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Warner Brothers Announces 10 New DC Comics Movies
wired_parrot writes After being criticized for being slow to respond to Marvel's string of blockbuster superhero movies, Warner Brothers finally announced their plan for DC comic universe movie franchise. Yesterday at their annual shareholder meeting, WB announced 10 DC comics movies. The studio has unveiled an ambitious schedule that features two Justice League films, plus standalone titles for Wonder Woman, Flash, Shazam (Captain Marvel), Green Lantern, Cyborg and even Aquaman. Also announced were plans for 3 Lego movies and a three-part Harry Potter spinoff.
I never read comics when I was a kid.(well, thats not true, I read Heavy Metal)
I read sci-fi(Niven, Asimov, Bradbury, etc) and fantasy(Tolkien, Lovecraft, Howard, etc).
I don't get this thing with comics. Most of the comic book based films are ok at best...
Are they really going to make that many comic book based films?
That is just sad.
There are so many good sci-fi and fantasy books/stories out there.
It would be nice if something not ending in "man" was made into a film.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
No..
Actually, patrons are mentally bankrupt. Hollywood puts original content in front of audiences every now and then, and it underwhelms at the box office.
Brand familiarity and the powerful psychological pull it has on consumers are just as responsible for you wanting to see the next Star Trek movie as you are likely to keep buying the same laundry detergent.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
One of the big problems DC comics has had since they no longer were, you know, about detectives, is that they generally tell the large stories like Marvel, but in a similar universe with fewer characters and often crazier origin stories and power sources.
I would argue that this difference has been a key to their success, but also has hurt them badly. Superman's origin story- the lone orphan survivor of an amazing race- resonates pretty ludicrously well, but the frequently paired Amazonian warrior or Galactic Cop both presuppose the existence of an entire universe of other stuff. Suddenly you need to have Amazonians in the modern era, and suddenly you need a galactic everything in place, and etc.
The Marvelverse, meanwhile, just takes random events and decides that they just happened to make a super hero now. Gamma radiation, radioactive spider bite, radiation in the upper atmosphere, random genetic powers- these are all "more realistic", but importantly, they don't drag a bunch of bullshit into the story from the sidelines. While Krypton conveniently self destructed, meaning that you can have as much or as little Krypton in your superman story as you need, most of the DC guys bring with them a whole wide world of junk you need to wade through and consider.
Even the divine characters are much more tied to reality for Marvel, with the Norse Gods being a fine set of guys to throw on screen any old time. Meanwhile, the "new gods" of DC are alien, bizarre, and require much devotion to understand what the heck is going on.
The Marvel universe has given us a ton of X-Men, Spiderman, the Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, and they are all very well loved. Soon we'll see Dr. Strange as well. To explain these we have:
"Some people are mutants", "Radiation can give you powers", "there's some magic", "super serum, one time only offer".
Meanwhile, just to get us to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman, a reasonable superfriends crew, you end up needing Themyscira, a modern Amazon place, a whole race of Amazons to go with it, Atlantis as a living and actual kingdom under the sea, a whole race of martian (or alternately, several of them left with a destroyed race and a host of badguys that killed them), a whole lot of crazy stuff in Gotham, a bunch of alien superpower guys doling out willpower rings, meaning, oh yea, a galaxy spanning set of everything imaginable.
The other thing hurting them in a movie format is that they have a relatively light tone in many of the comics, and when they do not, they don't try to avoid whatever they are talking about. The race of goofy green aliens with the dumb rings are meaningful if they are being exterminated, and you feel bad for them, etc. Is a movie going to make you feel bad for these CGI freaks you learned about 15 minutes prior, in the space of two hours? Unlikely.
Instead, they will often darken everything, and just leave out most of the lore, trying to make them more marvel-like. Wonder woman is going to look like she's dressed as a robot, superman couldn't even keep his actual outfit and had to straight up murder some dude, etc.