How do you make a Justice League movie work?

Cafe Society
21

I think we are reaching a consensus that Batman should be included in the team. There were a couple of team books with Batman back in the 90’s–specifically, Batman and the Outsiders and Justice League International–both of which worked pretty well with the generally grim, loner Batman successfully working with in a team setting. I think there is a potentially good story there.

Specifically, one of the problems with the Justice League concept all along is that they tend to have a few really heavy hitters–Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash–and a few that the writers have to struggle to make relevant. Like, say, Aquaman.

I suggest that the appropriate story is that Batman detects a significant threat that he is absolutely not qualified to fight–Darkseid is a good possibility. He recruits Superman, Wonder Woman. Flash, and Green Lantern to defeat the threat. That gives him a role on the team–the leader and the guy who can make them work together. The conflict between his being naturally a loner and needing to create a lead a team would drive his character.

22

So, “Di’s Kooky Quintet,” eh? This has some merit.

One tricky bit is not having Swiss Army Bricks like Supes or J’onn made so powerful (such as, in their own movies; but also in the main movie) that they don’t need the others. You can solve this in a few ways:
Be careful how powerful you make the big guns.
Present a threat that needs a big gun or two but also more hands working on it than they have.
Don’t have characters on that level in the team—
or make the whole team on that level or close (the “League of Gods” approach).

My question is, do you want to do a JL movie, or do you want to do a movie with Supes+Bats+Wondy+Flash etc.? Those are two different definitions!

I think you could pull off a “League of Gods” with most of the classic core JLA (less Batman), something like this:
Superman (generalist, well-known flagship character),
Flash (faster than everyone),
Wonder Woman (familiar trademark, also truth power),
Oracle (support, doesn’t really need to match the team’s powers),
the Atom (different powerset, SCIENCE!),
Faith (dark mysterious backstory).

I don’t recommend Green Lantern because it’s just too silly, but you could try it if you like losing money.

23

That’s actually pretty good as an adaptation of the concept.

That is, “The World-Famous ELONGATED MAN!”[sup]1[/sup] Or, you know, Ralph.

That’s Superman/Batman. And if that’s the focus, then don’t bother. Batman is Superman’s non-powered clone, Wonder Woman is their little sister. They may be actually too much alike in the wrong ways to play off each other well.

[sup]1[/sup](No, really, have him introduce himself like that, it could work.)

24

I kind of picture it opening like this. Superman and Wonder Woman are fighting, say, General Zod who has escaped from the Phantom Zone (no need to go into background with him, he won’t be around long; just have Superman yell “Zod” at him to tell fans who he is). They go a few rounds smashing each other through walls, until there’s a momentary pause with them glaring at each other. In the background Batman sudden rappels down from above, landing behind Zod and calmly walks towards him; Zod whips around towards Batman - just as Batman pulls a glowing green rock from his utility belt and shoves it in Zod’s face. Zod falls to his knees, then drops unconscious.

Superman: “You carry around Kryptonite?!”

Batman: "I believe in being prepared. <looks at Superman> “Just in case.”
*
<looks at both Superman and Wonder Woman>*

Batman: “Now that you two are done playing, the President is on the line with something important.”

25

In order for this to work, they need to tweak the backstories of the characters a bit more. In general, Marvel seems to have greater recognition overall and I think more movies based on their characters, but DC has the older and more iconic ones like Superman and Batman. Marvel has repeatedly changed some of the stories of the characters to make sense and get rid of the silliness and I think comic fans need to accept that for a Justice League movie to work, that needs to happen

For instance, I don’t think its a good idea to have Superman in his prime parading about as the head of the JLA. My version would have a younger Superman who’s still learning his powers. He moves to Metropolis as in the comics but he’s still fairly young and doesn’t have the iconic suit yet, maybe some mashup he made himself like Spiderman in the first movie. Batman, having already been a pretty established character through the recent films, is the focus of the movie, recruiting these superheros for a threat, like Reno Nevada said, he can’t solve alone.

I think the Avengers have shown us that the audience is going to have some trouble with more than 6 main characters and 4 core, because as great as the film was, guys like Hawkeye was kind of left out and I don’t think Thor was used too well in the movie. It wasn’t bad, but he seemed to just “be there” as a heavy.

The rest of the cast would be filled out by the more iconic characters like Wonder Woman and Flash. One problem I see is that WW is kind of just a female Superman, and if people are going to jump on me and say how wrong I am using 50 years of comic backstory, well, that just proves my point. I’m the audience that the studio needs to make their money 10 times over and I think WW is just a female Superman. A movie focused on her needs to do something to dispel that.

With the Avengers, I think a great strength of the core group was how different they were. Cap is the idealistic man out of his time, leader and soldier. Iron Man is a billionaire pretty boy genius. Thor’s an alien god. Hulk is a normal scientist with a Jekyll and Hyde thing. And it was good they didn’t make a movie about Black Widow and Hawkeye because they were really background characters to the core group.

Its going to be hard for Superman and Batman not to overshadow everyone else on their team. And the focus can’t be on Superman because he’s the good old American boy, we know what he’s going to choose everytime, the side of good and justice, there’s no mystery to him. The focus HAS to be on Batman. And maybe during the movie, they can break up the team, one Superman’s side and one Batman, eventually making it so they get together because they need each other and can’t win over Darkseid or whoever alone. Fuck yeah, that would be kickass! They should hire me to write this! :D:D:D

26

You left out “present a threat that has elements the bricks can’t deal with/would be counterproductive in a conflict with”. Putting Wonder Woman in a Raven-esque role of assembling the team gives us an easy out for Supes–a lot of her threats are magical, and Supes has no special resistance to magic. He might shrug off a magic fireball the way he would any other explosion, but he would be vulnerable to scarier stuff…like mind control.

So, start with a magical threat–Felix Faust, perhaps. You can lift some elements from the animated Justice League episode Paradise Lost, in which Faust makes a bargain with Hades to free him in exchange for mystical knowledge.

Putting Supes up against Faust directly is a recipe for disaster–if Faust manages to control him, or trick him with illusions, he could paste most of the team before shaking it off. His role is tanking Faust’s guardians, diversion, and/or whoever Faust is bargaining with.

Batman’s role is piecing together the clues that tell them what Faust is up to and where it’s all going to go down. He’s also there to shut down Superman if things go bad–maybe have Faust turn Supes in a preliminary dust-up, forcing Batman to play the kryptonite card.

The Flash is good for speed-searching and clearing out masses of weenie minions. Flash versus the Zombie Horde might have potential.

I don’t really see a place in this for a Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter would be a brick too many, unless they toned down his strength/invulnerability and played up his shapeshifting to make him an infiltrator. It might be better to go for a magician, which would mean introducing either Doctor Fate or Zatanna; of the two, I think Fate would have more potential for later stand-alone films.

So, five members of the League assembled by Wonder Woman to counter a threat from Felix Faust. Perhaps they split up, each going to counter a spell of mass destruction best suited to their abilities. After putting down the various threats, they discover that it was a trap; the conflicts were located at the points of an enormous pentagram which has been empowered by their battle, enabling Faust to summon an eldritch horror/evil god/powerful demon at its center. Cue final battle.

27

I don’t know almost anything about comics, so from the perspective of an ignorant movie goer, The Justice League is a tough sell.

First off, the names of the heroes, villains, and League itself are kinda cheesy. The Justice Leaguers, based on my quick googling, also have cheesy back stories, poorly-defined powers, and few if any relatable character flaws. They all seem to be super strong, extra fast, morally good, genius-level, and two of them are invincible with the exception of a single weakness. Batman is the only true odd man out in this regard (although he is a genius).

Adding to the problems for your potential audience is that we’ve had Superman and Batman movies already, none of which will tie into this franchise. Hopefully the new Superman movie does well, but Superman is an inherently difficult character to work into a team. Unless you break out the kryptonite every five minutes, there’s no problem he can’t solve without resorting to a magical enemy, and that (to me) sounds stupid. I suspect mass audiences won’t accept a magical enemy.

I didn’t know anything more about the Marvel heroes (although I think their b-level heroes are still more culturally known than DC’s), but Marvel did a great job of making them relatable and getting me enthused for the big Avengers movie. That’s something I think the studios will struggle to do for The Justice League unless they extensively rework the characters, which will disappoint existing fans.

28

Oh, I don’t know. There was that little thing with an evil god recently.

29

The Passion?

30

Any justification of Batman on the League which hinges on him being a normal human who carries around kryptonite is pretty much a concession that Batman does not belong on the team.

Kryptonite is from Superman’s mythos, not Batman’s. It really only does anything to Superman, who’s usually the good guy; and as such it is pretty much a mildly radioactive rock under most circumstances. Such a function could be happily performed by any of the other Leaguers.

Now, you want to have eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne bankroll the team in exchange for getting to run around with them and pretend he’s a superhero too, that might work. If it gets too absurd, you could have him get shot in the face, and get a big mournful funeral scene.

31

Now, it is possible to have a mix of high-powered and low-powered characters, but it’s still tricky. There was some snark about Black Widow on the Avengers. She works well (as do Coulson and Barton) in the movie as shot, but from the promos people were like, what, she’s just normal? Even after she had proved effectively super in* Iron Man 2.*

So, it depends. A team where Batman is sort of the Nick Fury, Green Arrow and Black Canary are sort of at the Hawkeye/Widow level, and you have relatively limited metahumans, yeah, it could be OK. A “Big Guns” team with a bunch of godlikes and Mr Wayne in his gimpsuit is going to be (pace Grant Morrison) absurd.

32

It bears mentioning that Joss Whedon was all set to direct such a movie, with Cobie Smulders in the starring role. There’s got to be a studio exec somewhere who regrets letting that one fall through.

33

From what I heard, neither Joss nor Cobie was all that committed to it.

34

There already have been Superman and Batman movies. What a Justice League movie brings to the table is having them interact together. Marvel took a huge risk with what they did. The fact that The Avengers was awesome and made a fortune, downplays just how easily this all could have gone wrong. DC could have done the same but they weren’t brave or smart enough. We have had good Batman Movies the last 5 years; we are getting a new Superman next year, the logical step with a Justice League movie now is to put them together. Because of the way Batman was presented, it will be a different continuity (I would guess) but still… A DC Team up movie that doesn’t have those two in it will just confuse and anger any potential audience.

35

The key to making Batman work in conjunction with high-powered supers is to play down his action role and play up his mental roles: information gathering, deduction, planning, iron will/psychotic obsession, and even intimidation (because Bats can do, and has done, horrible things to people that probably wouldn’t even occur to the others). In action sequences, his involvement should generally be trying to get out of the way, creating diversions, and engaging in sabotage.

I think the Justice League animated series mostly did a good job of this, and should be considered the model for any future Justice League projects. Of course, that’s partly because the DCAU is my favorite incarnation of the setting.

“Batman to all points. I could use some air support. Since I can’t fly. At all.
<still falling>
Now would be good.”

36

OK, thinking about it, some normals might be good. No reason you have to have awesome powers to be a hero. Then again, it’s DC, and everybody’s traditionally over the top.

Really, someone should do an ersatz version without Warner Bros. Something *like *the Justice League.

37

Just start with Starro the Conqueror invading Earth and the world’s greatest superherores respond to it.

Agree with the posters who say it’s got to have both Superman and Batman.

But why limit the number of women to one or two. Zatanna, Black Canary, Hawkwoman, and Wonder Woman were all Justice Leaguers. Put em all in a movie.

For minority superherores you’ve got John Stewart as GL, Vibe, and Black Lightning (this name will probably have to be changed if it hasn’t been already. I’ m a trifle out of date on comics.

38

It might be easier to age Static up a few years. As I recall, he joined the Justice League pretty young.

39

Bats, Superman, and Wonder Woman, or I cry foul. Flash, Martian Manhunter, and John Stewart Green Lantern would be my top picks to flesh out the rest. Maybe a cameo scene for Aquaman.

(I’d love to see Oracle to give a little gender balance, but she might be a tough sell without the backstory established. A Killing Joke prequel movie would be tough, since any Joker will be compared to Ledger now.)

Yes, having a threat to Supes that still makes Batman relevant is tough, but the comic writers and animated series writers have been doing it for years. I agree with others that the trick is to play up the Detective aspect of Batman. I’d probably go with something extraterrestrial. You’ve already got one alien on the team (2 if MM is included), so no one can say it’s out of left field. Maybe a subtle invasion that Batman discovers, but with aliens powerful enough that he can’t defeat them alone.

40

I confess I didn’t read the other replies, but IMO this is easy:

Batman
Superman
Aquaman
Flash
Wonder Woman

and…whoever. The martian guy came along a lot later and I could give a flip about him or anyone else. Start with the mainstays. Plus Flash and WW are incredibly overdue to appear in a comic book movie anyway.

That all said, I’m rather tired of comic book movies in general, and this from someone who read many a marvel and DC comic book as a kid. Are they really that hard up for movie ideas/good writers?