DC "Universe" thread.

[Evildrider]

I figured we needed this now instead of bouncing between threads.

So first off there is this.
Bascially Rock is teasing that he's been cast as Shazam. Which I'm ok with, simply cuz I'm a Rock fanboy.

[jgsugden]

Now we have a thread to track the trainwreck as it unfolds.

I guess the good news is that they can't fall beneath my expectations.

[Velorath]

Even as a comic book fan, I continue to be completely indifferent regarding DC's movie plans.

[Evildrider]

Oh, I have no faith in wtf is going on with DC when it comes to their movie plans.  People still stop to look at train wrecks though.   

[jgsugden]

Just to repeat it in the official thread for the DCCU - I don't necessarily think it is all the fault of the powers-that-be at DC.  Their heroes are just not right for movies.  They're too powerful and too built upon concepts from nearly a century ago.  They don't make sense together, and they don't work on screen.  They have a few that can, but most of them are just so ridiculously powerful that any real 'threat' to them either has to be unrealistic, or we're going to see a quarter of the world's population die in each film.

However, beyond having a much harder job than Marvel, they've seemed to botch it at every turn.

[Tannhauser]

Someone in another thread said they already had three universes so the train has left the tracks before its left the station.

[jgsugden]

Someone in another thread said they already had three universes so the train has left the tracks before its left the station.

More than that:  Justice League, Arrow/Flash, Gotham, all the animated universes, Constantine, etc...

[HaemishM]

Their heroes are just not right for movies.

That is such a complete and utter bullshit cop out. Their characters are tailor made for over the top, blockbuster action movies so long as the creators actually respect the heart of the characters. I thought OTHER THAN THE ENDING, Man of Steel did a good job of portraying the character as well as his powers. It's only failure was in trying to ignore or "dirty-up" the 4-color nature of the character. Hell, a guy that dresses up as fucking Dracula made 3 hugely successful movies, successful both creatively and commercially. There is absolutely nothing in the Justice League that can't be filmed if done right.

That said, I'm positive the dickbags they have running the show at WB don't have clue fucking one how to pull this shit off.

[jgsugden]

The more 'powerful' the hero, the more unrealistic they seem. DC heroes are more powerful, in general, than Marvel's.  Superman outclasses everyone, but there are a good number of DC heroes that could wipe the floor with pretty much any Marvel character. 

Also, the less grounded in science the heroes powers are, the more unrealistic they seem.  Marvel's heroes were designed in response to the idea that DC's heroes were unrealistic products of the fantastic science fiction of the early 20th century.  DC has a few grounded heroes, but ther percentage of their core characters that are the products of inexplicable aliens, supernatural forces and the ilk (Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Dr. Fate, etc...) are much higher than Marvel - which based much of their initial cadre of heroes on science/evolution considered nearly a half centrury later (Hulk, FF, Spider-man, X-men, Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-man).  There are exceptions to the general rule for each (Batman and Flash (to an extent) in DC; Thor and Dr. Stange in Marvel), but the core of Marvel is grounded in something that 'makes more sense' than DC.

This is why Batman is the hero that has worked best for DC on film.  This is also why DC's first foray into super-powered people in the Arrowverse is Flash - he is one of the few DC big guns that is the product of science - making him more 'Marvel' than many other DC heroes.

I'm not saying a good DC film is impossible - I'm just saying that a movie about an alien with god-like powers is more difficult than a movie about a super-soldier, a man in an iron suit, a Dr.Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde  monster, etc...

[HaemishM]

The Flash got his powers from "lightning striking a vial of chemicals" or "the speed force" is no more "scientific or realistic" than Daredevil getting his radar sense from a radioactive waste bath to the dome or an irradiated spider biting a teenager. Superman is an alien who gets his strength from the sun is no less "realistic" than Thor the "space alien Earth people thought was a God with magic hammer."

You are talking utter shite.

[jgsugden]

The Flash got his powers from "lightning striking a vial of chemicals" or "the speed force" is no more "scientific or realistic" than Daredevil getting his radar sense from a radioactive waste bath to the dome or an irradiated spider biting a teenager. Superman is an alien who gets his strength from the sun is no less "realistic" than Thor the "space alien Earth people thought was a God with magic hammer."

You are talking utter shite.

Dude. 

I call out that Flash as getting on TV BECAUSE he has as much science/realistic as most of the Marvel science origins.  You pointing out that his origin is similar to many Marvel characters is repetition, not disagreement.

I mention Thor as an exception to the Marvel rule.  You saying Superman is like his is pointing out Superman is like the exception to the general Marvel rule. 

 

[HaemishM]

Green Lantern (Silver Age) is given his magic wishing ring by a space alien and joins the space cops. The Martian Manhunter is teleported to Earth from Mars by a scientist. Green Arrow becomes Robinson Crusoe and learns to build arrows on a desert island before building boxing glove arrows. Hawkman is an alien cop (or the reincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh or a bunch of other origins) with an anti-grav metal pair of wings.

Shazam and Wonder Woman's origins are about the only ones that are "fantastical." The rest are pretty clearly early '60's sci-fi and very in keeping with the Marvel origins of the time. The only difference is Marvel used "radiation" as their McGuffin instead of other things. Marvel doesn't own the exclusive right to science-y sounding origins, and that's not why Marvel's characters have been more filmable. They've been more filmable because the people in charge have a better grip on how to bring that shit to the big screen. Warner's comic movie division seems to be run by people who don't like or understand the characters they are being asked to adapt.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Cosmic rays~~~~

Edit: To prove Haemish's point, both fantastic four movies were utter pieces of shit that treated the heroes as caricatures and not seriously in any way even though it was a science-y back story.

[Riggswolfe]

Marvel doesn't own the exclusive right to science-y sounding origins, and that's not why Marvel's characters have been more filmable. They've been more filmable because the people in charge have a better grip on how to bring that shit to the big screen. Warner's comic movie division seems to be run by people who don't like or understand the characters they are being asked to adapt.

Haemish is spot-on. DC heroes aren't anymore un-filmable than Marvel and frankly, other than Spiderman, DC had a huge, huge advantage when the current round of comic book movies began. If you asked people to name Comic Book heroes back before the X-men movies people would say Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and maybe Spiderman. DC had name recognition and built-in audiences but they squandered it and have been afraid to take chances. Meanwhile Marvel is releasing a movie with a talking racoon and my hope is it'll make a lot of money. If it does it will be because, by and large, Marvel respects its own properties.

DC and WB? Not so much. They just don't get it. They saw a darker, grittier Batman make money and get critical acclaim and decided the smartest move was to make Superman dark and have his father tell him to avoid helping people because it'll suck if they find out what he can do. It's like these people don't even read their own comics! We'll see a Black Widow movie before Wonder Woman and that's just sad because everyone knows who Wonder Woman is but before Iron Man 2 only hardcore fans knew who Black Widow was.

Edit: If you want to see the ultimate proof of how DC properties can be done right, watch Arrow. Green Arrow is arguably one of their more ridiculous characters yet the writers of that show respect him and have figured out how to change him to fit the times yet still keep some of his core intact.

[Khaldun]

Nothing's absolutely unfilmable, though I'm not holding my breath for a great Ultra the Multi-Alien movie. But we've all had this discussion here before. To make a good film from certain starting points, you have to embrace certain kinds of premises. The DC Universe, if you're going the full Justice League, needs to not be scared of being bright and colorful and exaggerated. It has to be hyperreal--more than just a world where a man can fly, a world where gods can fight each other in the street (without thousands dying from every punch)  and yet still live in a recognizably contemporary human world. It needs to be fun.

Marvel's major cinematic custodians understand this better than DC's folks. But that's because DC's films are being made by people who are ashamed and confused about comic books.

[Velorath]

I'd love to see Marvel put out a Squadron Supreme/Supreme Power movie right after DC releases the Justice League movie,.

[Riggswolfe]

Nothing's absolutely unfilmable, though I'm not holding my breath for a great Ultra the Multi-Alien movie.

Honestly, I suspect Antman is going to be the first major Marvel failure but that's more because of the turmoil about getting it made as opposed to the character. That said, the character holds very little interest to me and strikes me as more of a supporting character than a character that needs his own movie.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Nothing's absolutely unfilmable, though I'm not holding my breath for a great Ultra the Multi-Alien movie.

Honestly, I suspect Antman is going to be the first major Marvel failure but that's more because of the turmoil about getting it made as opposed to the character. That said, the character holds very little interest to me and strikes me as more of a supporting character than a character that needs his own movie.

It wouldn't surprise me if they scrap the whole thing.

[Khaldun]

Sorry, I don't think you scrap a film that you've already invested that much money in making. 

Do we need to dig up the posts where people said, "Guardians of the Galaxy? What the fuck is that shit, Marvel's losing it"?

We're in the DC thread, but the point about any comic-book character is, "If you understand what's required, you can do it." Ant-Man can't be just a straight-up translation of comic-book Hank Pym because comic-book Hank Pym is a layered character who has acquired a distinctive personality sort of by accident over many many years. If I were looking fresh at the character, I'd go more with the comedic scumbag Ant-Man that Robert Kirkman created. I'm guessing Marvel is too and that's why they wanted Edgar Wright originally. That also fits Marvel's fairly canny understanding that their superhero movies need to have a range of models or feel.

DC/WB is so far away from understanding that, and so crippled in terms of the creative talent they recruited, that they'll never get that.

[Threash]

I do not buy this BS about Marvel characters being more realistic or filmable or acceptable to audiences at all.  Marvel has simply done a better job at taking this shit seriously.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I never said ant man couldn't work or that they would indeed scrap it but....

Even with the amount invested, the brand of marvel movies is so huge that if they don't feel like antman is working out the way they wanted to or that the difficulties they are having might translate into a sub-par film I have no doubt they would toss it in the can or shelve it for the next decade or so.

[jgsugden]

Saying the FF movies were dung means nothing - anything CAN be screwed up.  What we're discussing is how hard it is to get it right, not whether it can go wrong.

With greater power, comes greater difficulty making a story relatable.  If you don't agree with that basic idea that has been thrown out there over and over and over again by writers, I don't know what else to say.

Comic characters tend to have origins that reflect the science fiction stories of the days in which they are created.  That is something that is hard to argue against, and something supported by a number of documentaries on comics.  The science fiction under the core DC characters is the science fiction of the 1930s and 1940s - as most (but clearly not all) of their core characters are the ones that have been around since the earliest days.  The science fiction under the core Marvel characters are based upon the science of the 60s through 90s - as their core character base has expanded more than DCs.  Regardless, the advance of science between the 30s and 60s was huge.  Space Travel went from a fantastical concept to a reality.  When Superman hit the stands, TVs were something that regular folk thought they'd never see in their homes.  When Spider-man spun his first web, we were preparing to move to color TV.  Superman's earliest audience was celebrating advent of the mechanical icebox.  Spider-man's early audience was beginning to suspect that the freon in their fridge was destroying their environment.  The characters built to appeal to these audiences was drastically different.  The fans of Marvel were more sophistictaed.  Heck, even DC realized it when they revamped a number of their titles to make them more appealing to the sophisticated audience.  The Flash was revised so that instead of gaining his powers from inhaving vapors, he got them from a science expeirment gone wrong and Green Lantern's mystical power ring and lanterns became a high tech gizmo from aliens a few years before Marvel relased FF #1.  Heck, I'd argue that DC realizing their characters were unrelatable might have been a key factor in Marvel being so focused on making characters relatable to a 1960s audience...

If you don';t see why DC characters are less relatable and harder to turn into something modern audiences will accept on film, I guess we'll just disagree and you'll continue to blame the DC failures only on studios, and not on the greater difficulty in the task.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The fans of Marvel were more sophistictaed.

 

[Ingmar]

As a non-comic book guy, the best comic book related thing I've ever seen was the DCAU stuff (the Batman cartoon, Justice League, et. al.) So I don't really believe the premise that it's going to be so much harder to do a franchise thing here, because they've already done it once.

DC's problem seems to be finding the right people to actually execute things, not anything to do with the character stable.

[Thrawn]

As a non-comic book guy, the best comic book related thing I've ever seen was the DCAU stuff (the Batman cartoon, Justice League, et. al.) So I don't really believe the premise that it's going to be so much harder to do a franchise thing here, because they've already done it once.

DC's problem seems to be finding the right people to actually execute things, not anything to do with the character stable.

The Justice League cartoon did such a good job with the "non-powered" heroes and actually making them interesting and relevant.

[Velorath]

With greater power, comes greater difficulty making a story relatable.  If you don't agree with that basic idea that has been thrown out there over and over and over again by writers, I don't know what else to say.

The characters don't need to be exactly as powerful as the are in the comics (which is partially a result of years of power creep). Superman needs to fly, be stronger than the other heroes they introduce, and have x-ray vision and heat vision. Between Superboy, Lois and Clark, and Smallville, there was a live action version of the character on TV almost consistently from 1988-2011 ('98-2000 being the only gap) that was not the super-powerful version. Even the Christopher Reeve version was at a decent power-level most of the time aside from when he was doing eye-rollingly bad shit like traveling back in time. Obviously they chose to play up his power-level in Man of Steel, because it looks cool in a cinematic sense, but it was by no means the only direction they could have gone with the character.

Edit: Also Thor and Hulk are two of the most powerful Marvel characters. What really crazy things have they done power-wise in the MCU?

[Hoax]

Hulk had that awesome scene with Loki.

"Puny god"

[SurfD]

Have to agree with Velorath on that point.   Supes and Thor are "powerful".   You know, guy wearing nothing but tights geting punched through buildings powerfull.  Guy moving cars with ease powerful.  Guy shrugging off heavy weapons fire powerful.  They don't need to be "Hey Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power level?!?" powerful to get the point across that they stand in their own league in terms of strength / durability / etc.  It is when they cross the line between "I can engage in hand to hand combat with Fighter Jets" over into "I can lift and throw the Exxon Valdez" that things start to go wonky.

[HaemishM]

Marvel's characters weren't "more relatable" because of power levels. They were relatable because Stan Lee introduced real world problems that comic characters didn't normally have to deal with before. Things like a sick aunt, making the rent, love triangles, etc. Also, they went through some definitive evolution while DC's had been stuck mostly stuck in stasis. And as was mentioned, DC updated their origins to fit more with the contemporary times in the '60's. But none of that makes DC characters inherently less filmable. They just need the right touch. The guys they currently have in play to do that take the material somewhat less seriously than their Marvel counterparts and so the cinematic tone is "uneven" to say the least.

[Fordel]

As a non-comic book guy, the best comic book related thing I've ever seen was the DCAU stuff (the Batman cartoon, Justice League, et. al.) So I don't really believe the premise that it's going to be so much harder to do a franchise thing here, because they've already done it once.

DC's problem seems to be finding the right people to actually execute things, not anything to do with the character stable.

The Justice League cartoon did such a good job with the "non-powered" heroes and actually making them interesting and relevant.

I would go so far as to say that if it wasn't for the DCAU, we wouldn't have shows like Arrow. I sure as hell didn't know who the fuck Green Arrow was before JLU.

[jgsugden]

DCAU was excellent.  I'd say that it was the best animated comic adaption we've seen... far better than anything Marvel has done.  However, if you tried to directly convert most of that work to film, even with an unlimited special effects budget, it would not be good.  What we accept in animation is a far cry from what we accept on film. 

Regardless, we're going in circles.  I'm not going to convince any-one that Superman and Martian Manhunter are far harder to adapt to movies than Spider-man and Hulk. 

[Ingmar]

Well if nothing else I think you're right about Martian Manhunter, but mostly because he's just really damn weird conceptually and has a stupid name on top of it.

[Fordel]

He's a Shape Changer and a Telepath, if only those were brought to the big screen 

[Hutch]

 

[Lakov_Sanite]