Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This looks like a job for...two new execs.
In the wake of the scathing reviews and disappointing box office returns for “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” Warner Bros. leaped in single bound to make some major changes at the top.
The $870 million earned worldwide at the box office may seem like a super-sized haul to those outside the business, but the big screen Superfriends are getting their butts kicked by their Marvel Studios counterparts. Is this the darkest night the Green Lantern oath is referencing?
So the studio promoted DC Comics chief content officer Geoff Johns and producer Jon Berg to run a newly formed film division safeguarding the company’s super-powered assets, as the Hollywood Reporter first reported. That means the balance of power has shifted: director Zack Snyder, set to film “The Justice League Part One,” won’t be allowed back in the Hall of Justice much longer as the creative visionary behind the franchises.
The Big Three: (From l.) Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck as Batman.
(Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/ TM & © DC Comics/Courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainm)
But the new brain-trust will need some help - including some unsolicited advice from this lifelong nerd who learned how to read from reading “The Flash “comic books - about how to improve the DC cinematic universe.
* Don’t fix what isn’t broken: The good news is that Snyder has cast a pretty good Big Three -- Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot work as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Much as they are in the comics they need to be front and center as much as possible at the multiplex. Marvel engineered their empire through Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man and Fox clawed into their “X-Men” success courtesy of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
DC’s superheroes look iconic. Don’t be so dim as to alter their recognizable costumes too much.
(Courtesy of DC Entertainment)
And Warner Bros. should get Affleck’s “Batman” standalone film in theaters faster than “The Flash” and other titles on their planned slate.
* Why so serious? Every mature-audience adult comic book reader turning their nose up at any super hero that isn’t racked with extreme mental issues was once a wide-eyed kid who fell in love more optimistic versions of these characters. Batman can and should be dark, he’s got a utility belt full of emotional issues, but Superman shouldn’t ever kill a villain.
Inject some humor - and not just the gallow’s kind thrown around by The Joker.
What Marvel has done so well is master the PG-13 action movie that is accessible to both kids and their parents, the latter of which are then forced to buy toys for the former immediately after the closing credits. Conversely, why did “Amazing Spider-Man 2” fall so flat that it led Sony to go back to the drawing board for yet another reboot? The filmmakers killed off Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy just ten minutes before the end.
It’s a superhero flick, not “Ordinary People.”
Get Grant Gustin’s TV Flash to cameo with his big screen counterpart, Ezra Miller!
(Nino Muñoz/The CW)
* Brighten Up: DC’s superheroes have the most recognizable costumes in the business - so why were they messing around with The Flash’s iconic red and yellow costume for Ezra Miller’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in “Dawn of Justice”? Scrap the Christopher Nolan-influenced muted tones - it only works for Batman who works in the shadows -- and embrace the colorful characters.
That is with the exception of Aquaman’s orange and green tights, which should be left at the bottom of the Mariana Trench....No one wants to see Jason Momoa wearing that.
* Flash fact: That dark vibe is the reason Warner Bros. opted to fill Flash’s gold boots with a different actor than Grant Gustin, who is busy sprinting through CW’s popular TV series. And it works in comics continuity: DC is famous for having a “multiverse” full of alternate realities populated by different versions of its super heroes.
Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is one of a number of good female characters that should get more screen time.
(Clay Enos/DC Comics)
Marvel, though, has repeatedly dropped Easter eggs in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and its Netflix series that those TV characters exist in the same larger world as Captain America and Iron Man. And fans love that feeling of watching a story that’s connected with something bigger.
Warner Bros.’s heroes are thriving on the small screen, so why not put them to work when “The Flash” standalone movie races into theaters in 2018? Considering the speedster flits in and out of time and other dimensions, imagine the wedgie-inducing impact of a brief cameo of Gustin’s version as our hero races through the Speed Force.
* Ladies First: DC Comics has a super-team worth of high powered women that is unparalleled in the medium. Even Marvel execs would have to admit, if they were tied up with the Lasso of Truth, that Captain Marvel and the Black Widow can’t match up to Wonder Woman.
There are reports that Warner Bros. is plotting a movie around some of them centered on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, an anti-hero introduced in this summer’s “Suicide Squad.”
That movie may include the fan-favorite Birds of Prey, an all-female team led by Oracle, formerly known as Batgirl. That band of tough ladies, though, could and should carry their own film.