10 Radical Ideas To Save The DC Extended Universe
7. Get Comics Writers To Write Comics Characters
You know when you're desperate for a job, and you exaggerate some of your previous experience to get your foot in the door? As long as the person interviewing you knows just a little less about the subject than you, it's perfectly possible to bluff your way in with minimal real knowledge of the subject at hand.
Well, that's exactly how Warner Bros. have been landed with their major creative personnel for the DCEU: they’ve handpicked people already in the film industry who claim to have a working knowledge of comics and superheroes, and given them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they like, because they know even less about comics and superheroes than the muppets they’ve hired. Fox made the same schoolboy error with the people they picked to run the X-Men franchise.
Marvel, on the other hand, set up a creative inner circle with specific interest in and background in the comics and the characters being adapted, and then had them heavily involved in the strategising and planning of the MCU from the word go. The DCEU needs to gravitate more towards the Marvel model than the Fox model.
Now, DC comics guru Geoff Johns is currently overseeing parts of the DCEU, which is an excellent step in the right direction. But instead of hiring screenwriters and directors who may or may not know about the characters they’re writing about, or about anything to do with comics, why not hire the people writing and drawing the comics as consultants on a movie by movie basis?
I’m not suggesting that comics writers can miraculously write perfect screenplays - it’s a different discipline. But is there any reason why you couldn’t pair an accomplished comics writer with an accomplished screenwriter? Can Mark Waid, Gail Simone, James Robinson, Chris Terrio and Ben Affleck not hole themselves up in a Hollywood hotel suite for a fortnight and put together the bare bones of the next few films in this franchise?
As it stands, the initial plan for the Aquaman movie was to have Gangster Squad’s Will Beale and 300’s Kurt Johnstad write two completely separate screenplays for the film and to pick the best one. That’s ludicrous… but it’s par for the course for the DCEU.