DC's big problem is that their characters aren't interesting. There, I said it. Their characters are boring as hell.
This guy is more interesting than all of the movie Avengers combined. And he didn't need a super hero costume to do it either.
Superman, Batman, and Wonder woman are able to drive interesting plots, but as characters they're cardboard cutouts and as people they're totally lame.
They are only as interesting as they are written. It's that simple.
You could not pay me money to hang out with Superman. If I had to hang out with him for some reason, I would try to pay someone else to take up the duty, he's just that boring.
No. You wouldn't.
You'd be standing there in slacked jawed awe at the guy you know could've done a better job than the Avengers at handling the alien invasion from their own movie.....by himself.
Hate to break it to you.....you're not cool enough to not be awed by a man who can fly and shoot lasers from his eyes. You're just not. He'd be bored of you long before you ever got bored with him.
I can enjoy watching Robert Downy Junior chew the scenery as Tony Stark. He's awesome. He's arrogant. He's a jackass. And he's better than everyone else.
While I enjoy the shtick, it's a shtick. Too much of it gets dull and predictable. Also, he's the "comedic relief" since there's no Wonder Man or Beast...the Avengers classic comedy duo.
And he loves the hookers and blow.
Really? Because I own both Iron Man 1 and 2 and nowhere in the movies are the words "hookers" and "blow". Not only are they not mentioned in this PG-13 world, they are never even inferred, in any way, shape or form.
The Iron Man movies didn't need any armor. They didn't need any villains. They just needed two hours of RDJ acting like a kind in a nose-candy store.
Except that they did. Again, it's a shtick and it runs the risk of getting annoying with over use. Plus it's not like there was ever a long running t.v. show about a Clark Kent who didn't wear a Superman costume. A show that was popular because it humanized the character and made him more relatable and interesting even when he wasn't fighting villains.
You may have preferred Marvels approach to the movie versions of their characters over WB's approach to the DC characters....doesn't mean anything other than you've got an opinion that is no more valid than anyone elses.
Tony Stark is interesting on his own, even in the absence of conflict.
He was no more or less interesting than Bruce Wayne was for the first hour of Batman Begins. Jack Knight, Kyle Rayner and Wally West are all interesting characters outside of their super hero persona. You seem to prefer comedic, shtick based characters like the movie version of Tony Stark, so these guys might not appeal to you. Their humor tends to be of the more believable kind though.
The same can be said for Thor. Chris Hemsworth doesn't have the same force of personality that RDJ does (few actors do), but Thor is a larger-than-life Norse God and that, more than anything, really drives the movie. You could make a two hour film about Thor driving to the post office to buy a book of stamps and it would still be interesting, because he's Thor.
"Fish Out Of Water" movies are as old as Hollywood and it's usually a winning formula (TVH) You could easily replace Thor with Orion of The New Gods and get the exact same result.
Oh look! He's a god, but he doesn't know what a stamp or stamp dispenser is!! Let's watch the wacky hijinks as our pompous and regal god warrior attempts to find out!!
See, not hard at all.
Even Captain America, the closest thing Marvel has to a boy-scout archetype, is a three-dimensional human being who can be interesting to watch in the absence of conflict.
See, the thing is that you spend all this time explaining why the Marvel characters are better characters than the DC characters, who have no hope of ever being interesting enough for movies.
Wait, scratch that. You pointed to the MOVIE versions, not the COMIC versions, because clearly Marvel felt they could do their characters straight out of the books, they had so much faith in them. Except they didn't.
It's amusing pointing to changed characters, and saying that DC can't add life to their characters by tweaking them the way that Marvel did with theirs.
Seriously, have you ever even read any Iron Man, Cap or Thor? The movie versions are altered versions that sort of feel like their comic counterparts and the most altered character of them all? Tony Stark....who is the complete opposite of how his character was presented in the comics.
Tony Stark was just another bland, serious, millionaire super hero type... a B-List hero who's main claim to fame was being a founding member of the Avengers. In order to make him work on the screen, to stand out, they had to radically change Tony Stark's personality.
His most classic story line is one about alcoholism....as in he's the alcoholic, and he alienates everyone around him and gets kicked out of the Avengers. It's dark and depressing, not jokey and wise cracky.
The story IM fans wanted to see in a movie, especially since RJD could do it all kinds of justice, but see they won't do that movie because they don't want to ruin the "party" vibe for the people who think that the character is all into "hookers and blow".
They also don't want to deal with this backlash:
You don't have that with the DC characters. Take conflict away and you've got boredom. .
There's a comic strip at the bottom with Batman, Starman and Green Lantern that says you're wrong.
You can't cast a filppant scenery-chewer as Superman, or as Batman, or as Wonder Woman. It just doesn't work.
And if you'd said that about Iron Man years ago, people would've mocked you relentlessly. The fact is that someone took a chance with it and ran. The "it doesn't work" thing says more about your mindset than anything. I'd get a kick out of seeing a Superman as cocky as he used to be.
Superman isn't just the original super hero. He's also the original bad ass, wise cracking super hero. Time to bring those elements back and mix it up with his later incarnation into something more suited for the 21st Century.
This idea that the DC characters are stuck in stone is bullshit. And appropriately enough, the guys in the left of the above pic pretty much represents the attitude you have regarding Supes and Co. Like Supes, I'm laughing at it.
Their personalities are not suited to such grandiouse acting. They're subdued and serious archetypes.
Their personalities, like the bulk of Marvels characters, are not suited to being hammed up ala RDJ. The Marvel characters in the comics were every bit as serious and subdued. And if they can be transformed to suit the needs of an ever changing audience, then so can the characters who've evolved and adapted to the changing times for almost a century.
About the only major DC character who can support that sort of on-screen personality is Wally West, and who the hell is Wally West. He certainly can support an entire Justice League movie.
"Who the hell is Wally West?" A character that was slightly more well known to the general public thanks to the JLA cartoon, than Tony Stark was before he had a movie.
Seriously, even a character most comics fans hadn't heard of like Blade, was more well known thanks to a successful movie, than Tony Stark.
If they need comedy relief, Plastic Man is a well known character and his origins are comedic. So yeah, he's perfectly suited to do the funny shtick in a JLA movie.
The real draw of the Avengers (and any crossover, really) is all of these interesting characters interacting with each other. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman interacting with each other is just three times as boring.
The simple fact is, as you have made clear by highlighting the changed MOVIE versions of the characters, that it's all in the writing and being willing to take chances. You see, it doesn't take much to make characters more interesting, it really doesn't.
Take this bit....
Much later.....
See how monumentally easy it was to do? This bit could easily work with The Big Three, or anyone else in the JLA and it would be funnier because people wouldn't immediately think of the Justice Leaguer's watching Woody Allen. All it takes is the courage and will to develop them as Marvel did for their movie versions. And THAT'S the answer to RAMA's question of what WARNER BROTHERS (not DC) can learn from the success of The Avengers.
For fucks sake, if Kirk, Spock and Tony Stark can all be made interesting, hip and cool, to a wide audience then the same can easily be said for the members of the JLA.
