directe3d by someone who has only done mediocre horror sequels, at least.
You know who else was an obscure horror director before jumping into big-time tentpole films? Peter Jackson! Now, I don't have any interest in Jackson's horror work (except for maybe
The Frighteners, more for Michael J. Fox than anything else), but Jackson's
Lord of the Rings trilogy is a masterpiece. There's also not a lot on Sam Raimi's pre-
Spider-Man resume to indicate that he would be a great comic book movie director. Heck,
Thor is my favorite Marvel movie and who would have figured that Kenneth "Shakespeare-guy" Branagh had the action chops to pull that off. So I tend to keep an open mind about these sorts of things.
And Superman III and Supergirl are far purer distillations of Silver Age DC storytelling style and its unapologetic goofiness, and actually work pretty well if you approach them with that mindset.
Ahhhh,
Superman III. You know, I used to have Richard Pryor's "I just came directly from the Pentagon" speech memorized and could recite it on cue. ... I don't know why I did that...
Spielberg is one of my favorite directors so I'm thrilled he's doing a DC movie, but I'm a little disappointed he's going with a group of characters I'm not familiar with. I would have loved to see what he could have done with a character like Superman, The Flash, or Green Lantern.
I think Spielberg is on the right track. Frankly, Batman & Superman have been done to death and I don't really have much interest in the other upper-tier DC characters like Aquaman, Cyborg, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Power Girl, etc. I'm not a big comic book reader but the DC properties that tend to interest me (at least from a concept and/or design aspect) tend to be a little bit deeper cuts. I'd rather see movies about Swamp Thing, Zatanna, or Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld.
I'd definitely watch an Old Batman movie starring Keaton (and directed by Tim Burton!)
Agreed! At least about Keaton. I'm not sure about Burton. I haven't really been impressed by anything that he's done since
Big Fish. (Granted, I haven't yet seen
Big Eyes or
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.)
You know what would be funny? If Ben Affleck directed a
Batman movie with Michael Keaton. Affleck directing & starring in a
Batman movie at the same time was never going to happen. Directing a movie of that scale is a herculean effort on its own. If he tried starring in it at the same time, he'd be dead within a week! But I'd still like to see Affleck direct a superhero movie. If he were going to direct a
Batman movie, might as well have him work with the best.
BTW, I'm really glad that Jake Gyllenhaal shot down those rumors of him playing Batman. I never liked that idea. I've said it before, but I think that, if they can't get Affleck (or Keaton) back, they should just leave the character alone for a little while and develop the rest of the DC universe, including extended members of the Bat-family if they must.
And the Rock's Black Adam???? Seems like a mess that he was excluded from. Shazam (unless it is a teaser final scene, and the Black Adam movie shows his origin and a battle with Shazam)
Agreed. I mean, Black Adam is traditionally a VILLAIN. Granted, our modern pop-culture often tends to take popular villains and soften them into heroes(ish), i.e. Harley Quinn, Loki, Venom, Spike from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. Heck, that's the entire premise of
Suicide Squad. But I'm not sure how you make Black Adam a hero without first establishing him as a villain. (Maybe the
Venom movie will show us a blueprint for that but frankly it looks terrible.)
How far along are they on Suicide Squad 2?
Last I heard, they were going to start shooting it this fall. They were going to do it sooner but it got pushed back because of Will Smith's schedule on other movies like
Aladdin and
Gemini Man. And now I'm not sure if it's going to get further derailed thanks to Margot Robbie doing
Birds of Prey instead. (And can someone please explain to me how it makes any damn sense that the Harley Quinn spin-off is turning into
Birds of Prey instead of
Gotham City Sirens?!?!)
Is this just to keep Leto happy?! Because I remember him being pretty pissed when Scorsese's Joker origin movie was announced.
I don't see why Warner Bros. would feel quite so obligated to keep Leto happy. It's not like he's an integral part of what they're doing. I mean, I don't think he really needs to be in
Suicide Squad II, it's been ages since we've heard anything about the
Joker/Harley Quinn movie, and I thought I heard stuff about how Margot Robbie never wanted to work with him again anyway. Personally, I love Leto's version of the Joker and I kinda want him to show up in
The Batman but I don't think he's irreplaceable.
I'm starting to wonder if Scorcese was really interested in doing an actual "Joker" movie to start with or if he just wanted to do a Psychotic Gangster film and figured he could hijack the Joker character to do that and gain an built-in fandom. That's why he wanted to use his own actor instead of working with Leto and the DCEU...he didn't want to have to "play by the rules" and have whatever story he was thinking be a part of a larger Universe.
Firstly, Scorsese doesn't need to hijack any built-in fandom to make a gangster movie. Martin Scorsese gangster movies command their own fandom.
Secondly, has Scorsese even gone on the record about his involvement with this movie, like, at all? Maybe it's more a matter of Todd Phillips really wants to make a Joker movie but DC isn't really interested in working with the
Hangover guy, so he's puffing up the project by involving Scorsese's name. (Reminds me of the 1996
Doctor Who movie where Steven Spielberg was involved as a producer during the very early stages, bailed because he didn't like any of the scripts, and the remaining producers hid that fact from FOX, Universal, & everyone else for as long as they could.)
Seems to be a problem with "Auteur" directors. They don't want to have to play with others. Edgar Wright had the same problems because he didn't want to work by the MCU's release schedule and kept sitting on his hands and then didn't want his Ant-Man movie to be linked to the MCU at all.
Have we ever gotten the skinny on what about Wright's
Ant-Man would have been different from the movie we got?
