Justice League Part III

Let's talk some more Justice League currently due to come out in 2017.

In Justice League Part I, I discussed DC Comics' biggest failing up until now while making movies with the biggest failing of all being the fact that their heroes have been too good and their villains too bad.  In Justice League Part II, I talked about the most important thing when adapting a superhero, that is, the relationship between that hero's mortal persona and their super persona.  This is referred to as their Mortal-Super Relationship or MSR.

Many different development strategies have been considered for the Justice League movie.  For obvious reasons, this movie has been frequently compared to Marvel's extremely successful counterpart, The Avengers (2012).  As such, it only makes sense to consider it.

Marvel's strategy began with the individuals.  Each of the main heroes was established in a movie of their own with hints about an Avengers movie being dropped with increasing frequency and blatancy.  This was an incredibly successful model for them because no such thing had been done before.  It also got the nerd world buzzing about the movie, and kept them trying to work out the movie along the way.

Here's the deal, though:  the nerd world has already been talking about a Justice League movie and trying to figure it out since hints of The Avengers began.

Because of this, another model has been considered.  Namely, the suggestion has been to start with the team, and spin off the individual movies.  The idea here is that they would establish some of the better known heroes in movies leading up to Justice League and then after establishing them in the team-up movie and getting them in the public eye, work up their individual movies.

Superman has already been established in this new universe.  Batman is set to be established in the next.  This is arguably the two most important characters in the DC Universe and particularly in the Justice League.  Clearly they will be major players in the Justice League movie, but who else should be in it?  In my opinion, that must depend on the story.

Why would all of the world's most powerful heroes be required to team up?  What force in the DC Universe would have the power to bring them together?  Who's going to be the villain?

In virtually all of the comic book origin stories of the Justice League, they are brought together to fight off an alien invasion.  This is a very good and obvious reason to bring them together.  The obvious choice would be to bring the villain Darkseid across the universe with an invasion force, but honestly DC needs to distance themselves from The Avengers as much as possible.  They're already behind the competition on this major team-up.  The last thing they need is to be accused of ripping them off.  The Avengers created a very successful alien invasion, and I'm sorry to say, I wouldn't expect DC to live up to that.

Thus, I must suggest they distance themselves from Darkseid for this first movie and look to other, earth-based villains.  Whatever the conflict is, it must be on a global scale and there must be some epic fight at the end.  That's just simply what people want to see.  To me, this means that you need a villainous mastermind.  Luckily, DC Comics has several of those.

Often, the people that the Justice League would fight would be some kind of large-scale villainous team-up with someone heading up the organization of the criminals.  Unfortunately, with their current time-table, DC simply doesn't have enough time to establish enough villains for this to work.  It really needs to be one, maybe two villains.  After digging through several articles (most of which suggest Darkseid), I would suggest going with the second most suggested DC villain:  Vandal Savage.

Savage's basic premise is that he is brilliant, power-hungry, and immortal.  In the animated movie Justice League: Doom (2012), he managed to bring together all of the Justice League's greatest villains, steal contingency plans from Batman, discover Batman's identity, and incapacitate the entire League.  If Cyborg hadn't conveniently been around, his plan would have succeeded without a single hitch.  Imagine that he had managed to get his associates (potentially along with some familiar power-hungry faces like Lex Luthor) planted and lined up in every major government in the world, then all at once, unleashed a wave of assassins (possibly including some well-known characters, such as Deathstroke) who take out the heads of state, leaving Savage's people in charge.  They then turn over power to him, and he is ruler of the world.

This would be in the very beginning of the movie.  It would be sudden, swift, and flawless.  The movie should then focus on Superman, who is well established by previous movies.  He should be distraught, confused, and feeling rather powerless.  He knows that he should do something, but isn't sure what, because, in reality, Clark Kent is not very confident.

Enter Batman.

Batman is paranoid.  He always has been.  In the animated Justice League movie I mentioned before, he had very elegant and effective plans in place to take down every single member of the Justice League.  It would only make sense that if there were super-powered beings around the globe, Batman would know about them.  He comes to Superman with information about several other heroes who were less conspicuous in their actions, because Batman doesn't have the public reputation that Superman does.  While Batman was dodging the authorities even before Savage's takeover, Superman has a reputation and image that these people can unite behind.  Thus, Superman goes out to recruit the Justice League.

In my perfect movie, here is the League:

• Superman takes the lead.  He brings the group together to fight back against Savage and topple his regime.  He very reluctantly becomes the public face of the team.  He would spend a short montage meeting with several heroes who will turn him down.  When the League finally meets for the first time, he tries to appear hopeful and optimistic, but is ultimately disappointed by the turnout.
• Barry Allen as the fast-talking joker Flash, who received the power of super speed in a lab accident.  He would be a large source of comic relief, but still very driven.  He would be at odds with some of the other team members with accusations flying of him not taking things seriously.  If I got my way, he would die by the end and pass his mantle on to his nephew, Wally West.  His MSR wouldn't be very complex.  Much like Spider-Man, he would be much funnier as Flash and a bit more serious as Barry Allen.
• Princess Diana of Themyscira as the fearsome and beautiful Amazon warrior Wonder Woman.  She would be young and inexperienced.  Superman would come to Themyscira, the island home of the Amazons, and ask the Amazons for their help in fighting Savage, but the queen of the Amazons, Diana's mother, would refuse, saying that it isn't their fight.  Diana would then, in an act of rebellion, fly off to join the League in their fight.  She would be referred to as Diana throughout the movie and only be called Wonder Woman at the very end, perhaps in a newspaper headline or something.  Thus, her MSR would be non-existent.
• John Stewart as the rigid and militaristic Green Lantern.  The Green Lanterns are essentially an intergalactic police force.  John Stewart was a marine who, in the comics, was selected to be a backup for Hal Jordan.  In my universe, Hal Jordan would have disappeared and Stewart would have been chosen as his replacement.  In doing so, he would have given up his previous life and fully committed to being a Lantern.  Because of his military training, he would try to take the lead, but would ultimately find himself at odds with other members (particularly Flash) and yield to Superman.  To recruit him, Superman would travel to Oa, the Green Lantern headquarters to ask for their help.  Due to having given up his life on Earth, Stewart would also have no MSR.
• The dark, mysterious and unpredictable Black Adam.  People who know who this is are currently screaming at me from across cyberspace to tell me that I'm an idiot.  Black Adam is the main antagonist of the hero Shazam (formerly Captain Marvel).  However, he is also well established as an anti-hero, that is a much darker more violent superhero who isn't always such a good guy.  He would push for a direct approach of simply killing Savage and moving on with the world.  Nothing of his past would be revealed.  He would simply show up at the meeting and force his way onto the team.  He would be at odds with Superman who would be trying to find a more peaceful approach.  Taking a hint from Marvel's movies, there would be a cut scene after the credits with him talking to a boy that he has imprisoned who he will simply refer to as Billy.

Noticeably, Batman is absent from this roster.  In this movie, he would not actually be a member of the League on principle.  He would, however, be present throughout the movie, spying on the meetings, dropping clues, and helping out in fights.  But he would not ever officially join them.

As far as building the universe and revealing characters, DC doesn't have a whole lot of time to work with before they plan on releasing this movie.  Batman vs. Superman (2015) is their next scheduled movie.  This leaves time for only one, maybe two other films if they rush them.  With the storyline the way I would set it up, Wonder Woman and Black Adam would actually be hindered by lead-in movies.  I also feel that while Green Lantern (2011) was an awful movie that DC should leave as far in their past as possible, it did have enough popularity that the basic idea of the Green Lanterns is established in the public eye.  Thus, I don't feel that he would need a lead-in movie either.  Since Superman and Batman will both be established after the next movie, I believe that DC should turn their attention to Flash and establish the characters of Barry Allen and Wally West.

After this Justice League movie, DC would be set with characters to spin off.  They could go from their and make Shazam, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and, of course, sequels galore!  If they were smart enough to follow my advice, Aquaman could be established in a Wonder Woman movie and Booster Gold and/or Martian Manhunter could be set up in a Justice League sequel.

So there you have it, DC Comics.  I just handfed you a Justice League movie that would give them enough distance from The Avengers to be successful in addition to setting them up for success on future movies.

What do you think?  Would this movie work?  Would it be successful?  Does anyone have a better idea?  Leave some comments with your thoughts!

And if you're a producer working with DC Comics and like what you've read, send me an email!  I'd LOVE to hear from you!

Justice League Part II

Let's talk some more Justice League currently due to come out in 2017.

In Justice League Part I, I talked quite a bit about what DC Comics has done wrong in the past and my biggest concern with a Justice League movie.  Now, let's talk about what some (not me) would argue to be the most important part of a superhero movie:  the hero.

The most important thing to understand when considering a superhero is the relationship between the two potential personas.  Do they have a secret identity?  Do they wear some kind of disguise?  How different do they act when in their mortal identity instead of their super identity?  This is the foundation of what makes the superhero genre what it is.

The sequel to Man of Steel (2013) is set to introduce the newest reboot of Batman.  This movie, currently very cleverly called Batman vs. Superman and set to come out in 2015, is of particular interest because of who we all expect to be the two main characters.  Batman and Superman are two of the most important superheroes in superhero history partially because they are two of the first, but more importantly because they represent the two poles of the superhero globe:  one dark, one light.  One believes in the best of humanity, the other believes in the worst.

Since the two heroes are so very polarized, it isn't surprising that they represent two extremes when it comes to the relationship between their super persona and their mortal persona.  In their particular cases, the most important point is which came first.

Bruce Wayne declared war on crime and became Batman after his parents were killed in front of him as a child.  Worse yet, most versions of the story suggest that the family either went to the theater or left early because of him.  Rough stuff.  He was just a kid and from that moment on, he was Batman.  Everything he did in his life was for the sole purpose of fighting crime in Gotham.  Later, when he finally started his campaign, he created the persona of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne to protect his identity as Batman.

Kal-El was born on the planet Krypton and was sent in a small space ship to Earth just before Krypton's destruction.  He crash landed on the farm of John and Martha Kent just outside of Smallville, Kansas, where he is raised as Clark Kent.  Later, after moving to Metropolis and becoming a reporter, as his powers develop and he learns to control them, he feels a sense of responsibility that leads to the creation of his identity as Superman.

These two are interesting because they both came to similar conclusions.  Both have dual personas that are complete opposites and both work very hard to keep people convinced that the two are not the same person.  However, their is one subtle and distinct difference.

Clark Kent disguises himself as Superman.  Batman disguises himself as Bruce Wayne.

Clark Kent had a childhood and grew up.  He created Superman in order to step out of his timid persona and be something more.  Clark Kent created Superman.  On the other hand, Bruce Wayne had his childhood stripped away and turned himself into Batman.  There is never a time that Batman isn't Batman.  Bruce Wayne only exists as a way of funding Batman's endeavors and throwing his enemies off his trail.  Batman created Bruce Wayne.

I believe that in order to successfully portray a superhero, you must master that particular hero's relationship between their mortal and super selves.

For Superman, Clark Kent is the primary.  He should be natural and somewhat shy.  He's a small-town boy living in a big city.  Superman is an act.  He should pretend to be full of bravado and completely good, but it must be completely clear that it isn't real.  He shouldn't be particularly noble or self-assured, but rather should be trying to convince other people that he is.  The actual person should be flawed and self-doubting, but feign an air of confidence out of necessity, trying to live up to people's expectations.

For Batman, Bruce Wayne is an act.  The true character is dark and brooding.  He is constantly consumed by his war on crime and thinks of nothing else at all times.  Bruce Wayne should very clearly be an act.  He should pretend to be a billionaire playboy because that is what people expect of him.  He should seem to be care-free and a little bit of an ignorant ditz who only cares about himself while actually being a brilliant detective who has sacrificed a normal life to protect others.

These are two poles of the mortal-super relationship, but they are not the only types of relationships.  There are other examples, such as Tony Stark/Iron Man.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark makes his mortal-super relationship (MSR) very clear from the first movie when he says, "I am Iron Man."  His MSR is quite simple:  there isn't one.  The entire second movie is about the idea that you cannot separate Iron Man from Tony Stark because they are one and the same.  The third Iron Man movie goes a step further and (spoilers) actually strips him of his armor.  However, this doesn't stop him from being Iron Man.  He never drops the fight or quits using brilliantly designed tools and weapons.  They just look a bit different.

We now have the two biggest foundations for a successful Justice League movie.  Keep it in the grey area and be sure to understand each hero's MSR.  With the two of these in mind, how should DC Comics actually go about piecing this movie together?  Find out in the exciting conclusion of this three-part analysis:  Justice League Part III.

Justice League Part I

Let's talk Justice League currently due to come out in 2017.

This movie has so much potential that I'm almost sad that it's being left in the hands of DC Comics.  No offense to the company, which has some excellent comics and amazing characters, but with the exception of the Dark Knight trilogy, they haven't really mastered the art of movies.

Let's consider their track record in the last decade:

• Catwoman (2004) directed by Pitof Comar and starring Halle Berry.  I'll admit that I never saw this movie, but it has a meager 9% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  That's pretty sorry.  Several reliable superhero sources of mine, including the illustrious Dr. Deadpool, with whom I got to take a superhero class during my last semester of college, it was a miserable flop.
• Batman Begins (2005) directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale.  This was a really great and extremely underrated movie.  It's also part of the aforementioned Dark Knight trilogy, and is, therefore, not subject to the DC curse.
• Superman Returns (2006) directed by Bryan Singer and starring Brandon Routh.  This incredible example of a failure to relaunch tried to make itself both a reboot and a sequel for the previous Superman film franchise.  Unfortunately, rather than actually being a sequel to the entire franchise, it picked up after the second movie in a four part series.  This left it confusing for both people who hadn't seen the previous movies (who had no idea why Superman left in the first place) and people who had seen the previous movies (who had no idea why Superman was returning AGAIN).  Ultimately, flop.
• The Dark Knight (2008) directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale and (more importantly) Heath Ledger.  This is a movie that could have (and probably should have) been at least two movies.  It was pretty fantastic, but is also protected from the DC curse by the Dark Knight shield.
• Green Lantern (2011) directed by Martin Campbell and starring Bryan Reynolds.  I can't even begin to explain what a waste of my life this movie was.  I'll admit that some (and I would like to very strongly emphasize the word SOME here) of the graphics made it fun to watch and none of the actors did a career-wrecking job, but this movie was just BAD.
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012) directed by Christopher Nolan and starring a whole bunch of people (because this movie did too much).  I really feel this is an underrated movie.  It didn't live up to the reputation its predecessors in the Dark Knight franchise did, but I really like the movie as a whole, particularly when considered as the ending it was always supposed to be.
• Man of Steel (2013) directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill.  This, I believe, has been an incredibly OVER-rated movie.  I think what bugs me most about this movie was the fact that it had all the right parts, but no one put them in the right places.  It had everything going for it (except the most important thing, but I'll come back to that), and still managed to be a failure.  Why?  Two words:  DC.

So here's the big question:  Why is DC so far behind its biggest competitor, Marvel Comics, when it comes to movies?

One obvious answer is that Marvel now had Disney backing them and it never hurts to have the Mouse at your back, but that isn't the real reason.  The real reason is much bigger and a much larger epidemic in superhero movies as a whole.  In fact, I would be willing to argue that virtually every superhero movie that has ever failed fell for this simple little mistake that I can some up in one word that makes my skin crawl:

Dichotomy.

Basically, it's too black-and-white.  The good guys are completely good.  You have to agree with every single thing they do, because it's ALWAYS the right thing.  On the other side, the bad guys and completely bad.  You never doubt whether what they're doing is wrong.  You never question whether it's wrong to hate them, because they are pure EVIL.

Consider Man of Steel (spoilers):  The biggest moral question that Superman had to face is whether or not to kill General Zod.  Unfortunately, the audience had decided long before that his death was a given.  He straight up said that he was genetically programmed to kill.  We never question whether terraforming the Earth was bad because both Zod and Superman showed that it wasn't necessary.  Kryptonians and humans could live on the same planet no problem.  He had no reason except spite and malice to destroy mankind.

This, I'm afraid, is going to be DC's biggest hurdle in creating a movie franchise successful enough to make Justice League work.  They need to corrupt their good guys and make us empathize with the bad.

Batman has worked because he floats around in the grey area.  That's the whole point of Batman.  In the Dark Knight trilogy, he works so far outside the law that he's hunted by the police more passionately than bank robbers.  He actually seems to cause as much trouble as he fixes.  More importantly, his villains are oddly relatable.  They continually show time and again that there is a fine line between what they do and what Batman does, and that is compelling story-telling.

Think about the much more successful Marvel movie characters.  Iron Man is a jerk.  Thor is so arrogant that he was banished.  Loki just wants to be loved.  Hulk has anger management issues.  Captain America can't move on from the past.  Xavier takes over the body of a man with no way of stopping him.  Wolverine kills the woman he loves:  repeatedly.  Magneto is simply trying to save himself from having to live through the Holocaust again.

There need to be reasons to hate the good guys and reasons to love the bad guys.

With this thought in mind, DC still definitely has everything it needs in order to launch a successful Justice League movie.  What do they need to do in order to make it a success?  Check out Justice League Part II and Justice League Part III for my thoughts on characterization and universal development.

Now You See Me

Let's talk Now You See Me (2013) directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Mélanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman.

Imagine, if you will, fusing Ocean's 11 with The Prestige.  You are then close to the intrigue and grandeur of Now You See Me.  The movie centers around a group of magicians who refer to themselves as the Four Horsemen who are brought together for a series of shows, the first of which involves robbing a bank live on a Vegas stage.  Along for the ride are an FBI agent and his partner from Interpol who are trying to navigate the clues and tricks so they can catch the Horsemen and a professional magician debunker who stands to make a fortune revealing the secrets of the Horsemen's tricks to the world.

I've said for years that the best bank robber would be a truly great magician, because they would rob you blind before you ever realized it and somehow convince you that you enjoyed it.  It would seem based on this movie, that I was right . . . sort of.

With brilliant writing, a mostly good cast, some truly intriguing cinematography and a permeating theme of faith and trust, this movie managed to keep me guessing right up until the very end.  It truly reinforces one of its most well-worn lines "The closer you look, the less you'll see."  I would recommend this movie to anyone who thinks they've mastered the art of film prediction or just anyone willing to follow along and get swept up in the mystery and fun inherent in the best magic shows and the greatest heist movies.

 

- - - HERE COME THE SPOILERS - - -

 

The movie opens by telling you to "watch closely, because the closer you look, the less you'll see."  It opens by challenging its audience to try and riddle everything out, knowing full well that you probably won't.  One of the magicians even warns the FBI agent that the first rule of magic is to always be the smartest guy in the room, and I wouldn't doubt for a second that the writers of this movie are usually the smartest people in whatever room they find themselves.

By far, this movie's biggest strength is the thorough integration of magic into the plot.  Having rewatched it since my first viewing in theaters, the entire plot, the entire scheme of the Four Horsemen, is one long magic show.  The trick is figuring out who the audience is for the performance.  Here's a hint:  It's the person who ends up behind bars.  He goes through all of the phases that he himself warns the authorities about.  He falls into the trap of thinking he understands the trick.  He finds himself delighted, amused, and amazed right up until the very end.  He falls for all the misdirection, preventing him from seeing where the trick is actually happening until it's too late to save himself.

Some of the acting in this movie is amazing.  Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine both give performances I would expect from such seasoned actors.  Both of their characters revel in their own arrogance right up until the moment when they find themselves played by the Horsemen at which point they perfectly play off a character of that level of pomp's reaction to being duped.

Mark Ruffalo's brilliantly plays a frustrated and highly skeptical FBI agent which is infinitely better acted before the final trick is revealed than after.  Granted, I don't know how else he could have played the character at that point, since the writers didn't really give him much to work with.  Weak sauce.

Woody Harrelson was by far the highlight of this movie to me.  That may be because I'm so in love with his fast-talking, cynical, goofy humor that I don't realize that he's as mediocre in his acting as the rest of the Horsemen.  None of them stand out as hugely amazing performances, but, in their defense, part of that is because they are on stage for most of the movie which calls for a very intentionally cheesy type of acting.  Their greatest strength is the way they each managed to find their character and fully commit to it.  None of the Horsemen were anything like any of the others and that is a much more impressive feet than it sounds.

This movie's weakest element, I must say, is the fact that they cast what I consider to be a weak actress in as large a role as they did.  While it is completely possible that Mélanie Laurent is an incredible actress in her native tongue, in English, most of her lines sounded cheesy and forced.  This wouldn't be so bad if she was a smaller role, but she is in more scenes than almost anyone else.  It got old pretty quick.

One of the coolest scenes in the movie involves what one could call the rookie of the Horsemen.  Jack Wilder, played by Dave Franco, has a completely awesome moment where he is left behind to stall while the other three get away.  He does this by fighting off two FBI agents using his skills as a magician to do so.  He uses misdirection, sleight of hand, and various tools of the trade to leave both agents (along with a few others along the way) embarrassingly beaten and in the dust.  It's so much fun to see the way he integrates skills like pickpocketing, card throwing, and smoke and mirrors into his combat.

That integration of magical elements into mundane events is what really drives this movie.  For me, the slowest part of the movie came between the second and third shows, because I was having more fun with the magic than with the cop-talk.  Then I watched it through again, and realized that that was one of the most exciting points in the movie, because that is where the most amazing of the magic tricks is pulled off . . . one that I didn't even predict.

I loved this movie.  It was fun.  It was unpredictable.  It made you go back and rethink everything that happened multiple times.  The characters all played around in the grey area, no one fully good guys or fully bad guys.  It was a blast.

I give it two clubs and a cadaver.