Secret Origins

Yes, I’ve crawled back out of my hole after only a few days to do what I do so well; bore you endlessly with geeky nonsense!

If you patrol movie news websites as tirelessly as I do, you’re no doubt aware of all the movement that’s happening on the Justice League movie.

The word is that Warner Brothers is keen to get a JL movie happening as soon as possible, with a strike looming on the horizon that looks likely to shut down all Hollywood productions for however long (I remember a few years back there was a similar situation with both the Screen Actors’ Guild and the Writer’s Guild, but nothing ever came from it except a bunch of unnecessary panic; sort of like the creatively-minded Y2K).

The rumour at the moment is that Warners wants Justice League on movie screens by 2009, sinking the Superman Returns sequel and possibly a third Nolan/Bale Batman film into this effort instead. The whole thing is feeling really rushed, with a screenplay written by a couple of untested writers (the couple who did last minute re-write work on Mr and Mrs Smith and … well, that’s about it). Both George Miller and McG have been rumoured to direct (Miller, a solid and interesting choice. McG a horrible, horrible idea).

Christian Bale’s more or less gone on record as being quite unenthusiastic about the idea of his Batman being shoehorned so roughly into a Justice League film this early in the Bat-franchise. Brandon Routh’s just desperate for more work. And Ryan Reynolds is still so keen on donning the Flash’s scarlet togs that he’s fielding people’s questions about his knowledge of the JL film.

I’m seriously wary about this whole thing. Both X-Men 3 and Catwoman are examples of comic book properties that were rushed into production to fit a studio’s timetable, rather than being given the time they needed to develop naturally, and we all know how they turned out.

Justice League should be the comic book movie to end all comic book movies. It should be the definitive word on the subject. It should be epic with a capital E (and perhaps a nice, saucy, Frenchy flourish of ending in ‘ique’). It should deliver a majesty and grandeur to the screen that audiences have never before seen in their blockbuster films. It shouldn’t be something rushed out in hopes of cashing some cheques before a strike. It shouldn’t be done in a way that steps on the toes of the talent behind and in-front-of the scenes.

The good news is it’s said the script incorporates 6 of the Big 7 (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Flash, Aquaman and Green Lantern), with the plan to use this movie as a launching pad for those characters currently without film franchises.

But really, how demonstrably retarded is Warners that they have these characters – and dozens more! – in their stables, and yet they haven’t been able to deliver any movies of them! You have one of the world’s biggest movie studios with exclusive rights to most of the world’s biggest brand name comic characters and they haven’t done a damned thing with them!

We’re up to five Superman films and we’re going on to six Batman films, and yet the most they’ve been able to get out of the Green Lantern concept is an aborted pitch for a Jack Black comedy vehicle in the vein of The Mask. It seems Warners has a higher percentage of braindead development executives than the average studio.

I could rant about this all day long (I haven’t even touched on the disappointing exclusion of the Martian Manhunter from the JL film, or the ridiculousness of the Catwoman movie being in no way based on the DC character and instead being a continuation of the Batman Returns concept from over a decade previous, created entirely by a hack Hollywood screenwriter to fill a hole by the Batman film being pushed back).

I’ll leave it here for the time being, though, as I guess the only person who might actually read this would be Peter, and the rest of you are no doubt bored with my comic book / movie talk.

But it’s certainly an interesting time to be a Justice League fan, one way or the other.