I was just about to come in with that same thing, Exapno…so I will.
I remember when we Marvel Zombies bemoaned the fact they we never got a good movie about Marvel characters, despite the fact that they were more character driven. DC didn’t have many, but at least they were well produced.
DC: Superman (et al), Batman (et al)…um…to a lesser extent, Swamp Thing.
Marvel: Captain America (straight to video), Punisher (stv), Howard the Duck, Fantastic Four (straight to bootlegs at comic conventions)
I’m glad Marvel is doing well with movies, but I really hope they don’t flood the market too much with unnecessary characters (Iron Fist…I’m looking at you.)
Batman, the recently cancelled Supergirl, recent runs of Green Arrow, JLA, JSA, and others are all very good right now. It’s not that DC doesn’t have the characters or storylines to make great comic-based movies. Heck, I’d still like a real Batman movie in which he didn’t kill his opponents and actually, you know, acted like Batman in general.
And I’d say Marvel and DC are pretty much tied for attrocious comic book movies. We’ve got Superman 3 & 4, Batman and Robin (and to a lesser extent Forever), and Supergirl for DC, and Captain America, Punisher, Fantastic Four (if you count it), and Howard the Duck over at Marvel.
Exactly. In the mid '90s, a Spider-Man clone (long thought dead) returns to New York. Turns out he had gone west and assumed the name Ben Reilly. Then we find that the “clone” living as Reilly is actually the “original” Spider-man and the guy who had been living as Parker is the copy. Later Marvel decides that the “Spider-Man” who had been in New York all along was in truth the “real” Parker, but only after the Reilly/Clone character had taken over as Spider-Man from Parker/Original for a while.
As a longtime Marvel fan (I read both companies’ comics, but Marvel will be my first love), I can definitely relate to that. DC had high-production versions of Superman and Batman, while Marvel gave us Captain America with rubber ears, Lou Ferrigno in green body paint, and Daredevil with a black suit and a sleep mask over his face. :smack:
I’m definitely tickled pink over the current Marvel Movie Renaissance (Daredevil was slightly disappointing, but still not bad), but I agree – one false move and we’ll have the next Batman and Robin.
Recently the Wonder Woman hit a snag in development hell when the star they were pursueing turned it down. Who did they want to play WW? Sandra Bullock! AHHHHUGH! Now Catherine Zeta-jones seems born to play the part.
I would think that with the new Superman movie in development, a Wonder Woman in development, that they will thow in a GL into development. If Daredevil can do well in Feb then you could do these not as big as a summer tentpole production but still make $$. But with all the problems at AOLTIMEWARNER who knows?
Uh, Lucy Lawless is Wonder Woman. Plus she was already in Spiderman. So give her the role, write a script based on a ten issue run of the comic, and give the director $40 million. Is that so hard?
Personally, I’d love to see a Wonder Woman movie with Liv Tyler as our star-spangled swimsuit babe, Sharon Stone as Circe (WW’s arch-enemy from the George Perez days), and lots and lots of lesbian subtext between the two! but that’s just me!
With Daredevil and Blade II, I think we’re already there. I didn’t care for Daredevil at all because of the silly plot, the horrible acting of the principal character and the terrible writing. The sound track was fun, I thought, but little else. (Unless you count Jennifer Garner’s brief stint… which I do. :))
Blade II wasn’t much better. Blade was a blast, but then they went all wacky with this gene-splicing uber-vamp thingy in the sequel, which doesn’t give me hope for the next movie in the series. Plus, what passes for romance in these movies nowadays? These people have a screen time of, what, 10 minutes together before getting all “You’s da’ luv of my life!”
Feh.
Well, I hope the second X-Men is as much fun as the first…
You mean Captain America and Punisher had theatrical releases? Man, that must have been an interesting time…
So the short answer to the question is because it’s the suits at Warner that are in charge, and they’re too busy running a multi-billion dollar company into the ground to give a rat’s ass about making good movies. Well, now, that’s just depressing.
Even more depressing when you think that suits are supposed to be all “Hey, look, a trend! Let’s exploit it!” but can’t even do that right.
It’s obviously been a while since you saw Batman and Robin. While neither DD or Blade 2 were particularly good movies (Blade II somehow received more critical acclaim than the first, despite having a worse story and poorer direction), what they both failed to do was to make complete mockeries of their respective source materials the way B&R did.
I mean B&R had the psycopathic, yet strangely compelling and sympathetic character of Mr. Freeze played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (who mailed in a horrible performance, even for him), Bane, the man who broke the bat (okay, why does it sound like a description of Barry Bonds when I write it?), reduced to a drooling neanderthal, and bat nipples. Neither decent performances from Uma Thurman and George Clooney nor Alicia Silverstone in vinyl could even come close to redeeming that steaming pile.
It’s been eleven years since the last decent Batman movie (Batman Returns) was released. That was the point when it started to became clear to Warners that their comic book properties weren’t the huge money-generating machines they’d believed them to be. Of course the production team behind a project is important to its getting developed, but that development doesn’t happen at all unless there’s demand from the studios & license holders.
Saying that WB is going to be reluctant to capitalize on the big wave of Marvel movies coming out just because they haven’t had any development so far, is just naive – if there’s money to be made, they’ll do everything possible to greenlight a new project. Catwoman is a bad example; they had to act immediately after Batman Returns to get any leverage on that, and they didn’t. Superman is a different story – not only is “Smallville” a success, but Marvel has had a pretty consistent string of super-hero hit movies, and the pressure is on. That gets stuff done more than any “creative vision” from the producer or “A-list talent” in the cast.
And about some of the other posts: I can guarantee that continuity issues are not the stumbling block for getting comic book movies made. The idea is absurd. In fact, I’d say that actual readership of a comic book has any bearing at all on the chances of a movie’s getting made/being successful. It’s all about character recognition and whether they can work any of the traditional movie-selling stuff (hot chicks in tights, etc.) into the franchise. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a Superman comic book, but I still know enough about the character to want to see a movie about it. All the nonsense with Red/Blue/Electric/Whatever Supermen, and Supergirls, and pocket universes and such, don’t matter one bit to the movies.
When I read comic books as a kid, the last thing I wanted to do was read about characters I could “identify with.” It was all about fantasy. I read DC exclusively; Marvel never interested me because it tried too hard to be “realistic.” It always came across as badly-written and pandering instead of DC, which was badly-written and cool. Give me “Metropolis” and “Gotham” and “Keystone City” over “New York” any day.
(!) Hey, you’re right. Too bad it violates my one-comic-character-per-actor rule. (Of course, I want Billy Zane to play Batman, & he was already the Phantom, so I may have to change that…)
Sol, Batman Returns may have been the last decent Batman movie, but it sure wasn’t the last Batman movie to make big bucks! 1995’s Batman Forever made $184 million at the domestic box office, more than Batman Returns’s $165 million. Diminishing returns didn’t set in until Batman and Robin, which grossed $107 million (and which cost a mint to make.)
In other words, comic book movies were still clearly earning big bucks from Batman Returns in '92 to Batman and Robin in '97. Did this help Catwoman get made in that time period? No, it did not.
If you think Catwoman is a bad example, you’re more than welcome to ponder the various attempts Warners has made at getting a Batman and/or Superman movie rolling since '97. There have been at least seven of them.
Mind you, it’s not usual for Hollywood projects to linger in development hell for extended periods of time. But the huge irony is that the development for these characters is already done! There’s a huge wealth of material to draw from. This was the strength of the Spiderman movie–it simply took the strongest elements of the early history of the character and changed them very little, by Hollywood standards. They didn’t try to “re-imagine him for the 90s” and give him a gay robot sidekick.
Those who are wondering what I’m babbling about in that last sentence should read this piece of ancient history from 2000:
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While neither DD or Blade 2 were particularly good movies (Blade II somehow received more critical acclaim than the first, despite having a worse story and poorer direction), what they both failed to do was to make complete mockeries of their respective source materials the way B&R did.