8 Weird Directions The Comic Book Movie Genre Could Take

8. Time-Period Appropriate Settings

We€™ve had Captain America in World War II, Watchmen in an alternative 20th Century, and the X-Men in the 60€™s and 70€™s, but what if we started to get comic adaptations set around the time-periods the characters were conceived? This scenario would throw up the alluring prospect of a 1930s Batman set against a gangster/noir backdrop or Superman in an art-deco and Fleischer inspired setting, a 60s Marvel Universe drawing upon Busiek and Ross's Marvels, the original Human Torch and Namor in the 40s, or even Spawn in the 80s. As time progresses and we see more and more versions of these characters on screen there will be an increasing need for fresh approaches to the material. And of course, there are certain characters that have been placed in their original time-period cinematically such as The Phantom and The Shadow, so a precedent already exists. This is also an idea not entirely original to this article: Peyton Reed, who was attached to the 2005 version of Fantastic Four before being replaced by Tim Story wanted to set his version in the 60s during the early days of the space race. It was also around this time that Warners purchased a World War II-set Wonder Woman spec-script, by Tim Jennison and Brett Strickland but the project never got off the ground. Those ideas may not have connected then but the genre is still developing and we are only now starting to see the scope for the kind of stories that can be realised on screen. Time-appropriate setting themselves, paying tribute to the characters as they first appeared may be one possible direction the genre could go.