiac was a small pawn in a grander scheme? It would be taking inspiration from the Justice League Unlimiteds Panic in the Sky and Divided We Fall episodes from the shows fourth season in which Brainiac fuses himself with Lex Luthor. It took the entire strength of the JLA to take him out. Luthor is one of the most celebrated villains in the DC Universe; why not make him the center villain of the film? Hes an ordinary man and with this infection it could still give the film the realistic tone we are looking to bring to the DC shared movie universe. If the film was to be done in a matter such as this, taking its time and introducing the characters properly, DC could have a huge hit on their hands. This could open up an opportunity to bring forth bigger films. Such as doing a Wonder Woman or Flash standalone film or even a Green Lantern reboot. No doubt, this would probably bring forth both a Man of Steel and Batman: Arkham Asylum sequel. The JLA sequel could lead up to a Blackest Night adaptation. There are a number of things to do here with this universe. It just has to be interrupted correctly and allowed to be done right. Why not have Geoff Johns write this script? Hes written a couple of episodes of Arrow, hes served as a writer on the JLA comics in the new 52. Let him write this. He understands these characters and could bring the proper film to the screen. This is just my two cents to throw into the ring: how to properly do a Justice League movie. 