Just curious, how do you feel about what they did with Captain America in the Avengers movie? He’s basically a Batman type, a non-super not comparable in strength to the other 3 core members.
I thought it was very well done in that they split up the battles for the most part and let Cap do his own thing without the supers showing him up. Cap was battling with the Chitari footsoldiers for a while and saving people while the other 3 were flying around fighting those dragons. By pitting guys like Thor and Hulk up against Loki himself, or some gigantic monster, they were able to downplay the power level between Cap and the rest of them. After all, if Cap is holding his own and the Hulk is holding his own, then it seems like they are both useful. Nobody really thinks about if they had fought different enemies, the Hulk would mow through the minor Chitari while Cap would have his super-serumed ass handed to him by the dragon or Loki
Calling Captain America a “non-super” isn’t really accurate though. Yes, he technically doesn’t have “superpowers,” but he’s quite a bit stronger, faster, more agile, and tougher than anyone else in the entire world. I know that officially he’s considered a “peak human” (as is Batman), but that doesn’t really fly with what we’re shown on screen.
That’s the general idea I was going for. Fighting grunts and getting noncombatants out of the line of fire is Cap-appropriate action in an action scenario where major super-powers are getting thrown around.
Batman and Cap as very different characters, though, despite fairly similar power levels; Cap doesn’t really have much of a non-action side or many tools for indirect action in such a conflict. Batman may not be able to hurt a major foe, but he may find ways to use his toys or manipulate the environment to weaken them in some way: blind them, interfere with their footing (for flightless foes), put things in their way to slow them down, and so forth. That’s more his style than fighting armies of grunts, though he’s been known to do that. In my preferred JL lineups, Flash would be the logical choice for mook mop-up, while Bats takes overwatch and looks for tactical advantages.
My chosen interpretation has been that the serum itself brought him to “peak human” as his new baseline–that’s where he is if he doesn’t bother to hit the gym. Intense training on top of that pushes him to levels not attainable by ordinary humans. It’s either that, or baseline humans in a comic-book universe all have a minor invulnerability superpower, because plenty of characters with no special defenses walk away from things that would cripple or kill a real human.
Absolutely not. That would be the quickest, surest way of making the public say “Avengers ripoff!” I think it would be important to eliminate “power”/role duplication as much as possible.
Alternatively, Vixen also avoids Black Widow duplication and simultaneously fills both the “minority” and the “second woman” slots. Also, interesting powers.
I really like the new Blue Beetle, but frankly, he’s just too … green. I’ve read enough scenes in the comics where the League is trying to fill out its roster and is naming off candidates, and I can see BB’s name coming up and being dismissed as “powerful, but too inexperienced”. Still, an Hispanic character would be a good move; I just can’t think of another good one at the moment. Creating Hispanic heroes is still a fairly new thing at both DC and Marvel.
Yeah, Batman’s strength on a team is his leadership, tactical skills, and “preparedness” (which includes the ability to quickly deduce opponents’ weaknesses and communicating those weaknesses to the team members best able to exploit them).
Another knock against “Blue Beetle”
While “cheesy” is in the eye of the beholder, I’ve always thought one of DC’s strengths is that each character had a unique backstory and explanation for their powers. The thing I noticed when I started collecting comics was that the majority of Marvel’s best-known characters (the non-mutants, anyway) all got their powers via “radiation exposure” of one sort or another. “Cosmic rays”, “radioactive spider bite”, “gamma rays”, etc.
But that’s exactly what Batman did in the comics. He deduced/discovered how to neutralize pretty much every known superpowered hero in the DC universe so that he’d be prepared if they “went bad”.
Yeah, but none of the other Leaguers would likely consider it. Superman is the paragon they all look up to; Batman is the only one truly willing to look past that and ask, “What if?”
The problem with Martian Manhunter is DC’s “New 52” reboot. The new version has not worked directly with the JLA, and is in fact a member of an entirely different, secret group called Stormwatch. People who liked him in a movie might be annoyed to find he’s not in the JL comics.
As of “The New 52”, the Killing Joke has been retconned out; it never happened, and Barbara Gordon is Batgirl once more.
Frankly, it would not surprise me to learn that DC’s “The New 52” universe reboot was done deliberately to clean things up specifically to make movies easier to reconcile with the comics. Back to Green Arrow, the new Justice League title consists of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Cyborg, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and Aquaman, and the latest storyline has featured Green Arrow repeatedly showing up and begging to join the team, and being repeatedly told “NO!”
I’d have to watch the movie again, but I’m not sure that they specified whether their procedure made him superhumanly strong or simply very-very impressive. Film doesn’t necessarily follow the comic book rules.
And I believe one scene was of him chasing down a car. I’m not sure what the top sprinter’s top speed is, in the world, but I’d have to imagine that sustaining that speed for any significant duration would be superhuman.
To be fair, he was chasing the car in New York City traffic, which I don’t imagine moves that fast, and he took shortcuts to catch up when necessary. But yeah, superhuman endurance is part of Cap’s package.
The one thing I see NO ONE mentioning is the one thing I think would work best: work the new Superman movie to seem like a continuation of the Smallville TV show, and have the Justice League grow out of the universe of young super-heroes introduced in Smallville. Follow the “Star Trek” route to translating episodic TV into film.
Smallville was a hit, and it built a live-action DC Universe. The groundwork is there. They just need to not screw it up by making the Superman movie completely unworkable within it.
Edited to add: On review, I see Bryan Ekers sort-of mentioned turning Smallville into a JLA movie. But that wasn’t really the primary thrust of his post.
Not so, it happened, but she eventually got cured of her paralysis. The comics haven’t gone into the details. But her time in a wheelchair is referenced.
They could have it where Static is older and more experienced and fight baddies and then at the end of the movie Batman shows up and offers him an invite to the already existant Justice League and that could be an intro for a Justice League movie.
That was my first instinct. Take a classic Justice League story and put it on the big screen, but I don’t know the JL enough to know what counts. (also, this idea worked for God Loves Man Kills, but not so much for the Dark Pheonix saga… :P)
Kingdom Come is too far out of mainstream continuity to work, methinks. And Identity Crisis relies too much on obscure characters no ones ever heard of. (I’m a moderate to major comic geek, and I hadn’t heard of Sue Dibney or Dr. Light before that series.)
I would suggest staying very far away from* Identity Crisis* when it comes to adaptations. Brad Meltzer’s fast-and-loose hyper-violent approach to established characters was not terribly well-received, and that miniseries was a watershed moment in a fan backlash against DC editorial. You’d be starting out with a lot of people against you in a big way.
Similarly, Jeph Loeb and Geoff Johns should be kept out of the loop.
DCAU is “DC Animated Universe”, referring to the common setting of most of the DC animated shows. I presume DCLAU is “DC Live Action Universe”, but I think it’s more established as “Disney Channel Live Action Universe”, so it may not be the ideal term.
