The Future of Comic Book Movies

[Kalyx triaD]

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/06/340x_avengers.jpg
One day, this will be normal.

I was thinking about Marvel Films 'Avengers Initiative', and Nolan's recent comments against the idea of crossing over Batman and Superman (which he's currently overseeing). Now although I disagree with Nolan's reasoning for not wanting a crossover, I could imagine he just doesn't see the value of crossing over his Batman and the Superman concept he's doing with David Goyer. I can't speculate on what's going on in his head, but Marvel certainly sees value in establishing a movie-verse. WB has also expressed interest in a similar project (and almost jumped the gun 2 years ago with an 'artificial' JLA crossover). I'm going to recount the events that led to this Avengers Initiative, how it's similar to how comic universes began on page, and why the future of comic book movies will probably require a shared movie-verse.

Warning, this is one of those Kalyx posts.

Avengers Assemble... In 15 Years:

People dispute over which movie started the modern age of comic films; Stephen Norrington's hip and dark Blade or Bryan Singer's smart and thoughtful X-Men. Either way Marvel found a venue for getting their characters on screen: shop them out to willing studios. By the time Spider-Man and X2 printed money and sweet review articles, studios were eager to grab the next big thing. Marvel had a field day, entire sections of their universe split amongst major studios. Their X-Men sandbox landed at Fox, Spidey and his foes over at Sony, with other heroes ending up at Lionsgate and Columbia Pictures, etc. Meanwhile, WB made a splash with Batman Begins (after a disgraced Bat-franchise years earlier), and prepped a new Superman movie. WB has the advantage of DC's entire catalog. Surely we'd see WB get to JLA before Marvel, with their heroes spread across multiple studios, right? Well...

A series of commercial, critical, and perceived blunders made for some unexpected changes to that forecast. Superman Returns only gave WB a fortune and not the world, so they deemed it a failure. This had them hesitate on a sequel, while Nolan's Batman series continued to give WB the world. The fallout of Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman and David Goyer's Flash projects, along with Nolan's disapproval of his Batman teaming up with other heroes, caused the idea of a live action Justice League to fade quickly (Whedon will get the last laugh, however). WB's ace in the hole of having all those heroes to themselves turned out to be a joker card.

Meanwhile, Marvel's successful run was sullied by the well shot yet unexpected direction of Ang Lee's Hulk. This would start a string of movies, including Dare Devil and Fantastic Four, to come out showing the dark side of letting just anyone translate their characters. Marvel took the offensive, and built a new portion of Marvel that dealt specifically with their character's films. It was too late to salvage X-Men and Spidey before their weak received 3rd entries, but it did pave the way for a stunt that changed the game: Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark appeared in The Incredible Hulk reboot, with dialogue mentioning "they're putting together a team." The buzz around that little scene overshadowed the movie it tailed. The movie-verse has begun.

Similarities With The Funny Books:

About a thousand years ago our favorite characters were loners, literally. Their comic books existed as separate worlds with no set universe (even if they were published under one banner). It wasn't until the 60's that the Avengers and the Justice League got their own books, though very exciting cameos began before that. Back then, the Avengers were promoted as a team to combat forces no single hero can face, while JLA was presented as an all-star, novelty affair (it was later on that they would explain carefully why somebody like Wonder Woman or the Green Lantern needed help with anything). More importantly, these books went a long way into establishing the greater universes of their respective brands. Although seeing Batman and Superman on the same page is just another day, decades ago that was a big deal.

Today superheros existed in their own movie universes. In a lot of these adaptations, the idea of the hero being the only of his kind was actually an important plot point. It helped, narrative wise, that the heroes be introduced in a world where there was none others (as Nolan notes). This worked for the audience because the modern superhero movie was also something we just never seen before. The movies were to us what the heroes were to the characters within, and it worked. The wonder and/or mystery of the superhero was a theme that assisted the current trend. But... we're not impressed anymore. That little scene at the end of Incredible Hulk revealed where our hearts lie.

Avengers Assemble... Now:

Now before I get to the ultimate point of this wall of text I must disclaim a few things: a) I still see value and success in self-contained hero movies, b) I do not think team-ups should replace stand alone hero movies, and c) this is ultimately an argument toward a shared movie-verse.

The rule of thumb was that if any other heroic character was seen in a superhero film, thoughts of a spin-off was expected. In this way sub-universes could begin, and that's polar opposite of what should be the goal. Something shouldn't spread into a universe, but come together as one. Already people are talking as if the superhero genre is finite, a passing fad. I personally believe it'll last as long as the car chase, and one's personal growing disinterest doesn't forecast jack. However, there is a movement against the 'origin story' template of superhero movies. Even eventual sequels are becoming cut and paste (although often the most successful of any film's series). It's widely expected, with high accuracy, that the third film in a superhero series is doomed.

So what then is the next step? How do we explore these characters after their movies run dry (the origin, the greater challenge, the final challenge, reboot time, repeat). How can superhero movies keep the buzz in a way where it work as it always had, with exciting new options at hand? The answer can be seen in Marvel's Avengers Initiative. Soon Marvel will have established a movie-verse where men in high-tech armor, thunder gods, gamma ray beasts, and super soldiers exist. They will meet, share dialogue, and fight together (and/or against each other). This is the future of the superhero film, the realization of superheroes existing together in one universe.

The execution doesn't necessarily need to be as grand as the Avengers movie, it could be as simple as cameos where permitted. The difficulty is maintaining the individual plot, while referring to a greater arc at hand. For instance, the timeline of Marvel's grand plot seems to suggest that the Hulk is motivating S.H.I.E.L.D to gather superpowered specialists. It prevents the team-up from being random, and requires cooperation from multiple production teams. This would make sense in the lead up for a major team up, but why can't we see Bruce Wayne in a business meeting with Lex Luthor in a small scene related the film's plot? Why can't we see the GL ring fly past Clark Kent in a speedy, humorous cameo? Hell, why can't we get a wink that Transformers 2's secretive NEST taskforce is in fact a precursor to the equally secretive GI Joe?

Gestures like these can be exciting, safe toward the particular film's plot, while building a universe. In a time where the superhero series has a foreseeable end point, a shared universe could expand the potential of how we can present a hero. A meeting between Superman and Batman could express new angles of their personality. Some creators may note the risk involved with putting these fantastical characters together, but if you can get us to believe in a man with metal claws and a man who swings on webs, we're game for anything - provided it's done well enough.

So like the team books of today, one day seeing two heroes on screen from different movies will be just another day. Maybe the universe will reach across mediums, maybe a TV show character will appear in a movie and vice versa... Until then, everybody will be watching this Avengers Initiative, including WB/DC, for a shared movie-verse is the future of comic book movies.

Avengers poster mock-up by oi9.com member alohaloya

[Rammsteinmad]

Good post.

Did you write it though? Or copy and paste?

Also, that picture is fucking sick! I know it's not real, but it's a good sampler of what we can expect I guess.

[Kalyx triaD]

I wrote it this morning. I thought about posting in the Marvel or DC Movie News threads but I figure it could have it's own thread (plus it's long as Hell).

And yeah, that poster looks cool. Can't wait for the real deal.

[Reavant]

Good post... but the problem is with putting heros together like that in movies is a continuity issue. The thing is that actors dont always want to show up in multiple movies as the same character. Whether its money or theyre scared of being type cast or they want to be 'more creative'. A problem with movies where there's sequels is that when the main characters are not played by the same actors movie to movie, they generally aren't as well received and can cause a bit of confusion. I think the biggest problem might be that you get these hero movies with good actors that end up being real good and when there's sequels to team ups, the actors don't do it and the movies are done with lesser actors that either dont do as good of a job or are perceived as not doing as good of a job because the public fell in love with the original so much.

[Reavant]

for example if this avengers movie isnt done with all the actors used to set it up, it will be an epic failure

[Nowhere Man]

Not that it contradicts any of your main points, but most of the well-known superheroes were only isolated in their own separate worlds for the first very few years of their existence. National Comics and their subsidiaries (which would eventually become DC) were putting all of their flagship characters together in the Justice Society, and Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel) was putting together the All-Winners Squad, both during the height of the Golden Age in the 1940s, a full two decades before the Justice League or the Avengers. While the later teams definitely solidified the idea of pooling the continuities together, it was hardly a brand new idea.

As for the main meat of the article, while I can definitely see the huge money-making potential for studios to lean towards making one big movie-verse, it does create a lot of problems in terms of consistency, continuity, and quality.

For example, if we're going to tie Nolan's Batman series to the upcoming Superman reboot, there's the simple problem that Superman was apparently just sitting on his ass letting all of that horrible stuff happen to Gotham City--seriously, name one thing that the Joker or Ra's al Ghul did that Superman couldn't have put a stop to within a minute of showing up. Sure, you could say that he wasn't Superman yet, that he was still in pre-tights Smallville mode, but unless they're going to just completely gut the character of his core principles, Clark still would have made the effort to head that way and lend a hand. The only way the Nolan movies work in relation to the rest of the DC universe is if there is no rest of the DC universe, that Batman has to save Gotham by himself because there's no one else to come in and help him.

Another problem is one that used to frustrate me to no end about the comics themselves: that half the time you can't tell what the hell is going on in one story until you've seen all these other ones first. Marvel's recent Siege event was guilty of a lot of this, and don't even get me started on DC's Final Crisis and Blackest Night. If you're planning on using already established characters to team up for a major story, then you have to run on the assumption that everyone has already seen the movies establishing them, and that will cost you viewers who didn't see the other ones and don't feel like doing their 'homework' (I still have plenty of friends who never saw Dark Knight because they didn't see Batman Begins first). If you're going to introduce new characters into the mix, then you have to waste valuable screen time on their origins rather than fixate on the central plot.

Finally, and this one is entirely just me, but I cannot imagine the script for such big team-up movie not being total shit. Yes, there are several great stories in the comics that involve almost the entire Marvel or DC universe, but most of those arcs were told across several issues, where the author had plenty of time to flesh out whatever he/she was trying to get across. In a movie, you've got about two hours, two and a half tops, before the audience loses patience. Creating a conflict big enough to get all of those superheroes together, writing each of the characters to convincingly react to one another and to the situation at hand, keeping the narrative engaging and entertaining, and still keeping in enough big-budget action to give the audience what they came for, is no small task. In the end, I have no doubt it will be big and loud and explosion-y and make a godjillion dollars, but it will likely come at the cost of the movie itself being stupid as hell.

[Kalyx triaD]

Good post... but the problem is with putting heros together like that in movies is a continuity issue. The thing is that actors dont always want to show up in multiple movies as the same character. Whether its money or theyre scared of being type cast or they want to be 'more creative'.

Well that's as easy as making sure the actors and actresses understand the commitment before they put ink to paper. I'm sure Sam Jackson wouldn't agree to nine Marvel movies if he was afraid of being type cast. And then you have guys like Hugh Jackman who would do the characters as long as they can because they simply love the role.

It would be ridiculous for an actor to sign up for a role, knowing the character may make multiple appearances, and back out later because they didn't wanna be in the Justice League. I have more faith in the sign up process than that.

What could be an issue is payment, as I've been hearing Marvel is kinda inconsistent with that.

[Nowhere Man]

It would be ridiculous for an actor to sign up for a role, knowing the character may make multiple appearances, and back out later because they didn't wanna be in the Justice League. I have more faith in the sign up process than that.


And yet Christian Bale did exactly that.

[Kalyx triaD]

Not that it contradicts any of your main points, but most of the well-known superheroes were only isolated in their own separate worlds for the first very few years of their existence. National Comics and their subsidiaries (which would eventually become DC) were putting all of their flagship characters together in the Justice Society, and Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel) was putting together the All-Winners Squad, both during the height of the Golden Age in the 1940s, a full two decades before the Justice League or the Avengers. While the later teams definitely solidified the idea of pooling the continuities together, it was hardly a brand new idea.

Aye, good heads up. I should have made specific allusions to the silver age.

As for the main meat of the article, while I can definitely see the huge money-making potential for studios to lean towards making one big movie-verse, it does create a lot of problems in terms of consistency, continuity, and quality.

For example, if we're going to tie Nolan's Batman series to the upcoming Superman reboot, there's the simple problem that Superman was apparently just sitting on his ass letting all of that horrible stuff happen to Gotham City--seriously, name one thing that the Joker or Ra's al Ghul did that Superman couldn't have put a stop to within a minute of showing up. Sure, you could say that he wasn't Superman yet, that he was still in pre-tights Smallville mode, but unless they're going to just completely gut the character of his core principles, Clark still would have made the effort to head that way and lend a hand. The only way the Nolan movies work in relation to the rest of the DC universe is if there is no rest of the DC universe, that Batman has to save Gotham by himself because there's no one else to come in and help him.

I actually recalled this point in one of the 'News...' threads concerning a Batman/Superman movie (using Nolan's Batman). The appeal of Bruce and Clark is the clashing of vengeful anger and hopeful optimism. While Clark is berating Bruce for his heavy handed tactics, Bruce could blast back about the arrogance of questioning his actions after the events of TDK. While Clark was putting cartoonish evil land owners in jail, Bruce had to stand over charred rubble where his love died in. He watched a good man go insane and had to sacrifice what little good standing he had to protect his name. And all that while a crazy clown pretty much won the whole ordeal. Bruce's endings aren't happy, they don't have him smiling at the camera before the credits. I think this is a gold mine of character interaction, and the stronger points of putting Bruce and Clark together in the first place.

I also think it's perfectly reasonable that Bruce had to handle all of that while Clark is either becoming Superman or just busy handling Luthor. For all we know every other hero was going thru there baggage... or maybe they did have time to help Bruce. In any case it's a detail we long got over in regard to crossovers. Otherwise we'd have Superman solving crime in Star City, and what would we need Ollie for?

Another problem is one that used to frustrate me to no end about the comics themselves: that half the time you can't tell what the hell is going on in one story until you've seen all these other ones first. Marvel's recent Siege event was guilty of a lot of this, and don't even get me started on DC's Final Crisis and Blackest Night. If you're planning on using already established characters to team up for a major story, then you have to run on the assumption that everyone has already seen the movies establishing them, and that will cost you viewers who didn't see the other ones and don't feel like doing their 'homework' (I still have plenty of friends who never saw Dark Knight because they didn't see Batman Begins first). If you're going to introduce new characters into the mix, then you have to waste valuable screen time on their origins rather than fixate on the central plot.

We'll just have to trust that the viewers keep up. No real answer for this. :-\ People will keep up or they won't. I'd hope they use the writing techniques of TV and comics where certain dialogue or even summaries could clue the audience in before the feature. It would certainly add to the comic book feel.

Finally, and this one is entirely just me, but I cannot imagine the script for such big team-up movie not being total shit. Yes, there are several great stories in the comics that involve almost the entire Marvel or DC universe, but most of those arcs were told across several issues, where the author had plenty of time to flesh out whatever he/she was trying to get across. In a movie, you've got about two hours, two and a half tops, before the audience loses patience. Creating a conflict big enough to get all of those superheroes together, writing each of the characters to convincingly react to one another and to the situation at hand, keeping the narrative engaging and entertaining, and still keeping in enough big-budget action to give the audience what they came for, is no small task. In the end, I have no doubt it will be big and loud and explosion-y and make a godjillion dollars, but it will likely come at the cost of the movie itself being stupid as hell.

The only answer to this, and one I think the writers have already accepted, is that some characters will be getting the shaft. Going from your own feature to becoming a co-star will have a shock factor. We can only hope the principle characters at least get their 'fuck yeah' moment and lines, because there's no way we could give them their due. It will certainly be a challenge.

[Kalyx triaD]

And yet Christian Bale did exactly that.

After T: Salvation, he should beg for a JLA slot. Although he left his stance ambiguous so long as the story made sense to him. That's all well and good, and I doubt WB stressed a JLA team-up the way Marvel did with their new leading men.

:|Could be wrong, Bale's pretty crazy.

[Nowhere Man]

I actually recalled this point in one of the 'News...' threads concerning a Batman/Superman movie (using Nolan's Batman). The appeal of Bruce and Clark is the clashing of vengeful anger and hopeful optimism. While Clark is berating Bruce for his heavy handed tactics, Bruce could blast back about the arrogance of questioning his actions after the events of TDK. While Clark was putting cartoonish evil land owners in jail, Bruce had to stand over charred rubble where his love died in. He watched a good man go insane and had to sacrifice what little good standing he had to protect his name. And all that while a crazy clown pretty much won the whole ordeal. Bruce's endings aren't happy, they don't have him smiling at the camera before the credits. I think this is a gold mine of character interaction, and the stronger points of putting Bruce and Clark together in the first place.

That's the thing, though; there's no fucking way someone as idealistic and nigh-omnipotent as Superman would just sit back and let the events of TDK happen in the first place. All of the previous Superman movies have established that Clark is every bit at home stopping petty street crime as he is fighting would-be world conquerors, and SR showed him doing just that on a worldwide scale. If there was a whole city being besieged by a psychotic terrorist or an evil ninja cult, a mere ten-second flight away from Metropolis, then why the hell would Clark not do anything about it? If Superman existed in the Nolan-verse, then TDK would have ended about two minutes into the opening bank robbery scene.

The only way that it works in my eyes is if the first two Batman movies took place during the five-year period where Superman was off-planet before SR (which I know is no longer part of the continuity they're creating, but whatever). Otherwise, he comes off as totally ineffectual, and it just smacks of taking the Frank Miller approach of re-writing Superman's personality completely in order to make him look like a naive idiot compared to Batman.

[Kalyx triaD]

That's the thing, though; there's no fucking way someone as idealistic and nigh-omnipotent as Superman would just sit back and let the events of TDK happen in the first place. All of the previous Superman movies have established that Clark is every bit at home stopping petty street crime as he is fighting would-be world conquerors, and SR showed him doing just that on a worldwide scale. If there was a whole city being besieged by a psychotic terrorist or an evil ninja cult, a mere ten-second flight away from Metropolis, then why the hell would Clark not do anything about it? If Superman existed in the Nolan-verse, then TDK would have ended about two minutes into the opening bank robbery scene.

All this you can apply to the general concept of crossovers, though. How do you feel about crime running rampant in Gotham with a whole universe of heroes existing in the comics? If we got passed that in the books we could accept it on screen. I have no answer for what you're pointing out, it makes sense, but it's something me and many others got over already. :-\

[Nowhere Man]

Mainly because I'm way more of a Superman fan than a Batman one, and there's no way to pull off a crossover movie like that without making Superman look bad. Either he's so totally inept at being the world's protector that he can't even deal with stuff that's happening in the next city over, or he just doesn't give a shit about Gotham. Either way it makes him look like crap just to reinforce the idea that Batman is cool, which is hardly something that needs reminding since he's a far more popular character anyway.

In the comics, it's slightly more understandable since A) Batman is smart enough and has enough high-tech gadgets to hang with the rest of the Justice League, whereas in the movie he gets all his gear from whatever Morgan Freeman has lying around, and B) there's enough crazy shit going on all over the world on a regular basis that Superman and the others would have their hands full. Not to mention Batman has like a dozen sidekicks helping him out in the comics, so it's not like he's doing it all by himself. It's still hard to swallow that a place as nasty as Gotham can still exist with the rest of the DCU (which is honestly why I feel Batman is a really poor place to start when getting into DC), but it does make a tad more sense as to why the other capes don't meddle with Bruce's turf unless it's something big.

[Kalyx triaD]

I like to think Superman has more cross-cultural appeal.

[Nowhere Man]

I like to think Superman has more cross-cultural appeal.

I'd think so too, but very rare is the occasion where comic geeks don't start hating on Supes for being 'boring,' 'gay,' a 'Boy Scout,' etc. Whereas all you have to do with Batman is have him say something gritty and then punch someone, and everyone jizzes in their pants.

[Kalyx triaD]

I love Superman. I think people miss the damn point of his character and bring up 'safe' criticisms like John Byrne didn't address them 20-fuckin-years ago.

[Reavant]

im sure if they just wrote how superman had a full realization of his powers after the events of TDK then he wouldnt look like he was sitting on his hands. Not to mention if you play up the psychology of clark and him believing in himself and shit like that before he realizes hes indestructible and shit like that.

[Nowhere Man]

I love Superman. I think people miss the damn point of his character and bring up 'safe' criticisms like John Byrne didn't address them 20-fuckin-years ago.

I was never a fan of a lot of Byrne's revisions (especially turning Lex Luthor into a half-assed Kingpin), but I did appreciate that he actually went out of his way to answer all of the tired old questions everyone brings up about Superman, like why nobody notices that he's Clark without his glasses, etc.

[dronepool]

This is a cool thread and that poster kicks ass. As for crossovers, I think it's lazy to not want to try and create one. It could work and it doesn't have to be "realistic". I understand that Nolan wants his Batman to be more down to Earth and Superman probably the complete opposite but Nolan or not, I just want a Justice League movie in future, with or without his characters incarnations.

I personally think that a JLA movie would be more interesting than an Avengers one, there's just something about the DC Universe threats that feel more epic.... I don't know what it is. I mean I like both, but watching every single episode of the DCAU makes it seem like they have so much potential for awesome stories.

[Kalyx triaD]

No matter what DC does, Birthright remains the ultimate Superman origin for me. Just excellent.

[Nowhere Man]

Indeed. Birthright took all the stuff from Byrne's reboot that was worth keeping (Lexcorp, Ma and Pa Kent still being alive), added in more familiar stuff from the Silver Age and the movies and Smallville, and streamlined it so it doesn't have that clunky 80s-Marvel feel that MoS does. Johns' new Secret Origins is okay, but Birthright is far and away the best origin.

[Reavant]

I was never a fan of a lot of Byrne's revisions (especially turning Lex Luthor into a half-assed Kingpin), but I did appreciate that he actually went out of his way to answer all of the tired old questions everyone brings up about Superman, like why nobody notices that he's Clark without his glasses, etc.

what was the explanation for people not noticing the difference between clark and superman?

[Nowhere Man]

what was the explanation for people not noticing the difference between clark and superman?

There have been a few different explanations, ranging from Superman vibrating his face while acting in costume so that photos of him always come out blurred, to him using subliminal hypnosis in the late Silver Age when he was a tv news anchor to discourage viewers from making the connection. However, the best explanation the comics have presented is that the glasses aren't the disguise at all, but just the way Clark acts compares to the way the world perceives Superman.

Superman is idolized by virtually everyone in the DC world, even by most of the other superheroes; there isn't a single person on the planet that doesn't know his face. Clark Kent is a nobody, not a complete schmuck but hardly a celebrity- even the people who read his articles probably don't know what he looks like. In All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor mentions that 60% of men in Metropolis subconsciously groom themselves to look more like Superman, so Clark would be just another guy who is following a trend.

As for the folks who know Clark personally (Jimmy Olsen,etc), there's the fact that Clark is always portrayed as something of a clutz, to the point where they'd feel a little ridiculous accusing the poor goof of being the world's greatest superhero. If they went around saying that the guy who punched out an intergalactic warlord last week is the same guy who couldn't get the coffee stain out of his tie this morning, they'd look like they were out of their minds.

On top of that, there's really no basis for people to suspect that he has a secret identity. Batman and Flash wear masks, so people want to find out who they really are, but everyone already knows who Superman really is. Couple that with the fact that many heroes (particularly Wonder Woman and Aquaman) don't even bother with having a secret identity at all, and it wouldn't be hard for most folks to assume that Superman is just always Superman.

Lois Lane originally had it figured out early on, and spent most of the Silver Age trying to find conclusive proof, but Supes was always able to keep one step ahead with robots that looked like Clark or Batman standing in for him or whatever. And Lex Luthor is smart enough to figure it out, but there's also the fact that he's horrendously insane.

So that's pretty much the best explanation for how Superman is able to get away with being Clark Kent. Nobody finds out because nobody is really looking.

[Reavant]

thats so ridiculously plausible that I cant believe they used it in the comics lol