They are going ahead with a Justice League movie

[Professor Zoom]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Point taken, but I thought Batman's intellect and detective abilities were something like superpowers, just because he's that far out on the bell curve. Plus, he has great martial arts skills, not to mention his disguises and equipment.

Whoopdeedo. Next to Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, I'm sorry, martial arts mean nothing. All of them could kick his ass... The Flash before Batman was aware of it. Hell, most of them could just toss him into orbit.

Unless, of course, he had a chance to prepare.

[CorporalCaptain]

I probably should have included preparation in his list of powers.

[Nerys Myk]

Professor Zoom wrote:

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Whoopdeedo. Next to Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, I'm sorry, martial arts mean nothing. All of them could kick his ass... The Flash before Batman was aware of it. Hell, most of them could just toss him into orbit.

Unless, of course, he had a chance to prepare.

This is why he keeps a flammable chunk of yellow kryptonite in his utility belt.

[Takeru]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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This is why he keeps a flammable chunk of yellow kryptonite in his utility belt.

That still leaves Wonder Woman and Flash to take care of him.
As much as I like Batman, he is really useless as a member of the Justice League and the only reason he's there is because the character is and has always been popular.

[Icemizer]

Batman is the brains of the league.
Superman is smarter but was raised on a farm in Kansas and has had little exposure to thinking on a tacticle and strategic level.
Wonder Woman is a warrior and thinks like one first without reguard for the consequences.
Martian Manhunter is an alien and has a non human thought process.
Flash thinks faster but is at heart a scientist and examines everything through that lens.
Green Lantern is a fighter jock who takes risks.
Batman is the only one who has trained himself to think like a leader. An in depth planner and multi level thinker is needed for the league as much as power and speed.

[Christopher]

I think having Batman on the team is valuable because it helps keep them grounded. If it were just a bunch of godlike, paternalistic superhumans protecting us weak mortals, they could become rather detached from us and run the risk of becoming benevolent dictators. Including a non-powered human among their ranks as an equal helps remind them of what it is they stand for and fight for, and lets them include a more everyday, street-level perspective in their thinking.

Granted, GL's basically an ordinary human with a fancy gadget too, but he's also a space cop and that can lead to a lack of that kind of everyday perspective. And sure, the other characters have their own everyday lives and people they relate to, but that's largely separate from their heroing lives, and having someone in their heroic community who holds and champions that more grounded perspective is valuable.

[Hartzilla2007]

Kai "the spy" wrote:

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Superman has super-senses and super-speed, his alter ego is a writer, ergo he's pretty much the most intelligent being on earth)

Bulls@#t, if he was that smart he wouldn't fall for the kryptonite thing every freaking time, he also would have taken Lex Luthor down by now. Seeing as he hasn't done either of those I call shenanigans on the whole super smarts thing.

Takeru wrote:

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That still leaves Wonder Woman and Flash to take care of him.
As much as I like Batman, he is really useless as a member of the Justice League and the only reason he's there is because the character is and has always been popular.

Actually I though he was there to pull the JLA's asses out of the fire since thats mostly what he does.

[Kai "the spy"]

Icemizer wrote:

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Superman is smarter but was raised on a farm in Kansas and has had little exposure to thinking on a tacticle and strategic level.

Actually, he's a classically educated journalist trained to view a situation from any number of perspectives.

Wonder Woman is a warrior and thinks like one first without reguard for the consequences.

I hate how current DC gets that wrong. WW is a warrior, but she's more than that. She's not even a warrior first. She's a princess, an ambassador, someone who resorts to violence only when all other means failed, and her main weapon is not a sword (although you could get this idea from current DC), but a lasso, a non-lethal weapon. Anyone remember how big a thing it was when WW killed Maxwell Lord?! She did it because their was no real alternative (well, Superman and Batman later said there had to be, but I still don't see it, and I'm a pacifist). Before that, she didn't kill, and afterwards she still seldomly did. Only with the New 52 she's like "Look, monsters, let me cut their heads off".

Martian Manhunter is an alien and has a non human thought process.

He's also the oldest member of the League (aside from WW, if you take her immortality into account) and has been on earth since the 1950s, with plenty of time to observe humans. Another fact most people tend to forget (especially DC editorial) is that J'onn is a detective. Yes, Batman isn't the only detective among the League.
Plus, we've seen J'onn taking up organizing duties for the League several times in the past, so he definitely has tactical experience.

Flash thinks faster but is at heart a scientist and examines everything through that lens.
Green Lantern is a fighter jock who takes risks.

That's true, actually, but only for Barry Allen and Hal Jordan. John Stewart actually is an ex-marine and an architect, so he definitely knows about plans and battles.

Batman is the only one who has trained himself to think like a leader.

First, WW is the Princess of Themyscira, she's probably been trained to be a leader and therefore think like a leader.

Second, Batman didn't train himself to be a leader, he trained himself to be a detective, scientist and martial artist. The leader thing only began when Dick Grayson came along, so he started out with a teenaged boy to 'lead'.

Also, you forgot about Aquaman, you know, the character this last couple of posts was all about. He is a king, an actual king, leading the armies of Atlantis (and the occasional whale) into battle. If he ain't a leader, who is?!

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Bulls@#t, if he was that smart he wouldn't fall for the kryptonite thing every freaking time, he also would have taken Lex Luthor down by now. Seeing as he hasn't done either of those I call shenanigans on the whole super smarts thing.

Ah, yes, Kryptonite, the embodiment of lazy writing. Of course, characters can only be as smart as their writers want them to be, so if a writer is to lazy to come up with a real threat, he has Superman being caught by Kryptonite, even if it really doesn't make any sense. Of course, there have been writers who were able to use Kryptonite in an original way, like Mark Waid in "Birthright", but there's a reason Denny O'Neil once had all Kryptonite on earth turn to harmless lead. It's a lazy excuse for a threat.

As for Lex Luthor, I guess you mean corporate Luthor (as Superman has taken down mad scientist Luthor basically each and every time they confronted each other). In this case, you have to take Superman's respect for the law into account. He can only bring Luthor down with hard evidence that would hold up in a court of law, so there's not much he can do. And even with the evidence, Luthor has enough highly-paid lawyers to keep him out of prison (also seen in Waid's "Birthright").

[the G-man]

Christopher wrote:

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I think having Batman on the team is valuable because it helps keep them grounded.

Arguably, however, Green Arrow could fill that roll, but for the fact he isn't as popular as Batman.

[Silvercrest]

Takeru wrote:

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That still leaves Wonder Woman and Flash to take care of him.
As much as I like Batman, he is really useless as a member of the Justice League and the only reason he's there is because the character is and has always been popular.

If there are stories where he's portrayed as useful, then your statement is untrue.

[Hartzilla2007]

Kai "the spy" wrote:

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As for Lex Luthor, I guess you mean corporate Luthor (as Superman has taken down mad scientist Luthor

Well considering Corporate Luthor is the only one who counts.

Besides if we want to look at Superman and how he would appear in a Justice League movie pretty much everything prior to the reboot is probably out.

So what examples of Superman's supposedly being intelligent are in the New 52.

[Christopher]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Well considering Corporate Luthor is the only one who counts.

In what sense? Luthor was an evil scientist/inventor for the first 45 years of his existence as a character; the corporate persona is only 26 years old to date. And of course screen adaptations are free to reinterpret the character however they wish, drawing on multiple prior influences; the Luthor of Superman: TAS was initially just the corporate version, but he was later revealed to have the scientific brilliance of the pre-Crisis version, and in Justice League his corporate empire was brought down and he reverted to his overtly villainous evil-inventor persona, subsequently taking a season-long swerve into his politician persona from the comics before ending up back in full-on Legion of Doom mode. (And of course the Superman Returns version was a wholesale resurrection of the lame version from the Reeve movies, the aspiring land mogul with idiot henchmen.) So if we're talking about the possibility of Luthor's appearance in a JL film, there's no guarantee that the film would favor only the corporate interpretation; indeed, I think if you want Luthor to be a JL antagonist, you'd pretty much have to make him a more direct physical threat rather than just a corrupt businessman.

Besides if we want to look at Superman and how he would appear in a Justice League movie pretty much everything prior to the reboot is probably out.

There is no reason whatsoever to assume that. Again, adaptations are always free to draw on elements of whatever interpretations they want. They've never been required to conform slavishly to whatever is currently going on in the comics -- since, after all, the number of people who actually read the comics is tiny compared to the moviegoing audience, or even the TV audience. Usually, screen adaptations of comics borrow from many eras, not just the current one. Batman: TAS was required to draw some stylistic cues from the Burton movies, but storywise and character-wise it drew on Batman comics from the '70s, '80s, and '90s alike. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has been drawing on story elements from throughout the decades-long history of the Avengers, mixing them together freely. And the live-action Marvel movies are freely mixing elements of the original and Ultimate universes.

[Professor Zoom]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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I probably should have included preparation in his list of powers.

[Nerys Myk]

Takeru wrote:

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That still leaves Wonder Woman and Flash to take care of him.
As much as I like Batman, he is really useless as a member of the Justice League and the only reason he's there is because the character is and has always been popular.

All has has to do is turn on that patented Bruce Wayne charm and you'll see star-spangled panties drop like the 1929 stock market. As for the Flash, all Batman has to do is whip out his Gotham PD official Deputy badge and yell "Halt!" and old Barry "Law and Order" Allen will freeze.

[Professor Zoom]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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All has has to do is turn on that patented Bruce Wayne charm and you'll see star-spangled panties drop like the 1929 stock market. As for the Flash, all Batman has to do is whip out his Gotham PD official Deputy badge and yell "Halt!" and old Barry "Law and Order" Allen will freeze.

Or MAYBE, Bruce turns his charm on the Flash, and those golden boots are on the floor...