Mid-Week Poll: Batman Reboot vs. ‘Justice League’ Movie

Christopher Nolan says that he’s done with the Batman film franchise. It should surprise no one to learn that Warner Bros. plans to continue making Batman movies without him. About a month ago, Luke here speculated about how a potential Batman continuation or reboot might work. More recently, rumors have circulated that Warner may forego a reboot altogether and move directly into a ‘Justice League’ team-up movie instead. Do you think this is a good idea? Would you rather see a Batman reboot or a ‘Justice League’ movie first?

First things first, it should be noted that just because Warner hired screenwriter Will Beall (of the upcoming ‘Gangster Squad’) to pen a ‘Justice League’ script doesn’t mean that such a movie will actually happen anytime soon. The studio has been actively developing variations on ‘Justice League’ or Superman/Batman crossovers for decades, all to no avail. Hollywood studios commission screenplays that stall in development all the time. This is a common occurrence. Even if Warner decides to go through with this project, the script will likely be rewritten a dozen or more times by as many new writers before it goes before cameras.

Obviously, Warner Bros. and DC saw the massive success that Marvel had with ‘The Avengers‘ and want a piece of that action. Presumably, if Zack Snyder’s upcoming ‘Man of Steel’ is successful, the studio will team-up that version of the Superman character with Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern and all-new versions of Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and possibly others, all of whom will later be spun off into their own individual movies.

On the one hand, this would relieve us of the burden of having to endure yet another Batman origin movie. That character’s origin story has been told enough times on film by now that we don’t need to see it again.

The problem, of course, is that Warner and DC are clearly trying to play catch-up and haven’t done any of the necessary groundwork for a team-up film like this. For whatever faults the Marvel movies may have (and they have plenty), the studio was incredibly savvy about laying the foundation for ‘The Avengers’ with individual movies for each character that built up to the grand crossover event. We already knew who all the characters are, what their personalities are like, what powers they have, how their stories connect with each other and so forth before going into ‘The Avengers’, so that information didn’t need to be reiterated. A ‘Justice League’ movie will be forced to introduce us to most of its characters. That could be a detriment, especially if the new version of Batman is significantly different from Nolan’s version that we’d gotten used to.

Do you have an opinion on this? Which movie would you rather see first, ‘The Justice League’ or a Batman reboot?

Batman Reboot or 'Justice League' Movie?

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23 comments

  1. EM

    I disagree about Warners’ lacking the necessary groundwork. The Avengers and several of their members are very well-known in comics circles but were largely unknown to the general public before the recent movies (the Hulk being the salient exception). By contrast, key Justice Leaguers such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are already household names and household icons. True, Warners might want to include some members who are less known, but you don’t need a two-hour introduction to each. For example, take the most likely incarnation of the Flash: Barry Allen was an affable, slow-moving police forensic scientist who in a freak lab accident gained incredible superhuman speed with which he fights crime in his secret identity of the Flash. There, now you know what you need to know. If the JLA movie wants to mention Iris Allen, Gorilla City, nephew Wally, etc. along the way, fine. But it’s very easy for the movie and for its publicity to bring the public up to speed (sorry) regarding the Flash and any other JLAers the public might not know well. Hawkman: he’s a man who flies around in a hawk suit. There you go.

    • EM

      That said, I could support a Flash movie that prominently featured Gorilla City. We need more talking gorillas.

  2. Shannon Nutt

    Imagine if AVENGERS had come before all those solo movies? Would we know what was going on? More importantly, would we have cared? The reason that film worked so well was because we were already invested in those characters and the film didn’t have to spend an hour telling us who each one of them were. I think Warners needs to AT least give us a solo Wonder Woman, Flash and maybe one other (Aquaman? Martian Manhunter?) movie before tackling Justice League. I DO like the idea of using the Justice League movie to launch a new Batman (rather than vice versa)…but I think that might be the only character that will work with (other than maybe Superman, as both have had a lot of theatrical movies in the past).

    • EM

      Warners is a long-established nickname for the company in question. If you dislike it or are ignorant of it, that’s your problem.

      • Shannon Nutt

        Yeah, I didn’t call it Warners until I started working within the industry and discovered everyone employed by Warner Bros. called it Warners. Now I can’t NOT call it that. 🙂

  3. Chaz

    I really dont think it matters, enough of the people that will go and see a JLA movie will already know who these characters are, sure there are quite a few people who dont have a clue who some of these DC characters might be, but those arent the people that are going to see the movie most likely, same with the Avengers, I’m sure there were people who just werent going to go see it.

    If the Avengers was the only movie that got made out of the bunch, I would have had no issue with it, not much is needed in the way of telling a lot of back story to these characters, they’ve all been around for a LONG time and most of the fans already know about them, the majority of the people seeing the movies will be fans anyways, but a little bit could have been put in just to give a general idea of who everyone is, either way the Avengers would have been a great movie anyways.

    If Warner gives a 2 1/2 movie to JLA there is plenty of time to setup a bit of the main characters if need be, but with Batman and Superman and now Green Lantern already fully established in film lore, you really wouldnt have to do much with them at all, so a bit on secondary characters would leave plenty of time to just get right into things without having to worry about individual movies for the rest. I really dont think a Wonder Woman or Flash or Martian Manhunter movie would do that well at all, hell I’m a fan of this stuff and I really have no desire to see them have individual movies, but together right away in a JLA movie, I’m definitely there 🙂

  4. Jason

    Avengers worked not only because the characters back stories were taken care of but because they were linked by the history and importance of the Tesseract and also based in a reality in which all of the characters could exist.

    Trying to introduce characters and tell a compelling story as for why they are working together would be a monumental task and one that would more than likely fail. Also, Nolan’s Batman and RR’s Green Lantern films share nothing in common. The look and feel of each movie are so extremely different it’d be hard to sell The Dark Knight not having called on the Green Lantern for a little assistance with the Bane problem. RR’s Green Lantern would be better suited to team up with the Joel Schumacher Batman. As horrible as that would be to imagine. As for Wonder Woman, she may be a house hold name but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who knows her backstory that hasn’t at one point been a comic book reader. Same with Flash and Aquaman.

    Marvel Studios got it right. Warner would be wise to follow their example. Even if that means we have to wait 10 years for a Justice League film. Or they could follow the Peter Jackson model and film them all at the same time and release them over a couple of summers.

  5. Drew

    EM,

    Your own ignorance is not a problem that should be aired out in this forum.

    Nonetheless, you made a decision to admit to it, so here are a few things that you probably should have considered before pulling back the curtain.

    “Warners” hasn’t been used as, or even accepted as a nickname for Warner Bros. for a couple of decades now. Just because something is long-established, doesn’t mean that it is okay to use it long after it ceases to be acceptable.

    Do you refer to Philips electronic items as Magnavox? Do you call the CW network UPN/WB? I didn’t think so.

    When a long-established company moniker stops being used, it is for a reason.

      • Shannon Nutt

        I stopped my dealings with Warner Bros. in 2009, but from 2000 until then, I can assure you most (if not all) still referred to the studio as Warners. 🙂 Maybe I only associcated with “old school” execs. 😉

    • Michael S. Palmer

      Shannon and EM are correct. I’ve been to the WB lot a couple dozen times this year; producers with WB pod deals, executives, as well as the Hollywood entertainment community in general, refer to WB as “Warners” as well as “Warner Bros.” Further, the studio has an internal list of screenwriters they favor called “Warners Approved.”

  6. I think that WB would be wise to try making a non-Superman/Batman/Justice League movie first. (Wonder Woman makes sense.) It could be a good way to audition a production team for making a Justice League movie.

    Where have seen the Justice League concept be fun and entertaining is when it is free of origin stories for either the team members of the villains. For a movie though, they would still need an origin for the Justice League itself. So much of the logistics of the Avengers movie would be absent without S.H.I.E.L.D, its characters, and dubious motivations. If WB really wants to imitate the Avengers, they will need an organization or two to precipitate the formation of the JL.

    They could just hire Kenneth Branagh to remake ‘Thor’ with Wonder Woman for a start.

  7. EM

    Honestly, I don’t see what’s so difficult. “Gee, Starro the Conqueror is invading, and no one hero is able to stop it. Maybe we should band together. By the way, where’d you get that golden lasso?”

    But for comparison and contrast, I ask, Was it a grievous error to release an X-Men movie without first releasing solo movies for the X-Men team members?

    By the way, what was the movie that depicted the origin of S.H.I.E.L.D.?

    • Yep perfect example, X-Men worked just fine because you knew the characters already, the fans have been following them for years and just want the team on the big screen, I think the JLA movie would turn out just fine given the proper story and time

      • I think that the X-Men movie did a decent job of introducing the concept the X-Men, mutants, Prof X vs Magneto, etc. to non-comic book fans by using the device of having following Wolverine and Rogue as they discovered most of those same things.

        When they show ‘War Machine’ in the first ‘Iron Man,’ that seems like something for the fans, but ‘the Avengers’ movie seemed more like trying to make the characters appealing for non-comic book fans.

  8. MrAngles

    I always thought that Batman being in the JLA was ridiculous and out of character. Where would he even have the time? Further than that, Nolan’s Batman really seems to exist in a world where there aren’t any super powers, can you imagine him fighting an alien invasion?

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      Whatever happens, it won’t be Nolan’s Batman. I believe the idea here is that Justice League would serve to introduce a new non-Nolan version of Batman, who would later be spun off into his own movies.

      Potentially, this could be very confusing for viewers who go in expecting that it will be Nolan’s Batman in the Justice League. The movie will have to do something to make that difference extremely clear.

  9. MrAngles

    It seems to me that since Batman is DC’s only successfully running movie franchise right now, it would be really bad to alienate the huge existing fanbase of the Nolan series by starting a new DC movie universe any time in the next few years with a new, more cartoony Batman. Their best bet is to work on putting out a few new movies, like Wonder Woman and Flash, then pull them together into a JLA movie that doesn’t include Batman, or maybe briefly reveals or mentions a new batman at the end to lead into future movies.

    That is if they choose to include Batman in the JLA at all, which I hope they don’t.