Ryan McNeil
Don’t worry…you aren’t about to read the ramblings of a comic book fanboy. I promise. Yesterday, I read all about the news surrounding Warner Brothers’ plans for a big screen Justice League of America movie: first in the morning on Pajiba, then on my walk home in Entertainment Weekly. The fact that this movie is being made isn’t what caught my attention…it feels like after Spider-Man webslung his way to $403M, Hollywood started looking at every comic book ever made as a potential payday.
Warner has successfully rebooted their Batman franchise with director Christopher Nolan. To a slightly lesser extent, they’ve also managed to do so with their Brian Singer’s Superman movie. Logically, you’d think Warner would look to crossing over the actors or directors from those series to this project. Nope – seems that sort of thinking makes too much sense for Warner Brothers. Instead, they’ll cast totally different actors, keep Brandon Routh and Christian Bale in the safety of their own franchises, likely pull a totally different director, and hope that audiences buy into different faces playing both The Man of Steel and The Dark Knight.
Comic book movies have been wasting perfectly good villains. Venom was misused in the Spider-Man series, ditto Bane, Catwoman, and Two-Face in the Batman films. Those that aren’t misused are killed off, going against the common rule of most comic books. If all of that isn’t bad enough, now studios will turn audiences off the heroes too!
Note to Hollywood: Just because your movie is based on a comic book, doesn’t guarantee a big payday (see THE PUNISHER, GHOST RIDER, THE HULK, DAREDEVIL, ELEKTRA). Don’t mess with what works – you’ll end up losing three franchises in one fell swoop.
Opening in Theatres Today…
THE KINGDOM (Watch two Oscar winners earn their mortgage payment)
FEAST OF LOVE (Hi Greg Kinnear…Where ya been?)
THE GAME PLAN (It stars a pro wrestler, that’s always a good sign)
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB (I wonder if your ticket comes with tea and biscotti?)
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (Prime yourself by watching the doc of the same name)
and INTO THE WILD (Which I’ll be seeing tomorrow – I’ll have a review up in the morning)