Justice League Movie: Why The Delay?

The "DC Comics Better Than Marvel/Marvel Better Than DC Comics" has raged endlessly for decades. Personally, as a fan of both, my stand on that issue is: they both have their good and bad points. End of story.

The highpoint of each brand, however, is when their individual characters team up: in DC, it’s the Justice League and with Marvel, it’s The Avengers. 

Of course, there are more teams (Teen Titans, Guardians of the Galaxy) but… you know what I’m talking about.

Marvel has already got the ball rolling with their highly successful film, The Avengers, with a sequel on the horizon for 2015, in spite of the fact that the team’s lineup consists of what would be considered “B-Team” characters (let’s be honest: Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Fantastic Four are more popular than Captain America, Thor and Iron Man).

Justice League, on the other hand, found success in the animated TV show Justice League prior to animated films like Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and Justice League: Doom. Most people, even if they’ve never picked up a comic book, are confused about Green Lantern being a white guy because their knowledge of the green-ringed dude is that of John Stewart. 

There was also a Justice League film in the works in 2009 with Mad Max director, George Miller, at the helm before it got cancelled. A film was rumoured in the works at the beginning of 2013 by Will Beal of Gangster Squad fame before it was chucked aside over reports that the script was "terrible". The latest now is that with the success of the Superman reboot, Man of Steel, a Justice League movie is slowly on the way a la the Marvel route.

Question is: why has it taken DC so long to get about it? A JLA movie is practically a goldmine.         

The matter is, if the Avengers movie was a dream come true for fans, a Justice League movie is Nirvana.  I’m not speaking as a DC Comics fan but that of someone who is a fan of both camps. 

First and foremost, DC's JLA line-up is killer.

Marvel has a creative problem and that is their 3 most famous properties— Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four— reside with Sony Pictures and 20^th Century Fox respectively. In the comics, the former two play a major role in the team. In the films, legal problems prevent it from being so even though the Oscorp Tower from The Amazing Spider-Man was initially scheduled to make an appearance in the New York skyline of The Avengers but it had already been rendered in the Visual Effects before both parties reached a decision. With the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fox is keen to create their own shared universe between the mutants and FF, DOFP being a sort of reboot button to everything (that’s not how their talk about it but it’s obvious). Whether there will be a day when Fox, Sony and Marvel Studios agree to share their cinematic universes is all up in the air but I guarantee you, the day that happens, then The Avengers will become REALLY popular. Because everyone— and I mean, everyone— would be extremely thrilled to see Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine clash with Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man compared to an alien invasion. 

DC does not have such a problem. They are free to select their line-up and fans will be certain to get favourites like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash sharing the same screen without worrying about any legal issues. That’s why we’re getting a Batman-Superman team-up in 2015 and we won’t get a Wolverine vs. Spider-Man film anytime soon. 

DC’s lineup is one for the ages. Marvel’s lineup is equally impressive albeit in the comics.

Secondly, epic stories.

 

The Avengers had one god— two, counting Loki. The rest were a man in a suit of armour, a super soldier from another era, a man with anger issues and two spies.

The Justice League is basically full of gods— it’s like a bunch of Thor clones coming together. Superman’s abilities speak for themselves. Wonder Woman is an Amazonian and can go toe-to-toe with Superman without impunity. Aquaman controls the oceans. Flash is the fastest being alive. Green Lantern can construct anything he imagines with his ring. Cyborg can hack into all the computers in the world. And Batman, with no superpowers, is the smartest tactician of the team.

Alien invasions can’t be on the scale of the Chitauri because Superman neutralised a similar and far more dangerous threat in Man of Steel by himself. Whatever threat brings these gods together has to be an extremely massive one like that in The New 52’s formation: Darkseid’s invasion. Once that’s established, it’s easier to tear them apart because of their massive-sized egos and because of how much significance their actions can have (think Mark Waid’s Tower of Babel or even the threat of David Graves in the New 52 which led to Hal Jordan’s resignation from the team). 

The latter is a storyline seemingly to be explored in the sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, but come on— seeing Superman’s, Batman’s and Wonder Woman’s friendships being torn apart is more impacting than Iron Man, Captain America and Thor disagreeing with each other (note: if Iron Man and Hulk become distant, I’d be hurt because that was the best part about the Avengers).

Thirdly, it’s the Justice League.

In terms of popularity, the Justice League has always been more famous than the Avengers, thanks to the excellent animated series from Bruce W. Timm and Paul Dini whose previous credits include the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series— even if only Supes and Bats have had a successful career on the big screen. Iron Man is famous now thanks to Robert Downey Jr. but before the films, the character of Tony Stark was nowhere near the level of Spider-Man, Daredevil, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

DC Comics needs to emulate Marvel’s formula to generate success— not just in having solo films leading to a team up but by firstly, having a strong focused producer like Kevin Feige and secondly, hiring a creative architect like Marvel has with Joss Whedon and Fox with Mark Millar. DC Comics seem to be doing that by handing those reins to Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer… which doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence given their pretty underwhelming and critically divisive resumes (Man of Steel is a great example).

With a new Superman already established in the form of Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck signed on as the new Batman and Glee actor Grant Gustin chosen to play Barry Allen a.k.a The Flash in the second season of Arrow, the question on everyone’s mind is: are all these pieces coming together to form a Justice League movie? Using cross-platform of television and film to establish the heroes is a novel approach, one originally considered by Ron Howard for his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.   

It remains to be seen but DC Comics seriously needs to be shaken out of its stupor or at least have the incompetent people kicked out for having taken so long to get a DC Cinematic Universe underway.