Yes the joker has a clown motif. It's really the only consistent thing about him. It's one of the things that makes him so timeless. Under the paint the joker can be portrayed a million different ways. Nicholson's joker was about gags, he wanted to put a smile on everybody's face. With Ledger's joker, everything was calculated, including the paint. For him it was all about the joke, civilization is a lie. Yes they both had a clown motif and they fought guys with bat motifs, but that is where the similarities end. I didn't know Burton had anything to do with the animated shows. Hamil's joker really runs all over the place. Part of the nature of the media I imagine.
One thing that nobody mentioned before (or I didn't find it) is that DC had Smallville as recent live action adaptation of Superman and some parts of the Justice League. If they had handled it better it could have served either as basis or at least inspiration for a big movie.
I think Smallvile actually works against DC's plans for a Justice League film. It already introduced a bunch of the mythology, yes. But it did so in ways that were limited by their budget. not to mention it outstayed its welcome (especially with its 'no tights, no flights'-even when Clark is living in Metropolis and has fought most of his rogue's Gallery), which probably made a lot of people lose interest. Of course, the failure to launch of the Wonder woman pilot (what were they even thinking?) doesn't help either.
Like I said, it would only have worked if they had handled it differently, e. g. with a big movie planned from the start. And it would have never got the same hype Avengers has. But it would have been a possibility. They could have kept the "no tights, no flights rule" in the series, then made the movie as he learns to flight and dons the cape the first time. Perhaps set the movie around season 7 or 8.
I doubt Ledger Joker was significantly that different from Frank Miller Joker. There's no definitive Joker if you look at the comics best chapters from every decade. It's all in your mind there is one jamesraykenney.
How much of the mainstream movie audience is familiar with Fran Miller Joker? Frankly more people are probably familiar with Bruce Timm Joker nowadays.
Growing up during the '80s, and experienceing at least three consumer product poison scares, I found the Jack Nicholson Jack Napier Joker no less scary than the Heath Ledger version, well, until he pulled out that bazookavolver, but that is neither here not there. Based on the trailers I have seen of The Dark Knight Rises, it appears that Christopher Nolan is doing his hardest to drive a stake through the heart of any possibility of using the Dark Knight Trilogy continuity as a basis for any sort of wider DC Moviverse. Again, that is neither here not there really. Mistake No. 1: Superman Returns wasn't really a terrible movie, it's just that it didn't feel like a Bryan Singer Superman movie. If felt more like Uwe Boll trying to do a Richard Donner movie. (Now that I think of it, yeah, it did feel pretty bad). Donner is (and therefore was in 2004)still fully sound in mind and body (and was about to do a Goonies followup until a studio regime change at Warner put it paid), so let him direct, or at least produce if you are going that angle. And make sure a villain other than Lex or Zod is used, like Braniac, Parasite, Silver Banshee, or Metallo. Frankly the tie-in game had a more original plot than the movie itself (Not that that's saying much). Otherwise, use the Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman of the Man of Steel miniseries, where Luthor is Mike Milken, Bernie Ebbers, and Steve Jobs rolled into one, but still a self made man. Mistake No. 2: Not telling Christopher Nolan that while he can make the character as serious or as campy as he wants it, it will be part of a larger movie universe and coherent whole. If he wants to do the perspecitve Justice League movie, he need but ask. If he wants to do The Prestige and Inception too, more power to him, but don't, repeat, don't let Bruce end up permenantly in a wheelchair at the end of the third movie. Oh, and Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman's deals are to be renegotiated to four more films after the runaway success of Batman Begins. Mistake No. 3: Justice League: Mortal was a terrible idea for a film. The plot was generic, the casting utterly terrble, and it's only real purpose was as a Tax Dodge! Even leaving aside the production problems, haves should NEVER pretend to be have-nots. It should have never gotten into the deep preproduction phase to begin with, and the bigwigs who came up with that collosal time-waster as a proposal should have been fired and blacklisted. Mistake No. 4: Not moving forward on either the Joss Whedon or the Spec Script version of Wonder Woman, and not giving Whedon the input he said he most desperately wanted. Frankly, I would have assigned him a co-writer in either George Parez, Jim Lee, or Greg Rucka. It may have been that he was simply warming a chair in front of a computer, but on general principle I would have given him no excuse whatsoever to do effectively nothing and then walk away. Mistake No. 5: Supermax was almost an even worse waste of time and money than Justice League: Mortal, especially as it came even closer to production. If any superhero's origin is more filmable than Bruce's, with a story even more down to earth, it's Ollie's. Right now I have on my hard drive two whole Green Arrow movie scripts and outlines for another three. Mistake No. 6: Green Lantern is almost a textbook example on how not to make a superhero movie. For the role of Hal Jordan, they cast Ryan "Van Wilder" Reynolds, which was even stupider than recasting Jim Rhodes with Don "Make Seven-Up Yours" Cheadle. The only DC Character's Ryan Reynolds would have been fit to portray would have been the Wally West Flash, and maybe Vibe. Then they recycled all the worst jokes from the original Jack Black vehicle script, conflated the characters of Hector Hammond and Parralax into something unrecognisable as either, and missed so many possible philosophical moments from the comics (especially those from alleged co-screenwriter Geoff Johns) it made me have to hold my hands behind my back while watching it to keep from tearing my hair out.
Say what you like about everything else, but back the fuck off of Don Cheadle. He earned his acting cred with Hotel Rwanda forever.
That was the studio not Farve's call and Cheadle was awesome. I have no idea wtf Mortal or Supermax is but as DC didn't go ahead with them bullet dodged so it's hardy a mistake. Superman Returns is mostly a rehash of Superman 1 and has a slow and boring script that made Superman look like a total dick and creeper as he knocked Lois up then fucked off for five damn years and starts spying on her as soon as he got back. You don't really care about Clark as a person because he does NOTHING and you don't like him as Superman for being a solar powered dead beat super dad stalker. Lex was boring, His plan was lifted from the first movie and while Spacey's a good actor there nothing for him to do with this dribble they had for him. I rewrote Superman Returns a while back. Let me see if I remember what I did. Lex was in it but he was supporting our main guy John Corbin aka Metallo. IIRC he gets fatally injured trying to get away from Superman during a robbery towards the beginning of the first act and Lex convinces him to let him use his body for science turning him into Metallo thus setting up Lex is a genius and has mad science skills. Metallo nearly kills him the first time and only loses the second after beating the snot of of him because Superman uses a hypersonic shockwave of his flying to shatter the Kryptonite (and this whole row of buildings in a Highlander like shattering of glass). Metallo beaten, Superman flies off to do his soar into the sunset bit. The stinger is we see the shards being picked up and Mercy, disguised to fit in, picking up one that has blood on it. Yes sequel bait.
I thought DC is normally not willing to take much of a gamble at all so instead of ever trying out one of their other properties they just churn out yet another Batman or Superman movie/show every single time and just assume name recognition alone will carry it. I think they gave Green Lantern a shot because the comic series has been doing amazingly well in the last few years, but now they will just consider it to be a third rate franchise because no one liked the horrible movie they created. I would not think we will see a Flash or Wonder Woman movie in the near future. not when they can make more horrible Superman sequels and some more Batman films.
Well, John Seavey of mightygodking has some ideas on how DC could make a Justice League film. I think e has some good points, but I'm not sure that DC/Warner Brothers would go for it.
Well I just saw the Avengers movie today. ...Frankly, at this point DC needs to give up on the idea of making a Justice League movie. I was doubtful about the idea without having seen it, but now that I have? Give up DC. It's not gonna work. You're mad scramble to play catch up 5 years from now isn't going to match what Marvel/Disney has managed to do with the Super Hero team up this year.
I personally think that what DC ought to do is borrow the MCU structure...but not for JLA. They should do the Fourth World. No reboots necessary, and it would be different enough that it wouldn't come off as trying to ape Marvel.
Really, how much has DC been doing at all? They've got one very successful Batman franchise running, a Green lantern movie, and Superman Returns since 2006. It's not like they've had a string of failures recently... they haven't had much period. We'll have to wait and see how the next Superman movie comes out. One of the advantages that DC will have with reworking Batman to fit a JLA movie is that audiences are already used to seeing Batman reinvented, and they know his origin story well enough that he doesn't really need a new movie to tell it. He's the kind of character that they could honestly do a lot to establish in very little time. Wonder Woman is going to be the real trick to get worked out. Nobody has known what to do with her in years. She really needs a good introduction movie, but she doesn't have the some kind of iconic supporting cast that the other characters do to help her out. She especially needs a villain- DC should have started trying to establish one a long time ago.
None of those are anywhere near as well known as Lex Luthor or the Joker. Going with Ares, Circe, or Hades also requires them to commit hard to Greek mythology, which can be hard to do without looking silly. Wonder Woman as a franchise would be much better off if she had a really good, versatile villain to play off of.
Thor is arguably more obscure than Wonder Woman and they managed to pull the mythology off fairly well.
Thor, as a Marvel property, is more obscure than Wonder Woman overall. Loki is well-known as an enemy for Thor, Marvel or not. They also went with "inter-dimensional aliens" to explain the mythology. Wonder Woman is highly iconic herself- which means that you have to be more careful with building a film around her- but lacks much in the way of iconic material to build with. It's a difficult position to be writing from.
Personally, I think DC needs to adopt a different style than Marvel in order to compete. Marvel has pretty much cornered the market on simple, solid, fun action comic book movies with their Avengers series, and as Green Lantern shows, DC can't really ape that style successfully. DC needs to look at it's recent successes in superhero films: The Dark Knight series and Watchmen. These are dark, serious dramas that take hard looks at what the realities of a world with superheroes would be, and that's the direction I think DC should follow up on. You can have superpowers in such a world as the Nolanverse, the important part of "realism" in the context of superhero movies isn't "Nobody has special abilities", it's "People act and react in a believable way". Watchmen did this very well, and Doctor Manhattan has more powers than most superheroes. So while DC should follow the Avengers model (Introductory movies for each character, then an ensemble movie), they should do it in their own style. As for the lineup, I think they should keep it relatively small and recognizable. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Alternatively, Aquaman rather than Green Lantern given the big flop of the Green Lantern movie. They should take notes from their experiences with the DCAU when it comes to a shared universe, and then apply it to the big screen with a unique, more serious take on the subject matter than the Avengers series.
That's all well and good, but the 'dark serious dramas' that look at 'realistic' takes on how superheroes would actually work doesn't fit tonally with the DC Heroes, it's far more Marvel's forte. You can get away with it with Batman, yes. But the rest of the league? Not unless you're doing a Kingdom Come film.
She's a clay figure brought to life by the Gods. She lives on an island called Thermascyra, Her mother is Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. She's an Amazon Princess. Greek myth is already locked in. You seem to suggest they should steal one of Superman's guys and try to show horn their ass in.
Would you count Vertigo imprint stuff or Watchmen with that? If you do, you have A History of Violence, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Constantine, etc. These may have varied in commercial success and critical reception, but they're still DC owned and some part of that revenue has to come back to DC, especially when people buy the original comics/ GNs after seeing the film. I think DC should really capitalize on its impressive library of Vertigo non-tights and capes stuff, something which it has always been better at than Marvel. I mean, adapt Ex Machina, or Y The Last Man, or Transmetropolitan, Fables, 100 Bullets, Sandman, DMZ, or something. Adapt them for the small screen too. I honestly don't think DC should bother trying to make a JLA film because the Avengers did the same thing first, and did it so well that DC will always be seen as coming in second if they compete with it. They have a stable of IPs that would weather audience exhaustion with superhero stuff and probably are cheaper than SFX orgies like Green Lantern. I'm not sure how much of the media rights lie with the creators on many of these cases, however.
