They are going ahead with a Justice League movie

[Dream]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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And, hell, there's a LOT that can be said about what Thor and The Hulk have gotten away with in their comics as being a god and an indestructible ball of rage but both work fine as movie characters.

They worked because both characters were weaken for the movies. Thor was struggling after getting stabbed and Hulk was being overwhelmed during the New York battle in Avengers.

I'm really curious at how Superman's power levels with be depicted in Man of Steel.

[Captain Craig]

Rumor mill update #142

So 2015 is off the table. Pushed back to 2016...right?
This "report" is now saying not till after 2017, not in 2017 but sometime after. They speculate as late as 2021.

It looks like the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie was more wishful thinking than anything. As more and more negative press leaks about the project, Warner Bros. and DC seem to be becoming nervous about the project. First it was a bad script, then Mark Millar's negative comments, and now a rumor that the movie may not see the light of day until after 2017 at the earliest.

A quote from Batman On Film from the JoBlo article:

“If Superman is huge, then they’ve bought themselves some time and will have a franchise to hang their hat on for seven, eight years. The need for Batman won’t be as great, and [the reboot] of that franchise can wait until the Superman trilogy is done.”

That seems to be how JoBlo is arriving at 2021 in their article title.


I don't tend to agree. If MOS does spawn a trilogy I don't see any reason they can't start on JLA as it's own thing just as having had an Avengers film isn't stopping an IM3 etc.
I know the structure was set up that way intentionally at Marvel.
MOS could be ground floor though of a new DCU-CU though which GL failed to be. Instead of after 2017, how about by 2017? Film MOS2 then jump over to film JLA. MOS2 for 2015 and JLA by no later than 2017.

[Trekker4747]

If they're going to do this right -the way Marvel did it- then this sounds GOOD. They need to give all the character they want in the Justice League movie their own "origin movie" and have it build up to the JL movie. So Superman's movie needs to do good, we potentially need a Batman "reboot" (soft reboot, probably), and possibly even a Wonder Woman, Aquaman or other JL member movies.

[Gaith]

Captain Craig wrote:

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This "report" is now saying not till after 2017, not in 2017 but sometime after. They speculate as late as 2021.

"In the year... twenty-twenty-one... If people still think superhero flicks are fun..."

... But what about the Hawkman movie?!

[JD]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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If they're going to do this right -the way Marvel did it- then this sounds GOOD. They need to give all the character they want in the Justice League movie their own "origin movie" and have it build up to the JL movie. So Superman's movie needs to do good, we potentially need a Batman "reboot" (soft reboot, probably), and possibly even a Wonder Woman, Aquaman or other JL member movies.

While I do think the way Marvel did things is the best way to go about these kinds of superhero team movies, I do have to wonder if DC will purposefully go a different route just to avoid being compared to them.

[sojourner]

Ah, here we go with the "DC has to copy Marvel and do separate movies first" train of thought again.

[Fist McStrongpunch]

I think just jumping into a Justice League movie is a huge mistake. Everyone knows Batman and Superman, but the others are all basically unknown. Some might include Wonder Woman, but she's really not known outside those who actually read comics. Sure, everyone and their dog knows Wonder Woman, but you go ahead and ask any of those people to tell you anything about Wonder Woman other than the fact she was played by Linda Carter, they'll stare at you blankly. To the public Wonder Woman is essentially: Linda Carter, lasso, invisible airplane. An it's easy to see why. Superman and Batman have fairly straightforward concept, origins, powers, but Wonder Woman has so many conflicting ideas involving mythology, patriotism, feminism, and BDSM that no one really knows who she is.

The others aren't much better. Flash is fairly simple, but Green Lantern is an inherently silly concept that will probably need some explaining, and don't tell me they won't need to explain it since he was in a film just a bit ago. That movie is like the sixth biggest flop ever so they can't really expect people to know about Green Lantern from it. Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Hawkman, Cyborg and others are inherently strange and will probably need a fair amount of setup as well. And Green Arrow is easy as hell but would have the stupid public complaining they were ripping off Hawkeye.

[Trekker4747]

If anything Aquaman would need the "hardest" movie to overcome the damage Super Friends did to him.

[Christopher]

Fist McStrongpunch wrote:

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I think just jumping into a Justice League movie is a huge mistake. Everyone knows Batman and Superman, but the others are all basically unknown.

I don't understand the assumption that lack of prior knowledge of the characters is a dealbreaker. Nobody knew who Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia were when Star Wars came out in 1977. Nobody knew who Marty McFly and Doc Brown were when Back to the Future came out. Thousands of movies over the decades have been built around characters the audience had never previously heard of, because they never existed before their movies came out. So where in the world does this bizarre notion come from that unfamiliar characters can't work in a movie?

And the fact that it's a team movie doesn't change anything. There have been plenty of successful movies that have been built around teams of entirely new characters, from The Seven Samurai to The Dirty Dozen to Ocean's Eleven to The Usual Suspects. Even in superhero movies, X-Men proved that you can begin a film series by introducing a team of characters who are mostly unknown to the mass moviegoing audience. There didn't have to be solo Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Cyclops, and Professor X films before the team movie happened. Starting with the complete team has worked, and it can work again.

[Fist McStrongpunch]

I would absolutely love to see an Aquaman movie done right though. A brief origin, getting to know Atlantis, then he discovers his brother is planning war on the surface world and we get huge awesome fights. And in the end, of course, he gets his hand cut off.

I think the best thing they could do for a Justice League movie is to have Flash and Green Lantern making fun of him for a good chunk of the movie, then Arthur leaves out of annoyance, only to return at the climax of the film leading a squadron of Atlantean aircraft and riding a fricking kaiju to help save the day.

EDIT: Also, X-Men worked because all the characters had the same origin.

[Trekker4747]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't understand the assumption that lack of prior knowledge of the characters is a dealbreaker. Nobody knew who Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia were when Star Wars came out in 1977. Nobody knew who Marty McFly and Doc Brown were when Back to the Future came out. Thousands of movies over the decades have been built around characters the audience had never previously heard of, because they never existed before their movies came out. So where in the world does this bizarre notion come from that unfamiliar characters can't work in a movie?

The problem is you're dealing with characters who have decades-old history behind them which carries a LOT of weight with them in terms of the general audiences. It's part of the problem the TNG movies had with not wanting to connect too much to the series itself or the ones on the air, and with the newest movie wanting to be pretty much be a reboot.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc. are NOT new characters in the same regards as other movie characters because these characters are decades old and general audiences are going to be scared by that. Thinking they'll have too much weight on them from the past that'll leave them lost and confused.

Besides, look at the MCU, all of the characters got "origin movies" before the team movie to establish them. Rush right into a JL movie and people might be afraid that it'll connect too much to Batman movies they've probably not seen, that the characters without movies aren't familiar enough to connect to them (this is a problem I think Hawkeye suffers from in the Avengers. He isn't established.)

Besides, whether or not you "need" origin movies for these characters or not is beside the point. Aquaman and Wonder Woman are strong characters who DESERVE their own movie.

[Christopher]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Besides, look at the MCU, all of the characters got "origin movies" before the team movie to establish them. Rush right into a JL movie and people might be afraid that it'll connect too much to Batman movies they've probably not seen, that the characters without movies aren't familiar enough to connect to them (this is a problem I think Hawkeye suffers from in the Avengers. He isn't established.)

Some would feel that way, but I doubt the rank and file of general-audience moviegoers who are the primary target here would know the difference or care. I mean, when Smallville was on the air, there were a lot of viewers who had no idea that it had anything to do with Superman. We genre fans are too prone to forget that most people aren't as genre-savvy as we are.

Besides, whether or not you "need" origin movies for these characters or not is beside the point. Aquaman and Wonder Woman are strong characters who DESERVE their own movie.

Of course they are. I just don't agree with the assumption that those movies have to come before a JL movie. Marvel's already done it that way; if DC just copies it, it'll seem like a copy. Let's at least keep our minds open to the possibility of a different approach.

[Set Harth]

Christopher wrote:

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I mean, when Smallville was on the air, there were a lot of viewers who had no idea that it had anything to do with Superman.

If cluelessness were an Olympic sport, this country could be great again!

[Dream]

2021?!

Oh, lord!

[Professor Zoom]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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If anything Aquaman would need the "hardest" movie to overcome the damage Super Friends did to him.

Who the hell remembers the Super Friends? That was 30 years ago. In the meantime, the Justice League cartoon has come out, Justice League Unlimited, Batman: Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, Smallville.

Why does the Super Friends matter, except to a bunch of aging people? Who aren't the target audience?

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc. are NOT new characters in the same regards as other movie characters because these characters are decades old and general audiences are going to be scared by that. Thinking they'll have too much weight on them from the past that'll leave them lost and confused.

And speaking as a DC fan for decades, this is ridiculous. Most audiences won't give a rat's ass about the comic history, they didn't for Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Batman, or Spiderman. In fact, because Wonder Woman has been in the public consciousness for so long, it should be EASIER to introduce her... unlike, say, Green Lantern.

Audiences aren't concerned with what happened in issue 55 of Aquaman, they want to know what he can do, AND, more importantly, what is character like... is he funny, is he angry, what does he want... Period. This "weight of past" is genre fans thinking way to hard and not realizing, most of that "weight" is just stuff that isn't really important.