Is the DC movie universe circling the drain?

[Mikey]

Yeah, I knew that bit, but I didn't know if there was any precedent for the term before the Black Library coopted it.

[Atekimogus]

I might get laughed at for this but imho the DC universe was never better than with Batman The Animated Series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

I watched that as a kid and liked it....years later I watched it as an adult and was finally able to appreciate the sheer quality of story-telling, character development und fine balance of humour and drama. To think that it was mainly a vehicle to sell toys...just incredible.

Always wondered what would have happened if they'd had balls of stell and just let the guys from the DCAU create their cinematic universe. Maybe not as director, but just for script, story and general direction....

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I might get laughed at for this but imho the DC universe was never better than with Batman The Animated Series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

I watched that as a kid and liked it....years later I watched it as an adult and was finally able to appreciate the sheer quality of story-telling, character development und fine balance of humour and drama. To think that it was mainly a vehicle to sell toys...just incredible.

Always wondered what would have happened if they'd had balls of stell and just let the guys from the DCAU create their cinematic universe. Maybe not as director, but just for script, story and general direction....

If they laugh at you, then they must laugh at me. The DCAU is my DC. More than the comics ever were or will be.

[Mikey]

Indeed, the DCAU had high points that were far higher than anything in BvS, and certainly higher than anything that WW, JL, or Shazam promise to hold. Not to say that there weren't some direct-to-vid stinkers in the DCAU also, but Batman: TAS as well as Superman: TAS were more consistent and less, well, pandering than a lot of comics-universe material I've seen. Also, Mark Hamill's Joker. Never really watched The New Batman Adventures, though.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

If for nothing else, what they did with Mister Freeze. My god...

[Nutso]

To show why Superman is a terrible character, the narrator first details Indiana Jones' character in Raiders of The Lost Ark.

[IanKennedy]

Pretty good, although it's not correctly titled. Superman isn't a terrible character, it's that Superman, as shown in these films, is a terrible character.

[Teaos]

I disagree. He is to powerful to be a great character. Superman in his modern roll is literally a God, it's really hard to write a good story with him in it more than once or twice before you have to make the plot really contrived.

His power is that of the Hulk, Flash, Cyclopes and Iceman with x ray vision and super hearing.

[IanKennedy]

He provides very simple fixes for BvS that would have made it a good character. There's nothing much wrong with the 1978 Reeve Superman either.

[Graham Kennedy]

Superman has worked very well in the original movie, and personally I rather liked Superman Returns as well.

But really if his only weakness is Kryptonite then every movie has to be about somebody getting hold of some Kryptonite, or else there's no threat and so no drama. I imagine it would get old fast.

Or you could depower him. I gather in the Supergirl series she and Clarke aren't nearly as strong as they are in the films, so there are all sorts of credible threats around. People seem to like it, so I guess it must work well enough.

Personally I'd be happy with a Superman that didn't appear to be either indifferent to or miserable about saving people's lives.

ETA : Oh, and here's a thing that bothers me somewhat. It especially applies to Supes fighting Zod, but it's really applicable to other Superheroes too.

As I've always understood Superman, he has essentially infinite strength, and is (Kryptonite and magic aside) essentially invulnerable. So watching Superman fight Zod is pretty much a literal example of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object. If Superman punches Zod, does it actually hurt Zod? It sure didn't seem to. He wasn't bruised or bleeding no matter how often Supes hit him. Similarly, Supes himself fought all those Kryptonians, and didn't have a scratch on him. But if that's the case, what's the point in fighting and punching one another at all? If it's not even theoretically possible to kill Superman by hitting him really hard, then hitting him really hard is an entirely pointless exercise.

One of my major gripes with Man of Steel is Superman killing Zod. And no, not because "Superman doesn't kill". I've watched every Superman movie and I don't recall ANY of them ever mentioning that he has a rule that he doesn't kill! I guess it's a comic thing.

Anyway, my gripe with that is that the neck snap is the first time in the movie we learn that it's actually possible to kill Zod that way. And why is it? Punching him in the face fifty times does absolutely nothing to him, but but the same guy using the same muscles to jerk his head will snap his neck? Argh! It makes no sense to me.

Same with Doomsday in BvS. Punches and throwing all around, and none of it does a damn thing. Just tell us the rules!

[Mikey]

Well, one may say that Supes is essentially a god... the comics dealt with that very neatly by having him opposed by, well - other gods. Quite literally, "The New G-ds," in fact. And Doomsday, and of course, Lobo (the anti-hero/villain with the best name in comic-dom.*) Doomsday was, in fact, the character who killed Superman in the comics. Sure, from the outside the introduction of such characters may sound like a writers' contrivance; but the whole Darkseid/New G-ds bit provided detailed storylines across the entire DC milieu; and the death of Superman at the hands of Doomsday can't be overstated in rallying DC from near-oblivion as a functional business.

*Of course, in Spanish "Lobo" simply means "wolf." But in his native Czarnian (of which there are no other speakers, since Lobo killed the entire rest of the Czarnian race in a fit of, well, boredom) it means "he who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it."

[McAvoy]

In Supergirl, their strength is inconsistent.

But the one big thing is that show has alot of powerful beings that give Supergirl a hard time. They even have humans wearing some sort of exo skeleton that allows them to go toe to toe with Supergirl level of strength.

[Mikey]

IIRC, Supergirl's strength and toughness have long been a subject of great inconsistency. Don't watch the show, though.

[McAvoy]

In the show you have Superman. Though his suit is weird. Almost looks like the alternate reality where Superman goes evil after Lois Lane dies by Joker.

Supergirl also recycles purely Superman stories as well. Parasite, Bizarro, to name a couple. Makes sense though you are catering to people who more than likely have no idea about Supergirl's own villains.

[Nutso]

So it looks like Affleck's script for The Batman might be out. His script had gotten a rewrite by Chris Terrio but, the bosses are looking to start anew.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/02/09/ ... ce-affleck


http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/ ... 083b1551f8

As this week's announcement that Ben Affleck would step down as director of his solo superhero movie The Batman continues to reverberate through Hollywood and fandom, sources confirm the script originally penned by Affleck and Geoff Johns was rewritten by scribe Chris Terrio (whose Argo screenplay won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and who did a page-one rewrite on Batman v Superman), but the project will undergo substantial changes and possible/probably another full rewrite. Warner Bros. is already speaking to several filmmakers about taking over in the director's chair -- including one of my personal longtime favorites to direct a Batman movie, Matt Reeves, who seems to be the frontrunner -- and word is the project will essentially get a fresh start once a new creative team has been put together.