For writing/directing a JLA movie how about... Kevin Smith?
Kevin Smith is a one hit wonder. He hasn't really done anything great outside of his first movie, Clerks.
They are going ahead with a Justice League movie
- Thread starter Flying Spaghetti Monster
- Start date
Kevin Smith is a one hit wonder. He hasn't really done anything great outside of his first movie, Clerks.
This has been my experience as well.
Yeah, it's pretty much splitting hairs. "Well, I wasn't trying to kill anyone".
Did we ever find out what happened to the tied up farmer? Did he end up dying in that place? Bruce certainly didn't give a crap about him when shit started blowing up.
Similar arguments could be made with Joss Whedon. It could also be argued that Smith's "Dogma" had a measure of success or notability and he certainly has a good fan following.
And given the... "unusual" restrictions he was under for doing the "Superman: Lives!" script it's not too bad. His Batman comics aren't bad either and certainly introduced a very interesting villain (Onomatopoeia.)
Yeah, Batman's "no killing" rule is... "Oddly" treated in the movies. Especially in "Begins" where he tells Ras "I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to save you."
Um... Yes, you do, Batman. That's sort-of what a hero who "doesn't kill" does!
In one of the Batman comics Batman actually saved a mortally wounded Joker much to the annoyance of Gordon. Batman didn't cause the wound to the Joker and the Joker's death certainly would make Batman's life easier, Gordon's life a hell of a lot easier and Gotham a degree or two safer. But Batman's moral code wouldn't allow him to not-save someone who needed saving. Even if it was the Joker.
That, for me, is much more interesting and much more "Batman" than, "Well, I'm not going to kill you but I am going to do this random thing which might cause some deaths. That's the same thing, right?" and "Well, I'm not going to kill you but I'm not going to save you from a situation in which you'll die. So my moral conscious is free and clear, we good? Bye!"
I'm not even willing to grant him that. He intentionally threw an ignition source into a large cache of explosives inside an occupied building. There's no way he didn't know that action would probably kill people, and he did it anyway, on purpose.
Bruce has never learned to mind his surroundings very well in the Nolan Trilogy
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Disagree. Whedon has shown much more talent with Buffy, Angel and Firefly along with his background as a comic writer before he made it big with The Avengers.
He's shown talent, for sure. I don't disagree at all there. But look at it from the perspective of a movie studios and producers. What clout did he have there? Buffy and Angel. Firefly? Canceled. Dollhouse? Canceled. "Serenity" - not a successful run at the BO.
Whedon is very talented, for sure. And when he has as much control over something as possible he can do a great job. And Firefly's failure is almost entirely on bungling by Fox, but I'd hardly think he was a "sure thing" when it came to his history looking at it straight from a Success/Failure standpoint.
One thing going for him was the extreme fan following he had and that, well, Avengers was going to do good no matter what even if Uwe Boll made it. (Granted it wouldn't have done nearly as good in such a case.)
Point is, I think Kevin Smith could have as much, erm, "weight" to toss around as Wheedon at the very least when it comes to their connections with comics and their fan followings.
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Poor Joss Whedon. He probably has the most misspelled name on the internet. I'm forever seeing "Wheedon," "Whendon," "Wheadon," "Wheldon," and that's not even counting all the people who refer to him as "Josh Wheaton" or whatever.
I swear, J. Michael Straczynski doesn't get his name mangled this much!
(Oh well. Rant over. As you were.)
I swear, J. Michael Straczynski doesn't get his name mangled this much!
(Oh well. Rant over. As you were.)
Poor Joss Whedon. He probably has the most misspelled name on the internet. I'm forever seeing "Wheedon," "Whendon," "Wheadon," "Wheldon," and that's not even counting all the people who refer to him as "Josh Wheaton" or whatever.
I swear, J. Michael Straczynski doesn't get his name mangled this much!
(Oh well. Rant over. As you were.)
Poor Joss Whedon. He probably has the most misspelled name on the internet. I'm forever seeing "Wheedon," "Whendon," "Wheadon," "Wheldon," and that's not even counting all the people who refer to him as "Josh Wheaton" or whatever.
I swear, J. Michael Straczynski doesn't get his name mangled this much!
(Oh well. Rant over. As you were.)
At first I thought it was a typo, but he spelled it Wheedon twice. I have NO idea why Trekker4747 mispelled Whedon's name when he quoted my post which already got his name correct.
No. If you're in a situation where you know something is going to cause the death of another person and you actively choose not to rescue that person out of spite for what they have done. Then it makes your moral of "not killing" not hold-up.
It's not like Batman had to get out of there as soon as he could to save his own life, or had to make a Sophie's Choice and choose to save one of two people and went with the "better" person. He actively chose not to save someone because he instantly decided to judge a person's actions and then sentence them to death.
This isn't like me not putting myself in the line of fire to prevent a gunman from shooting an innocent, or not diving in front of a bus to save someone from getting hit by it.
This is like me going down with you on a sinking ship, jumping into a lifeboat and calling to you trapped under debris or otherwise stranded and saying, "I don't have to save you!" and then taking off without helping you get aboard even though time would have allowed it.
Now, sure, it's not an "active" killing. But it certainly would make one saying, "I don't kill!" a little harder to swallow and should make one have a hard time sleeping tonight.
Yeah, Ra's was murderer and potential mass-murderer but he's still "entitled" to being saved, arrested and then tried as a criminal. Batman didn't "not save" him in order to save other lives, the threat was over. Batman had won. Ra's plan was kaput. So it wasn't even a "in defense of others "killing."
Batman choose to let another person die. Out of spite.
I have a shitty keyboard (well, it was okay until I spilled a drink on it now the keys are all gummy and don't feel right) and, well, I'll go with that.
As kind of tortured as Batman's "no killing" rule is in the Nolan trilogy, what you describe here is equally tortured on the other end - and one of the things about the no killing rule in the comics that's always strained credibility.
Batman doesn't save Joker in that story because of his extreme dedication to the preservation of all life - he saves Joker because no writer can kill off Batman's main nemesis for good. That's 85% of why the no killing rule was invented - that way all your villains stay around forever so you can have endless rematches.
So while Bruce's sloppy application of his no killing rule in the movies makes him come off as creating a neat little rationalization to feel like he has a clear conscience, his obsessive application of it in the comics does the same - except now it's, "I know you're a vicious murderer who has figured out how to beat the system over and over again, but I'm just going to put you back into the system knowing you'll kill again, but I won't take responsibility for taking you out so my moral conscience is clear, we good? Bye!"
FAR more interesting would be what no one ever does - write a Batman who deals with the fact that his means create collateral damage (Batman never seems to worry about all the cars he blows up, rooms he trashes, train tracks he destroys, knocking off whole sides of buildings, whether or not he's allowing people to die or never, ever killing anyone) up to and including deaths which he does not actively pursue, but which he knows must be inevitable so that he has to constantly balance the highest stakes of loss and gains. Much is made of Batman thinking of himself as a warrior or soldier - well, they deal with the death that must come from their actions.
Though at least Batman gives some kind of nod to a hero's attitudes towards death - unlike the Avengers movie, where the heroes are knocking off enemies right and left without blinking an eye. But they bad guys aren't human so apparently they don't count.
I'm trying to think - do any of the heroes in the any of the marvel universe films have a non-killing rule? Iron Man kills people in the first film, Cap is a solider, Thor is a warrior and I think kills troll in his first film and Hawkeye, Nick Fury and Black Widow are black-ops operatives.
Their actions in the invasion would therefore seem consist with what we have already been presented with - they will all kill if they need to.
I have to disagree. Batman saving the Joker is no different from the duty of any police officer, rescue worker, or doctor to save every life placed in their care. It's not any of those people's job to play judge, jury, and executioner. It's their job to save an endangered life. It's one thing to use deadly force against someone who presents an immediate, active threat to another person's life. But if that person is injured or unconscious and poses no immediate danger, then there's no justification for killing them, or for letting them die. Your duty is to rescue the person in danger.
There's a Canadian-made show called Flashpoint which is based very authentically in the real procedures of a Toronto special tactics/rescue squad, and the issue of "priority of life" comes up sometimes. There have been a couple of episodes where an ally of the team, a fellow law-enforcement officer, tried to take revenge on someone who killed their partner or fiance or whoever, and the team's duties required them to protect the killer even if it meant shooting the cop, because priority of life means that you save the one who's in danger and target the one who's threatening them, period, regardless of their respective motives or morality. Only the immediate situation dictates your choices. If you have to kill a friend and colleague to stop her from shooting a murderer, that's what you do, because your duty is to uphold the law.
That said, you could make a case that "I don't have to save you" is an acceptable response in some cases. If you asked a doctor to operate on Adolf Hitler to save his life (in some alternate world where Hitler was taken alive and imprisoned, say), he could refuse and insist you get someone else to do it. And since Batman is technically a private citizen, you could argue that he can define his duties however he wishes and doesn't have to follow a formal set of rules of engagement. But there is precedent for a code of conduct in which one's duty is to protect everyone, good or evil, with equal diligence.
Well, no, that's not true in the least. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, the film continuity that includes The Avengers, has not so far included any heroes who refuse to kill, but the Marvel comics themselves are full of heroes with codes against killing, including Captain America and Iron Man. Spider-Man's refusal to kill is a fundamental part of his character; his whole mission is driven by his guilt over letting Uncle Ben die, and so he refuses to let anyone else, even a villain, die if he has the power to save them. In the X-Men comics, Storm's refusal to take life under any circumstances was an important part of her character for a long time, though that changed in the '80s or '90s.
The problem is that movies have a certain set of expectations built around them, and part of the standard action-movie formula is the bad guy dying at the end. So superhero movies tend to conform to that formula, even though it's a departure from how comics usually operate. Fortunately there have been some notable subversions, including the X-Men films (at least where Magneto was concerned, though the same can't be said for some of his henchmen or for Stryker), The Dark Knight, and The Amazing Spider-Man.
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