Question: will the HUGE success of the Avengers movie motivate DC to do a JLA flick?

[Dreg]

Again, depends on the take.

Superman II saw him give up his power and become 'mortal' for the love of a woman. Which, it might be argued was HIS personal desire. He wasn't thinking of anyone else there really except himself... maybe Lois.

And he ended up regretting the decision and he ended up having to ask for his powers back.

And Batman -- we see one of Bruce's first outings -- before he has the costume -- and he falls off a fire escape and almost gets himself caught by the GCPD. He let Scarecrow gas him with the fear toxin and he had to call his butler for help!

When the Joker gives Batman a choice between saving Dent and saving Rachel people kind of forget or gloss over the fact that Batman headed to the location the Joker said RACHEL was at. He intended to leave Dent for the GCPD. Rachel was the more important one for him. And as it turned out the Joker knew it too and he lied to him. Batman let the Joker get the better of him because of his feelings for Rachel. And it got her killed.

the comic books' "Tower of Babel" storyline was pretty much all about Batman's paranoia being used against the JLA and that fact actually broke the team for a while. Because control freak Batman couldn't fully trust his teammates.

Superman gave up being Superman for love only so he could renounce his humanity in an even more selfless act. Batman leaving Dent for the GCPD was also far from a death sentence, because the GCPD were trained for these situations. Any defeats Batman might have suffered were due to the physical reality that he was a human being.

And in every one of those examples, the heroes are doing a noble thing. They might falter a bit at the execution, but even the pursuit of love is far from a character flaw.

All of my favorite scenes in the Avengers could not be replicated by DC heroes, because DC heroes would never behave like the Hulk. They would never behave like Tony Stark. Even Thor, as larger-than-life as he is, is more human, entertainingly up-his-own-ass, and fallible than any of the Justice League. I'm not saying that DC heroes are inferior, just that the heroes in the Avengers each lent something unique to the blend that you can't get simply by replacing Iron Man with Batman and Thor with Superman. To make a successful Justice League movie, they can't try to be the Avengers, they have to be the Justice League, and play things more straight.

[Stressfactor]

Didn't Superman ask Batman to create those counter-measures in the first place?

Yes, BUT only for himself. And he ASKED for it.

Batman then took the bit and ran with it -- creating counter measures for the others behind their backs and without their knowledge.

Bats probably would have been forgiven if he'd just stood up at a meeting one day and said "Look, we've all seen various members get possessed, mind controlled, what have you. I want to create counter measures that could stop each of you if that sort of thing happened again."

There would probably be some debate and some back and forth but in the end the other members probably would have agreed. And they wouldn't have had to have known the SPECIFIC counter measures.

But instead he did it all behind their backs making it appear to them as if he didn't trust them.


And if you carry it too far you end end up with the whole "Batman is a dick" problem we had in the lead-up to "Infinite Crisis".

In short there needs to be balance.

Tony Stark can be the fun-loving playboy... to a certain extent. Carry it too far and you end up with a character no one takes seriously.

Peter Parker can be a 'loveable loser' but if all he does is 'lose' and he never has any good things happen then he becomes that emo kid that no one likes to hang around with.

Batman can be the control freak with a plan for everything in his pocket but make him too much of that and you end up with 'Bat-dick'.

Superman can be supremely powerful but still be human. He can stand for anyone coming from another culture or coming from a mixed culture background -- how to not lose sight of your heritage while at the same time embracing the society you grew up in. Balancing job and home life and not becoming a workaholic. But if you take any one of those things too far -- make him too powerful, make him the perfect human, then he becomes as interesting as wallpaper paste.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Bats probably would have been forgiven if he'd just stood up at a meeting one day and said "Look, we've all seen various members get possessed, mind controlled, what have you. I want to create counter measures that could stop each of you if that sort of thing happened again."

When you're dealing with some members who can phase through stuff, mind control you, or move at near-light or faster than light speeds, he may as well not have bothered to create the measures if he's going to tell them about it.

[The Funketeer]

DC had a Justice League movie in active development with a director (George Miller) and many of the roles cast but it was derailed by the writers strike. The Avengers success isn't a formula that can be quickly replicated. The events that led up to the film took years. A big part of the reason it was successful was because it took heroes (and actors) that pre-existed in the MOVIE universe and brought them together on a team. You can't just recast Superman and Batman and expect people to get excited. They need to be familiar with the characters and a good actor's portrayal of them before they'll get worked up over a team up.

GL and the upcoming Superman would have been a good starting point but GL was a dud and how popular the Superman movie wil be remains to be seen. Christian Bale has also already declined participating in anything like this so that would mean someone playing Batman other than the guy who helped it make a billion dollars at the box office.

[Shurato2099]

WB/DC needs to get it through their heads that not all of DC's characters need to be brooding loners: that's Batman's turf. The rest of them are more upbeat, even inspirational. If WB takes anything away from the success of Avengers it should be this: take your time, do it right and make it fun. Avengers had people laughing out loud and applauding in a way that I simply haven't seen with any of the recent DC films.

[Corrina]

I usually don't like superhero movies because, in the past, I've had trouble getting post how hokey the real-life looks next to the comic book art & panels.

But the special effects have gotten so good that it's become far less of a problem for me. And I was thinking about why I loved the Avengers so damn much. As much as I loved the first Iron Man, I liked this better.

I think the reasons are twofold:
1. There's a moment where each and every one of them get to be a "hero," and I mean that in the truest sense of the word.
2. There's a sense of wonder that permeates the film. It doesn't overwhelm it, as they're all still very human, but it adds in the "super" part better than any movie since the first Superman.

The tagline for the first Superman film was "you will believe a man can fly." And we did. Superman's rescue of Lois' copter remains a classic.

Similarly, there are moments in The Avengers film where the eyes literally pop open for each of those heroes, moments where a viewer goes "WHOA, DUDE!"

I like the Nolan Batman films but there really isn't a moment, despite all the action sequences, that felt like that for Batman. Superman Returns had that one brief shining moment of the plane being rescued but that didn't last (and Lois was all wrong during the scene.) I think GL was going for it but that movie is just such a mosh of stuff, with so much coming at the viewer, that confusion is the result, not awe or wonder.

There's a moment in DC: The New Frontier where Jimmy Olsen has Wonder Woman in his camera focus during the climatic battle that's framed for maxium awe & wonder. (Jimmy even says it out loud.)

The Marvel movies combine those moments with characters we care about and then it all works, for the most part. DC's movies have it severely lacking. I don't know if it's because Nolan is more of a noir filmmaker or what but somehow his movies, despite all their action, lack that moment for me.

Whedon got it exactly right. Maybe it's his familiarity with superheroes or his work with Buffy, a "hot chick w/superpowers," according to the finale, but there are those moments in Buffy too, especially in the finale where Willow's spell takes hold. Moments that make you back up and drop your jaw and widen your eyes and think "AWESOME."

ETA: Maybe that's what I find lacking in much of Geoff Johns work. The ultimate successful fanboy seems to set up those moments but they feel forced to me a great deal of the time.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Corrina, I think you're onto something here about why certain superhero movies work more for me than others.

I think many of them TRY for the awe factor, but only the really great movies nail it. And when it feels forced or is lacking, the lovie doesn't really grab what makes superheroes fun for me.

Perfect example? Space Cloud Galactus.

[CutterMike]

Doubtless, it will. Equally doubtless -- not to put too fine a pont on it -- being Warner's, they'll do it badly.

I would argue that Nolan's Batman series -- in terms of relatively recent Warner's superhero movies -- a three-picture fluke. It is yet to be determined whether Man of Steel can redeem the Superman franchise.

Other than that, of the classic DC characters they've given us Halle Berry as PETA-Catwoman, Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern, Shaquille O'Neal as John Henry Irons... and are they still talking about the Green-Arrow-in-prison-without-any-arrows movie, or have they dropped that in favor of the Green-Arrow-as-a-trust-fund-baby-hiding-his-costume-from-his-mom TV series?

That said, a Nolan-esque Batman teamed with a Donner-style "The world is really a Nice Place" Superman could make an interesting core for a JL movie -- use them as the two opposite poles of the team and fill in the center with Wonder Woman -- the hereditary warrior who wants to show the world that being nice is the way -- sitting pretty much in the middle as the mediator between their two extremes. Add other characters as needed.

On a side note -- the Flash is going to be a particularly tricky character to do well. The problem is that we know, unconsciously, how physics works in the real world and, thus far, the versions of the Flash that we've seen haven't matched that. Currently, the two methods to denote super-speed are either to run the film really fast, or run everything except the hero in slo-mo and neither one really solves the physics problem..

Example: Whether you hop from one foot to another or run at full speed, you are pushing yourself UP against gravity, as well as FORWARD, so that you can establish a steady cadence where you take the same amount of time between your feet touching the ground. This is because, however fast you're moving FORWARD, gravity is pulling you DOWN at a constant speed; if you don't push up with each step, you drop closer to the ground every time that you're in the air. Thus, simply speeding up the film when the Flash is running looks wrong to our subconscious minds, because he' dropping too quickly with each step. At high speed, he should be covering thirty or forty feet with each stride. The closest that we've seen to a physically correct "super-speed" was the scene in Donner's Superman where young Clark outruns the train. As I recall, they dangled the stunt man in a harness from the back of a truck and drove at speed while he ran as fast as he could, letting his feet touch down whenever they naturally would.

Interestingly, Marvel -- for all that their characters are generally fantastical -- has USED the physics issues to better effect to ground their characters in reality. In "Captain America" they touched on this where Steve is chasing the Nazi agent through Brooklyn , runs around the corner and doesn't compensate for his newly acquired speed by leaning into the turn and ends up running through the store window. In the Ed Norton "Hulk" movie, Bronski, having taken the super-soldier serum, solves the problem of changing direction 180º by running up am abstract sculpture and flipping backwards. THIS is the sort of problem that the Flash should have to deal with, if we want him to look believable.

[Thequeerjock]

I'm wondering if you could even do a JLA movie at this point and not have it shouted down and called a rip-off. Even Stan Lee said recently he was utterly baffled that the Avengers managed to make it to the big screen before the Justice League.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm wondering if you could even do a JLA movie at this point and not have it shouted down and called a rip-off. Even Stan Lee said recently he was utterly baffled that the Avengers managed to make it to the big screen before the Justice League.

This is actually a good point. And the only way to stop that from happening would be to have Bale as Batman, but he doesn't want to do it from what I hear.