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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.
Aquaman sucks!
Everything these days is reboots, reboots of reboots, sequels, prequels, sequels to prequels, prequels to sequels, comic book adaptations, games adaptations, movies made from tv series, remakes, remakes of remakes, japanese remakes.
Seems like they're not even trying anymore.
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
Think of it like a piñata that drops millions of dollars every time you hit it.
I wouldn't let go of the stick, until they yanked it from my hands.
Frankly...beyond Superman and Batman, DC doesn't have much—at least that anyone has heard of and/or cares about. Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern do at least have some following, but they haven't aged well and I'm not sure they can translate to film nearly as well as, say, Iron Man.
IMHO, they'd be better off finding some more offbeat superheroes from their back catalog (a la Guardians of the Galaxy) or biting the bullet and inventing some new ones.
Still, Marvel has done an amazing job of refurbishing characters like Captain America and Thor, so maybe DC can do the same.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
DC does a lot better with TV than film. Consider
- Smallville was a huge success, very long run
- Arrow has been renewed twice, has a good audience and is doing very well
- The Flash looks like it has legs
- Gotham is getting rave reviews and looks like it has legs as well
Now let's look at their last couple of films:
- Man of Steel - OK this wasn't that bad
- Green Lantern - horrible
- Watchmen - Good movie but flopped
- Jonah Hex - Did anyone even know this movie came out?
- Superman Returns - horrible
The only saving grace has been the Nolan Batman films.
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.