One of the pieces of news coming out of San Diego Comic-Con was the not-altogether-surprising announcement that Christopher Nolan, director of the “Dark Knight trilogy” of Batman movies would not be participating in Warner Brothers’ upcoming attempt to bring DC Comics’ Justice League of America to the big screen. That Nolan would step aside shouldn’t dismay fans too much, as realistically there wasn’t much chance of him taking it on to begin with, and the tone he set with his Batman movies would not necessarily fit Justice League anyway. Rather, fans should probably take heart in the fact that Warner Brothers is still moving forward on the project, which a few weeks ago was announced to have Will Beall assigned to write the script. Beall’s only theatrical work so far is this year’s Gangster Squad, but this doesn’t necessarily bode ill for the film; after all, on the other side of the fence, X-Men was written by three writers with a total of one writing credit to their name (and that almost ten years before).
The question that comes to mind is exactly what does Warner Brothers need to do in order to make Justice League a success? Not just what do they have to do with the movie itself, but what do they have to do beforehand? Fans have been speculating on the film since before Marvel’s The Avengers came out, and after that blockbuster success, speculation has only been heightened. Comparisons will be inevitable. Considering the Nolan Batman films have been the sole unqualified successes that DC Comics movies have had in the past decade, Warner Brothers needs to get their act together. They need to put out a stellar film in order to be considered a worthy competitor, and they need to get their franchises stable before it comes out. While they can use a successful Justice League movie as a springboard to launch some of the franchises, they need to have at least some of them in good shape on their own first, to get people interested. They don’t necessarily have to have any Nick Fury-style hints towards the future in their films, but there have to be at least a few successful DC superhero films before Justice League hits, if for no other reason than to ensure that some of the characters and their current film portrayals are established with the audience in advance. Continue reading
