Justice League

But, considering how much money they sunk into it, we'll probably never get anything like that now.

Eh. Not so fond of that really. Honestly, I don't think the Fear thing should be really all that present in the onset, aside from some cryptic jargon from some cut-off source. You establish the characters before you mix them up in that stuff. The second movie could be used to carry the different themes like that.

I don't think the Blue Lanterns should be introduced in the Parallax arc, either. That's a little too much to go into that seeing as how all of Ganthet's crap should happen before that and really the introduction series for the Green Lantern shouldn't involve that. Crystal Sapphire? Maybe. Really, the second movie would, in my mind, involve how the Green Lantern Corp inadvertently fed into Parallax with the extermination of Sector 666. Meanwhile, Sinestro has his change of heart and heads to the Qward to find a new source of power. One more reliable than willpower.

The third movie happens some time after, and has Sinestro launching an assault on Oa with an army of lanterns powered by Fear. Big climactic showdowns. Parallax is freed from his prison in the Central Battery and even possesses Hal. Hal breaks free and beats Sinestro. Everybody cheers. Zoom back into Sector 666 to see a big red guy pulling a red lantern out of a pool of blood. Soon, he says. Soon.

edited 12th Aug '12 12:05:31 PM by Zeromaeus

If Parallax and Fear is entirely to be introduced by the second movie and ignored by the first, then what would the first be about. Furthermore, what would you do when explaining the nature of the Green energy in the first movie, in a way that doesn't scream "why didn't you tell us this before" when explaining the Yellow energy later. The Guardians can pull the "we did not want to tell you" bit they do, but I feel it would come off as just as much of an Ass Pull to the audience as it would to Hal.

Also, you want the second movie to involve the Manhunters and then snap back to Parallax?

Note that I was trying to rewrite in such a way that most of the first movie was kept but in a way that allowed greater development.

edited 12th Aug '12 3:51:36 PM by KnownUnknown

Only, normally, its something he finds out about after he's kicked out of the Corps.

I think they should have ignored the entire concept of the emotional spectrum. Its extremely campy silver age metaphysics, that are basically unnecessary to tell the story. The power rings are alien tech that generates cosmic energy of coincidentally green color, and are controlled by will. There, done.

Actually, I like it very much and think that a lot of interesting stories have come out of Green Lantern as a result.

I don't know why there's such a stigma on some comic stuff being silly. Its for fun. Besides, you can take a silly concept and use it well.

edited 12th Aug '12 7:56:44 PM by Zeromaeus

I think the concept of there being other Lantern Corps is one of the most interesting parts of the series. Leaving it out would be a mistake IMO.

Other Corps is fine, to an extent. Explicitly tying them to emotions, and emotions to colors? Bad idea *for a movie.*

You can tie them to colors and emotions, just in a way that says 'These guys use energy that happens to look yellow. They also want to impose domination through fear. Thus, the galaxy associates yellow with fear. Those girls use energy that happens to look pink. They want to spread their own notion of love around. Thus, the galaxy associates pink with love' rather than 'Yellow powers fear, pink powers love'.

edited 13th Aug '12 10:06:54 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yellow powers fear? I think you have that backwards. From my understanding fear is the emotion required to work the Qwardian rings. The energy they emit just happens to take the form of a yellow energy.

At most they could recast Hal, it worked well enough for The Avengers and Bruce Banner (I know a lot of people were pushing for Nathan Fillion as Hal, reference by Sheldon Cooper). But discarding something that is supposed to be in the public conscious as being part of the Justice League movie canon just because it wasn't well received is chickening out.

I think the first GL movie needed something as big and imposing as Parallax to get a sense of the scale these movies should be, an enemy that represents a force of nature and is not just a powerful alien. It isn't like Iron Man's problems being about a weapons race, but intergalactic enemies that can and have destroyed entire planets. I'm not familiar with all the GL lore but the three main rogues gallery is Sinestro, Manhunters and Parallax. Both Sinestro and the Manhunters need some more significant lead-up to get the full impact of their story, while Parallax is closely tied in with the GL mythos.

I think the main problem with the movie is that it needed to expand on the things that really worked (Hal's introduction to Oa and GL training). I can really say that anything one particular element really killed the movie (some people say everything on Earth) but just a combination of awkward choices didn't help: Hal waking up with a girl in his bed didn't set the right tone, the opening voice-over and Abin-Sur fighting Parallax would have worked better as a mid-movie flashback (I believe the narration was supposed to be Tomar Re telling it to Hal on Oa and Abin's battle could have been condensed when Abin gives Hal the ring) and Hal getting beaten up by disgruntled aerospace engineers was a weird thing to happen.

edited 15th Aug '12 9:15:57 PM by KJMackley

There's no reason a Justice League movie would have to have a Green Lantern in it. The League's gone through many different lineups, and its Big 7 lineup is probably one or two characters too many.

There's also no good reason to exclude him, either.

I mean, yeah, the movie doesn't have to have GL in it to keep in line from the comics, technically speaking (more accurately, it's more that it's technically not a poor connection to the comics to exclude him). So?

edited 15th Aug '12 11:18:29 PM by KnownUnknown

I'm just saying, if they decide to make a Justice League movie and are worried that Green Lantern still has some stigma attached to him, they can just leave him out without any problems.

"Without any problems" is kind of stretching it. Though he hasn't been on every lineup, GL is still an iconic member of the team. Plus, as far as my brief research tells me, a Green Lantern has been on the team at least as often as Superman - who wasn't on every version of the team either - if not maybe more.

edited 16th Aug '12 12:13:59 AM by KnownUnknown

Green Lantern seems like the only one whose powers are really on a level with Superman's, so it makes sense to have him on the team. If you're going to skip a few members, it's probably better to skip The Flash on the basis that Superman already has super-speed, and that there are limits to how interesting to watch you can make "runs really fast" be.

My understanding was that the Flash was both far faster than Superman, and that, when it comes to him, the answer to "What can you do with super speed?" is "What can't you do?"

The writers of the DCAU have even gone to say that were the Flash to focus he could potentially be the most powerful member of the Justice League. The whole point of the episode where his mind is swapped with Lex Luthor's was to illustrate this. And make a joke about his role in Smallville.

I know there were plans to make a Flash movie.

Which I wouldn't mind seeing.

I agree with the Flash not being needed. Since they pretty much have to introduce some characters through this movie I wouldn't mind bumping the roster down to five.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Cyborg would work well enough.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the Flash's origin story is so simple that he'd be a good fit for such an ensemble movie, since you can explain where he came from without having to bother with stuff like secret Atlantean socities or an order of superpowered space cops fueled by courage and imagination or a teleportation accident between Earth and Mars. "Super speed" and "freak lab accident" are a power and origin story so basic and time tested that you can just rattle them off in a single sentence and audiences will be like, "Ah, I understand, no need to explain further, carry on with the story."

This has already probably been mentioned but I think it would be a good idea for them to take a look at some of the animated versions of the Justice League like the Animated Series and the DC Original Animated Movies like Justice League: New Frontier which I think did a pretty good job at introducing their ensemble. Give an introduction to a character to demonstrate their powers and an idea of who they are. Maybe give a bit more to the less known characters as the likes of Supes and Bat's origin story are so well known. For example, show Wonder Woman on Thermyscira, the Flash rounding up some criminals in Keystone.

I think a good line-up would be: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter and if a cast of 6 isn't too much maybe the Flash.

I have the impression DC would insist on most of the classic lineup being there. They might swap somebody out to make the team more diverse; and they've never cared about Martian Manhunter at all.

The thing is if the story is going to feature some huge extra-terrestrial threat I think Martian Manhunter would be good but I guess Warner will go with whatever makes it most marketable which I suppose will be a mainly human looking cast :/

Ironic given that you probably can't get more "classic Justice League character" than J'onn.