Why the heck can't DC comics get a decent movie made?

Cafe Society
1

Marvel, apparently, is just churning 'em out these days with the not-bad-for-a-February-movie Daredevil, a well-received X-Men flick, the sequel thereof, a couple Blade movies, Hulk, which looks to be amazing, and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, Spider Man. (The MiB comic is now owned by Marvel too, isn’t it?)

DC, OTOH, can’t seem to get off the ground lately, which is kind of ironic considering that their most recognizable hero is Superman. (And I use the word “lately” loosely, because I can’t think of a live action movie based on a DC comic that I really liked*.)

I mean ignoring the Batman movies that flat out ran the franchise into the ground, DC can’t even seem to get anything made. They can’t get a movie based on the excellent Batman: Year One comic made, they apparently can’t even come close to getting a Superman movie made (and if even half the rumors concerning proposed scripts are true…), and these are two of the most recognizable franchises in the world.

So, tell me, what the hell is DC doing wrong? I mean, yeah, they have snicker LXG** coming out, but other than that, AFAIK, they have nothing.

  • I thought the first Batman was good but then they went and killed the Joker, which, with the exception of adding bat-nipples to the suit, is the worst thing they could have done to the franchise. What they did to the Penguin wasn’t a whole lot better.

And the old Superman movies were okay, but they didn’t have any real style to them (plus I never got to see them on the big screen, which probably doesn’t help).

** FTR, the snicker was directed towards their marketing the movie as an acronym. Further proof of DC not being able to get anything done right, IMHO. I mean, christ, if they can’t get the studio to stick to the comic’s frickin’ title…

2

I hate DC and haven’t read comics in years but I’d wet my pants if they made a Green Lantern movie.

3

I hate DC and haven’t read comics in years but I’d wet my pants if they made a Green Lantern movie.

4

You’d wet them twice? :smiley:

5

Well, I guess from my perspective the question is which D.C.?

I started reading pre-Crisis, and I stopped post-Crisis. I understand stuff has happened since then. Every once in a while I’ll find a Batman novel that gets my attention, and if the Justice League is on TV and nothing else catches my attention I’ll watch it, but I keep having these questions.

"Superman, why don’t you just… wait, can he do that anymore? He used to be able to run faster than light, or was the Flash faster… wait, didn’t they change his origin so that there was some kind of…ah, who cares, why doesn’t Superman just, but then there was that one where he got bruised from catching the ball off the Daily Planet building… but wasn’t he split in two then? Why did he die, anyway, I didn’t read that… didn’t they decide that they couldn’t write good stories for somebody who was basically omnipotent? Oh, yeah, Lex Luthor did… wait, was that in the comics or in the movie or on TV? Was it the science geek or the clown who bought real estate in Arizona or the businessman or the sexually ambiguous fertilizer plant manager… did he have hair or not when he did that…?

Well, Batman will solve the problem, he’ll just… wait, is this the Batman from the SuperFriends comics or the Year One guy or the one who kicked Superman’s ass or is it the guy who pretended to be Batman or the guy who pretended to be Batman but went nuts or is it… where is Robin, anyway? Which Robin is supposed to be not there right now?"

Not everybody keeps up with the continuity across multiple media and universe altering decisions even within the official comic book canon.

This makes it a little hard to guarantee an audience base.

6

LXG? What the heck is LXG? What’s the point of buying a comic franchise if you change the title so no one recognizes the franchise?

7

They should make a movie about The Atom. Or Hawkman. No, wait, I’ve got it!

MR. MXYZPTLK!

Another Superman one would be cool too, though.

8

LXG = League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I guess they thought it wasn’t quite as dumb as naming the movie LEG. :smiley:

9

I don’t know how anyone can follow a story thread through the DC monthly issues. I’d rather read a good graphic novel than watch an average movie, but the only “superhero” stuff I have bothered with are the various Batman collections like “Knightfall” or “No Man’s Land.” The credits on any of these anthologies include issue numbers from around six different titles like “Batman,” “Shadow of the Bat,” “Legends of the Dark Knight,” “Detective Comics,” “Nightwing,” “Robin,” “Gotham Nights,” etc, etc.

There are a number of good storylines which would work as a film, but I think part of the problem is that hollywood wants a huge spectacle rather than a series of compelling episodes. Their view seems to be that if one enemy is good, than three or four will be fantastic. What they end up with is a boring, disjointed mess.

10

I think it’s because movie franchises go on and on until finally you get something of Batman and Robin that’s hated by everyone and panned by all the critics. They fear making another movie for the possibilty that it could happen again, or people will not even go for fear it’s Batman and Robin.

Marvel didn’t have to fear this when they realesed X-Men, because most of their movies were crappy straight to video, featuring mangled renditions of their flagship characthers. Why is that a good thing? It’s because none of them had nearly enough hype for anyone to care about. With Batman and Robin, it was like the second coming of jesus and everyone couldn’t wait for it.

DC has been recently lobbying much more to get a proper film done, although with some of the plots and directors/writers being suggested, they might have another B and R.

11

Of course, continuity is no problem if you want to catch up on what the characters are doing now. All you have to do is… well, probably spend several dollars each on several different books every month or two weeks for several months and then go back and fill in all the important stuff that’s happened over the last few years by picking up the graphic novels and the one-shots and the limited series’ and the crossovers and the…

12

:smack: Jesus, that’s dumb. That acronym just singlehandedly killed any interest I had in this film.

And I had quite a bit, too.

13

Why does DC have anything to do with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? The comic is independently published.

But for the original question, my amateur analysis is that Marvel is now where DC was in the early-to-mid 80’s. Hollywood loves repetition; if something succeeds they immediately dig up any franchise/license remotely similar and try to milk the hell out of it. When movies like Star Wars became the norm, that paved the way for the big Superman movie. When that turned into a relatively successful franchise (at least with the second movie), then they started Batman with its enormous media campaign. By now, though, they’ve milked their big names dry and are struggling for ways to rejeuvenate the franchises.

I think that all the reports of Superman and Batman movies stuck in limbo are because the studio’s too nervous about seeing big-budget flops like the last Batman movie. (Whether or not it was an outright “flop” financially, I don’t know – but it can’t have been as big a return on their investment as they needed.) It seems to me that we didn’t start hearing about them again until X-Men and then Spider-man became successful. I predict that DC will start to move on their big licenses again, while Marvel will produce too many sequels and burn out on their licenses. And I would bet that Marvel is releasing their stuff in relatively close succession because they’re aware that their licenses just aren’t as well-known as DC’s.

Another thing to keep in mind is that DC is owned by Time/Warner/AOL/Whoever else is involved this week. And Warner Bros. has a television network they have to create programming for. And again with the Hollywood repetition, where the success of one franchise paves the way for another series: The X-Files begat Buffy the Vampire Slayer begat Smallville begat Birds of Prey. They’re trying to keep their characters alive, but in teen-friendly fantasy/drama series to appeal to the Buffy and Dawson’s Creek audiences.

And about the Superman movies’ not having any sense of style: blasphemy! 3 and 4 were downright awful, but the original is one of the greatest movies ever made. It should be studied as the perfect way to make a comic book movie. And 2 was entertaining enough.

14

SolGrundy, assuming your question was serious, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes from “America’s Best Comics,” which is an imprint of Wildstorm, which is owned by DC.

15

Please, Hollywood, do not look to Superman 1 as an example of how to do a superhero movie. I can do without comically inept villains, spacey free verse odes to the hero from the heroine, and the hero making up entirely new, totally unexplained powers to save the day at the end of the movie.

I doubt that the success of Spiderman will help DC movies actually get made. The problems run deeper than that, and go back much further–for example, the Catwoman movie has been in development for eleven years. Producer Jon Peters is still in charge of Superman for some reason, even though he’s completely failed to produce anything over the years (and scared away all the A-list talent from the project in the process.)

The only thing that will get these projects actually made is a thorough house-cleaning at Warners.

One last thing: it’s not a case of “What is DC doing wrong?” DC has absolutely no choice in the matter. They are owned by Warners, and it’s Warners that’s causing all the problems.

16

I’ve said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating.

Gross overemphasis on superheros and ridiculously complex crossovers and continuity have ruined comics. That, and restricting sales outlets mostly to comics shops. These conditions exist because the major publishers apparently believe that there isn’t any significant audience for comics other than the fanboys.

Sooner or later, the major comics publishers are going to have to find some way to market comics to a wider audience than the fanboys. If they don’t, comics may well go the way of the pulp fiction magazines.

17

Actually, from what I know about the screenplay, you wouldn’t have recognized it anyway.

18

“Why the heck can’t DC comics get a decent movie made?”

Because they’d need decent comics to base the films on?
Yeah, easy jab, but honeslty their comics are for the most part horrible IMHO.

And not just because of the continuity problems, but there is nothing in them, for me, to actually make me respect the characters and want to pay attention to the stories.

I’ve expanded considerably in the past five years as far as my comic purchases go, I used to buy only Marvel, but now there are sooo many other good companies/books out there. They just aren’t very good and they are, well, tacky.

If they had more characters that weren’t called “boy” “girl” and such, is wouldn’t seem so - well - gay.
However, I have to admit I am picking up Batman lately (c’mon! Lee and Loeb!!! [drooooooooool]) and I’ve skimmed over the last several months of the new Catwoman book. That is very, very good.

Ah, well. Marvel has the films and DC doesn’t. Maybe that’ll change some day. Whatever.

19

When I was a kid (a loong time ago) we read nothing but Marvel in my neighborhood. The Distinguished Competition characters were cardboard cutouts, while the Marvel characters were real.
Contrast Batman and Spider Man:

  • Batman lives in a fictional Gotham City and is a millionaire in “real” life.
  • Spider Man lives in Queens in “real” life, as a high school and then college kid. But like most residents of Queens, he commutes to Manhattan to work, in his case to fight as Spider Man.

Which would you find it easier to identify with?

20

Just a couple short years ago, somebody would have been in here asking why DC could do such great movies about their characters and Marvel had movies so bad that they couldn’t even be shown (The Fantastic Four).

Given that Spiderman and Daredevil made lots of money, but are vastly inferior as movies to the original Batman and Superman movies, I predict that the coming glut of Marvel movies will wipe them out by 2005. At which point comic book movies will lie low for a few years until somebody reinvents them yet again.