Why doesnt DC Comics want continuity between movie Franchises??
- Thread starter Joerib
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^ They already tried doing that and aborted the project after basically rushing it into production and casting young up and coming talent.
I don't really think it's as big of an issue as people sometimes make out. The average person might not be too bright but I think most of them are versed enough in movies and TV to get it when it comes to this stuff. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average person rolls with small continuity issues better than the die-hards.
The issue of continuity is foremost a secondary concern behind that of making a good film overall for me, and the primary way to do that is to create a fabric of fantastic reality to the universe you're telling stories in. Once DC figures that out, maybe they have a shot of matching Marvel's success.
While talk Nolan's Batman hits a note of realism (i.e. What if Batman existed in the real world?), I think the problem DC has had that Marvel (of late) largely hasn't, is the notion of "What if the DC Universe WAS the real world?"
Marvel has done a great job of mixing in the fantastical elements of it's universe and then effectively portraying that as what is in essence the "reality" of that world.
To me, and I'm sure many of you, it should be common sense, but to the folks running DC films, they're approaching these movies as "stories where fantastic things happen" which changes the basic concept of reality...
Whereas Marvel just accepts that the fantastic exists IN the reality of the world they're telling stories in and keeps on moving.
Now admittedly they've come up with some 'handwavium' notions for the advanced Technology, and Magic that's really Science situations... But whatever, I don't need to believe that any of it could work in our world, just that it works in theirs
While talk Nolan's Batman hits a note of realism (i.e. What if Batman existed in the real world?), I think the problem DC has had that Marvel (of late) largely hasn't, is the notion of "What if the DC Universe WAS the real world?"
Marvel has done a great job of mixing in the fantastical elements of it's universe and then effectively portraying that as what is in essence the "reality" of that world.
To me, and I'm sure many of you, it should be common sense, but to the folks running DC films, they're approaching these movies as "stories where fantastic things happen" which changes the basic concept of reality...
Whereas Marvel just accepts that the fantastic exists IN the reality of the world they're telling stories in and keeps on moving.
Now admittedly they've come up with some 'handwavium' notions for the advanced Technology, and Magic that's really Science situations... But whatever, I don't need to believe that any of it could work in our world, just that it works in theirs
Personally I think a Superman film could benefit from a grounded, naturalistic treatment. That's sort of what made the Donner film work. A lot about that film was pure fanciful Silver/Bronze Age stuff, but Metropolis felt like a real, everyday city and that helped ground the fantasy, make it feel more believable. I'm afraid that Zack Snyder's hyperstylized approach to filmmaking will be too detached from any sense of reality.
considering posters on here have mentioned muggle friends thinking Green Lantern was going to be in Avengers, i wouldn't count on it.
To be fair that might have to do with an episode of Static Shock giving the show a shout out before it started.
Except in that episode, Batman said that the Tim Drake Robin was "with the Titans," and the Robin in TT was strongly implied to be Dick Grayson (although TT's Robin was nothing like either Dick or Tim in personality, instead being a dark, brooding Batman surrogate).
^That's where I'm hoping that we'll see the hand of Nolan as executive producer and Goyer's as screenwriter. I, too, want to see a naturalistic approach to Superman. The first season of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN took a more naturalistic, noir approach and that remains my favorite season of that series.
RE: Continuity between film franchises
Frankly, that's for the birds. I don't want to have to see five other movies to enjoy one movie. For me, I prefer the DC movie franchises stay separate from one another unlike the Marvel Entertainment films. That's why I like the DC animated DVD movie releases because they're all stories that can stand on their own and aren't interlinked.
I've long thought that it would be interesting to do a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie that's a period piece, ala NEW FRONTIER, or set in it's own continuity separate from Nolan's BATMAN films or the upcoming MAN OF STEEL. That would allow other actors to put their own take on the iconic characters of Superman, Batman, etc.
I don't really see the necessity for a shared DC universe myself. I'd much rather allow someone like a Christopher Nolan or Sam Raimi to bring their own, unique vision to a character, than to force each director and movie to conform to the style of the other.
As fun as Thor and Captain America were, I think both felt a bit hamstrung by the need to fit their characters into Favreau's Iron Man world. There was too much of a "sameness" in tone and style between the movies for my taste.
As fun as Thor and Captain America were, I think both felt a bit hamstrung by the need to fit their characters into Favreau's Iron Man world. There was too much of a "sameness" in tone and style between the movies for my taste.
But that's not the way continuity works, not if it's done right. You don't have to see Iron Man or Thor to appreciate Captain America, or any other permutation thereof. Each film stands perfectly well on its own. The continuity is a bonus for those who do see all the films. The same with different comic-book or TV series that share a universe -- ideally you can read/watch each one by itself and understand it perfectly well, but if you read/watch multiple ones, there's an extra level of connectivity that you can enjoy. The goal is to make it work on both the individual and combined levels, not just one at the expense of the other. Because of course the audience you're making the movie for is not monolithic, so the goal is to make the movie work for both audiences, the casual viewers only interested in the single film and the more dedicated viewers interested in the whole thing.
People ask this all the time about the interconnected Star Trek novel continuity that Pocket Books has developed over the past decade or so: "Do I have to read X in order to understand Y?" And that question always bewilders me. It's not like we're actively trying to confuse or exclude people. We know that any given novel is going to be somebody's first novel, so it needs to be accessible and able to stand on its own. When we include continuity among different books and series, it's meant to add to the experience of the individual books, not detract from them. Anything people need to know to follow a particular book is explained in that book. If there are links, it's to give people who do read multiple books a sense of a larger, consistent reality, and somewhat to try to get people curious to read more, but it should never get in the way of the reader's ability to understand a given book or to enjoy it as a solitary work.
To me that just shows how easily they would accept a shared universe without really needing all the setup.
Marvel has always been more adroit than DC at the shared universe concept because of the way the two companies were developed.
DC was created in the 1940s as a handful of standalone characters and concepts (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc.) that only later became 'integrated' into a shared universe. Even early team-ups of the characters (in All Star and elsewhere) were based in large part on the team ups being part of a framing device, with the characters largely going off on solo adventures for most of the book. There was also very little interest in continuity between books until well into the 1970s (ie, something that happened in WF or JLA or B&B hardly affected what happened in Superman and Batman solo titles--or each other--at all). In addition, DC bought out a number of other companies and kept those characters largely standalone (if not on different earths) for decades: Shazam and Plastic Man being two good examples. All of which meant that the DCU has never worked very well as a cohesive unit. (In fact, back in the 80s, part of the reason for removing Batman from the JLA was the prevailing idea that he worked best only when teamed up with similarly non powered heroes like GA and the Question).
Conversely, Marvel was originally the creation of Stan Lee (the line editor) and a handful of artists (primarily Kirby and Ditko, of course). Therefore, all the characters have certain similarities, in terms of tone, etc., from the beginning. More importantly, Lee decided early on (if not immediately) that his characters inhabited a shared universe. Therefore, integration of characters and concepts was never that difficult.
Those contrasting origins carry on into the films, IMO. It is much easier to integrate Iron Man, [silver age] Cap, Hulk and Thor because the comic books were integrated since the beginning. And all the characters bear the stamp of a single creator/co-creator/revivalist.
Conversely, DC has characters who, when done right (with a nod to their basics) are unique and who have traditionally inhabited very different worlds. A Nolan Batman, with its heightened realism and gritty mileau, is a difficult fit with (for example) the sci-fi world of GL or even Superman.
DC was created in the 1940s as a handful of standalone characters and concepts (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc.) that only later became 'integrated' into a shared universe. Even early team-ups of the characters (in All Star and elsewhere) were based in large part on the team ups being part of a framing device, with the characters largely going off on solo adventures for most of the book. There was also very little interest in continuity between books until well into the 1970s (ie, something that happened in WF or JLA or B&B hardly affected what happened in Superman and Batman solo titles--or each other--at all). In addition, DC bought out a number of other companies and kept those characters largely standalone (if not on different earths) for decades: Shazam and Plastic Man being two good examples. All of which meant that the DCU has never worked very well as a cohesive unit. (In fact, back in the 80s, part of the reason for removing Batman from the JLA was the prevailing idea that he worked best only when teamed up with similarly non powered heroes like GA and the Question).
Conversely, Marvel was originally the creation of Stan Lee (the line editor) and a handful of artists (primarily Kirby and Ditko, of course). Therefore, all the characters have certain similarities, in terms of tone, etc., from the beginning. More importantly, Lee decided early on (if not immediately) that his characters inhabited a shared universe. Therefore, integration of characters and concepts was never that difficult.
Those contrasting origins carry on into the films, IMO. It is much easier to integrate Iron Man, [silver age] Cap, Hulk and Thor because the comic books were integrated since the beginning. And all the characters bear the stamp of a single creator/co-creator/revivalist.
Conversely, DC has characters who, when done right (with a nod to their basics) are unique and who have traditionally inhabited very different worlds. A Nolan Batman, with its heightened realism and gritty mileau, is a difficult fit with (for example) the sci-fi world of GL or even Superman.
I think that the biggest problem for DC, in terms of building a shard film continuity, has been the fact that its most successful franchise has been Batman. In some ways, Batman, even in the comics, is something of a outlier. The character and Gotham City are really not representative of the bulk of the DC Universe. Batman is a ordinary guy with extraordinary skills and tech that fights fairly down to earth villains. He deals with mobsters, deranged serial killers and petty thieves, and not gods, mutants or aliens. So for DC, starting out with Batman creates a problem. In the DCU, the world outside of Gotham City is WAY more fantastic. Metropolis could not be more different from Gotham. Metropolis deals with rampaging robots, mischievous aliens and beings from other dimensions etc. If Superman were the center of the movie universe, creating a shared film continuity would not be that difficult. After all, once you've depicted a society where an alien from Krypton regularly saves the day from fantastical creatures its not that hard to throw in an intergalactic police force, a race of female warriors with powers given by the gods, a man from Atlantis, a speedster or a survivor from Mars.
Batman, at his core, is simply too mundane to support the rest of the DCU.
Batman, at his core, is simply too mundane to support the rest of the DCU.
Well, not originally. The original Timely Comics characters of the '30s-'40s were created by people like Kirby & Joe Simon (Captain America), Bill Everett (Namor), Carl Burgos (Human Torch), and various others. Stan Lee's creation of the modern Marvel Universe began in the '60s.
The shared universe came along well before Lee, since the Golden Age Timely characters often interacted or fought. The first major superhero crossover of all time was when Namor and the Torch first battled each other in 1940.
But yes, it is true that when Lee and his collaborators created the MU as we know it today, they incorporated a shared universe and frequent crossovers as a major feature of it. But I think that was following on the tradition that already existed in Timely/Marvel history.
But the characters in adaptations are not the same as the characters in the originals. The films can cross over so easily because they're designed to do so and because they're from the same studio and rights-holders who are consciously designing them to fit together. In different hands, they could easily be interpreted in ways that wouldn't allow them to fit together well at all. I mean, just look at X-Men Origins: Wolverine vs. X-Men First Class. Those don't fit together particularly well despite being from the same source material. Nor could you cross over Halle Berry's Catwoman with the Nolan Batman films. Conversely, look at how well the DC Animated Universe was able to incorporate Static Shock, even though Milestone was a separate universe from DC in the comics of the time. The nature of the original doesn't dictate or limit the nature of an adaptation, because adaptations can change things as much as they need to.
And I still say that there's no reason Superman couldn't be done with heightened realism. Richard Matheson's rule for writing fantasy is to include one fanciful element and keep everything else as grounded and naturalistic as possible, to maximize the ease of the reader's suspension of disbelief. I think it would be very interesting to see Superman done in a naturalistic way.
Except that for decades, in the comics of the '50s and '60s, Batman was routinely taking on aliens, mad scientists, time travelers, weird-science supervillains like Clayface, and the like. And Batman's almost always been a member of the Justice League, and so he has a long, long history battling gods, aliens, and the like. What you're describing is only one interpretation of Batman. Yes, it's been the dominant interpretation in his solo comics since the mid-'70s, and it was the interpretation of Batman: The Animated Series and the Nolan films, but it's never been the exclusive interpretation, because he's still been part of the JL in the comics, he ended up teaming with Superman and joining the JL in the DC Animated Universe, he's been with the JL in several DC Universe DVD movies, and he anchored the wild Silver Age craziness of Batman: The Brave and the Bold for three seasons.
Its more accurate to say that the Marvel universe is a product of the 1960s. A point by which, DC had already decided to integrate its characters into a single common universe. With the exception of Captain America, Marvel never had the baggage of having to reconcile the equivalent of the Silver Age and Golden Age interpretations of their characters. They all pretty much were created at the same time (and lived in the same city).
However, I would say that Marvel has a similar problem with clashing tones/themes as DC just not in the same way. To me, as someone who is not all that familiar with the details of the Marvel Universe, it makes sense that the X-Men and The Avengers would not share a common continuity. As a Marvel lay person, I've always struggled with the idea that for some reason Mutants are persecuted for their special abilities in the world f X-men, yet in that same world, everyone seems to LOVE the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. So thematically, it makes sense that the X-Men films would not cross over with the Avenger films since the tone/focus of the stories and world built around them are very different.
This point, along with your others, is well taken. However, I was merely pointing out that Marvel movies have a built in advantage insofar as the source material was designed as an integrated universe from the beginning, while DC's was not.
More or less I agree. Though I think it had less to do with the time period and more with the creative choice of the writer/artist/editor. As Christopher points out, Marvel (or Timely back then) integrated its universe as far back as the 1940s.
Not when you consider the X-men is about bigotry. Some people always hate persons who are born different.
It reminds of something I heard Jim Shooter or John Byrne (and, trust me, this is the only time I'll ever confuse THOSE two) back in the 80s. Someone asked why people still hated mutants when someone like Captain America would fight alongside them. The response was, basically, "and Cap had a black partner too, but bigots didn't stop hating African Americans." Bigotry doesn't have to be, and rarely (if ever) is, logical.
I don't disagree with you, per se. However, i will say that the Batman depicted in Justice League stories is often very different than the one shown in his solo comics. His solo comics typically focus on him as detective, with elements of the urban legend that is not always publicly trusted (though the 60s more establishment Batman did deviate from that). When Batman is shown in the Justice League he is much less detective and far more public. The character tends to have a different tone and his role in JL stories are very different than when he's going solo. When you start with Batman by himself, his world tends to be far more down to Earth and its harder to include those more fantastic elements.
Its worth noting that even in the DC Animated Universe, it was Superman the Animated Series that first started introducing the idea of other super powered beings. In fact, the Superman series was where they first started experimenting with the idea of crossovers...and the first test of the Justice League was in Batman Beyond...the incarnation of the Batman character that dealt with more far out science fiction concepts.
But the difference is that the FF, Iron Man, and the like weren't born into a different "race," but were just altered by technology or exotic phenomena. I think the fear of mutants has to do with the fear that they will eventually outcompete and replace "normal" humans, that they're a harbinger of humanity's eventual extinction. The FF and Spidey and Thor and Giant-Man don't convey that same fear. (Although maybe they should, since at least in some cases their genetic alterations are hereditary; Franklin Richards is a mutant, and I assume the alternate-universe Mayday Parker/Spider-Girl inherited Peter's abilities.)
Another part of it could be that a lot of mutants are deformed or innately dangerous, and that creates a negative public perception about them as a "race." True, a lot of other superpowered beings are villains, but they're not seen as sharing a racial identity with the superheroes who fight them.
And I was pointing out that that doesn't matter, because the choices made by the people creating an adapted version can easily cancel out any such advantage or compensate for its lack. There is no reason why an adaptation has to have the same properties as its source material, or even to be particularly close to it.
I mean, look at the Bill Bixby Incredible Hulk series. It had virtually nothing in common with the comics' Hulk, and was set in a much more grounded universe. When the revival movie in 1988 crossed Bixby's Hulk over with Thor, it was a total mismatch because there was no place for magic and gods in the Bixby-Hulk universe, despite the fact that the comics' Hulk had frequently teamed with or fought against Thor. The adaptation was just too different from the original for the original's characteristics to be relevant.
So the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is happening isn't an automatic outgrowth of the fact that the connective tissue exists in the comics. It's happening because the producers of the movies want it to happen and are choosing to make it happen. If Warner Bros. had the same desire, they could make all the different DC characters fit together in a cohesive universe just as neatly, as we've already seen in animation with the DCAU or with The Brave and the Bold.
But that's exactly my point -- that there isn't just one way of defining Batman.
On the contrary. Let's take a look at the live-action cinematic versions of Batman that preceded Nolan's:
Batman, 1943 serial: Government agents Batman and Robin battle a Japanese prince/scientist and his fanciful high-tech inventions, including an atomic death ray and a zombifying machine.
Batman and Robin, 1949 serial: Batman and Robin battle the scientist-villain the Wizard, who wreaks havoc first with a remote-control ray and then a disintegrator ray, and then both of them combined, which somehow adds up to an invisibility ray.
Batman, 1966 feature film: A continuation of the Adam West sitcom universe, in which a team of supervillains employs skywriting Polaris missiles, flying jet-umbrellas, and a dehydration ray -- also notable for introducing Bat Shark Repellent.
The Tim Burton films: Perceived at the time as a darker, more realistic take on Batman, they're nonetheless as campy in their own way as the Adam West version, and set in a larger-than-life, hyperstylized, Tim Burton-style world. Batman Returns in particular features villains who are a mutant penguin-man living in the sewers and a woman who rises from the dead, and culminates with Batman battling an army of mind-controlled kamikaze penguins.
The Joel Schumacher films: The most campy and fanciful interpretation of Batman in screen history, even beyond the '66 and Burton versions, with magic mind-control rays and diamond-powered freeze rays and nothing that makes any kind of realistic sense.
The simple fact is, we never got a "down-to-earth" live-action screen version of Batman until 2005. Before Nolan came along, the most grounded, serious big-screen Batman we'd seen was the animated one in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The previous screen versions of Batman were all fanciful enough that they could easily have launched spinoffs with other DC heroes in the same universe -- though it's uncertain whether we'd have wanted to see them.
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