Justice League

I think the best way to handle it may be to have one of the superheroes (I'm thinking probably the Flash) get their powers at the start of the movie and be recruited by the Justice League, that way we get introduced to the world of superheroics through the eyes of an up-to-that-point normal person.

Except, given that Flash has one of the worst origin stories ever, I think if we were gonna gloss over anyone's origin, it'd be his. I think someone like Cyborg, who's been getting a lot of popularity lately, would be better as an audience surrogate.

But the neat thing about the Flash's origin story is how simple it is: freak accident involving lightning and chemicals gives him superspeed. That's it. You don't need to involve super-scientist fathers or royal lineages or alien worlds or decades of training. It's just a regular guy given superpowers through random chance. That's an origin story that can be told in a matter of minutes, and is perfect for having an Everyman character suddenly thrust into the world of superbeings.

Though Cyborg could also work. Maybe have him be an innocent bystander injured during a superhero/villain battle, and the League (or proto-League, if they're not fully formed yet) are the ones to keep him alive through cybernetics, which for one reason or another get enhanced to superhero levels over the course of the movie.

edited 1st Dec '12 3:51:02 PM by RavenWilder

The Flash's origin is simple, but also mind-numbing. Seriously, it's worse than "radioactive spider", and would guarantee that the audience wouldn't care about anything that follows, because the Flash's origin has already established in their mind that they're watching a live-action cartoon.

How is it any sillier than, say, the Hulk's origin, or the Fantastic Four's, or any of the thousand other "superpowers from a freak accident" origin stories?

It isn't. But then Marvel and Ang Lee worked in some backstory about Bruce's dad injecting him with stuff, possibly super serum derived from Captain America if I'm not mixing it all up.

And most people don't like Fantastic Four.

Flash is a guy who could just turn up and run around really fast while snarking around and I feel the audience would just 'get' that.

Basically, because Hulk and the FF's origins are at least a little bit set up. Bruce is attending the testing of a gamma radiation bomb, runs out to the testing site to save a teenager, and is bombarded with radiation. The FF are a group of tight-knit friends who follow Reed into space, knowing the risks, and get caught in a storm of cosmic rays. Flash was literally just in the wrong (right?) place at the wrong time, when a bolt of something (lightning?) breaks open a case of something.

It's not objectively any worse than a lot of superhero origin stories, but many of the superhero films of late have prettied up their origins with more pseudo-science to try to get away from that level of silliness. Incredible Hulk completely rewrote the Hulk's origin, while both Spider-Man 1 and Amazing Spider-Man technobabbled up the spider. Thor cut out Dr. Donald Blake entirely, with the exception of a tongue-in-cheek reference.

Lightning Bolt + Chemicals = Superpowers wouldn't go over with a film audience any better than the basic radiation = superpowers that recent films have gone out of their way to avoid.

Yeah, it's not like anyone's ever made good movies about a normal guy who's in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Then just say whatever chemicals he got splashed with were part of an experiment involving accelerating electrons or something, and there you go.

And I think the real reason superhero movies are expanding on the hero's origins isn't to make them less silly, but to make the film's more cohesive; instead of the hero getting their powers from one incident, then the villain getting their powers from another, they use one event to empower both, and so make the plot seem less disjointed. But a Justice League movie, by its very nature, is gonna involve various superpowered beings, all with very different origin stories; trying to tie everything together in the same way just isn't possible.

edited 1st Dec '12 10:20:18 PM by RavenWilder

You can definitely build a technobabbled origin story for the Flash, no one is disputing that. But at that point, the entire point of "I choose Flash because his origin is really short and simple," has been defeated, if you have to fill the movie with thirty minutes of complex pseudo-science before the audience will be willing to accept that he got powers from a chemical struck by lightning.

Not necessarily - if going with the whole "introduce the concept of superheroics as preexisting, and have a character enter as a audience surrogate" thing, then it would be easy to say that Flash - a police forensic scientist - gained his powers while studying chemicals confiscated from a supervillain which reacted negatively/exploded and effected him.

That would easily cut down on time greatly, particularly if Flash were the designated protagonist (which given that approach he would pretty much have to be) and everything from gaining his powers to becoming part of the League was part of a consolidated origin story. I'd assume the whole thing would take about as long to get started as the first Men In Black movie did in getting J into the organization.

edited 1st Dec '12 10:19:55 PM by KnownUnknown

Who said anything about thirty minutes of techno-babble? I'm talking about three or four sentences, tops. Just give the character some reason to be where scientific research is being done, mention the experimental chemicals are involved with accelerating stuff, and have a freak accident happen. Should take less than ten minutes.

It definitely requires much less exposition than being chosen by an inter-galactic police force fueled by bravery and imagination, or being the errant princess of a lost civilization of mythical warriors, or being the last survivor of a Martian civilization posing as a detective on Earth.

edited 1st Dec '12 10:24:40 PM by RavenWilder

I'm going to have to lean towards kalel's approach. i.e. Cyborg is better as a viewpoint character to introduce the gang.

Artificial limbs and high tech weaponry is pretty easy to accept and his dad's backstory as a guy involved in government research due to the rising potential threat of metahumans establishes the setting really well. And since his dad works at the research lab Victor showing up there wouldn't feel as contrived or forced.

The only issue would be whether Cyborg is that interesting a character. I think he's incredibly bland in the New52 but then most of the characters are anyway and I haven't seen Teen Titans so I don't really know what kind of guy he usually is.

In Teen Titans Cyborg (personality-wise) is basically Chris Tucker's character from Rush Hour, only a lot more badass. If Cyborg was used in the movie as an audience-surrogate I could very well see that version being used, due to how popular the show was.

More likely they'll use the comics version - he kind of fits that sort of thing better, apparent recent blandness aside.

edited 2nd Dec '12 12:44:07 PM by KnownUnknown

Not incredibly familiar with Cyborg, but isn't he basically a football player/genius that got into an accident and was repaired by his robotics expert dad? Or something like that?

edited 2nd Dec '12 3:53:16 PM by Zeromaeus

That's his backstory, yeah.

edited 2nd Dec '12 4:22:11 PM by KnownUnknown

OK, so yeah, he'd be the best as an audience surrogate character if they were to go the route of the rookie character joining up. However, I still say the important characters need to be established beforehand.

I still say Flash deserves his own movie.

Flash always runs into the same believability issue- Why he isn't just beating all bad guys down before they even know he's here? Granted, there are ways around it, but after a while you either have to repeat them over and over or give him Plot Induced Stupidity. Although that isn't that much of a problem in a movie's limited timeframe.

I agree. The Flash is a great hero and definitely deserves a movie of his own.

You know, I could understand if they jumped to World's Finest and did a batman/Superman story. Everyone know Batman. Everyone knows Superman. Establish them working together, and you have a groundwork for something else. The other heroes... not so much.

Well, if a hypothetical World's Finest movie goes over well, they could always do a Trinity movie as a sequel to help ease in people to heroes that haven't have a movie yet (AKA anyone that isn't Batman or Superman).

I think if they were to jump from a World's Finest movie to a Trinity movie, as the sequel newcomer, the Trinity film would revolve mostly around Wonder Woman and establishing her place in the DC Universe. It would come across as "Wonder Woman: The Movie, but with Batman and Superman also".

An unfortunate result of that is that it would feel, to some, like DC was saying that Wonder Woman isn't a good enough character to drive her own movie without Batman and Superman raising sales for her. This would also inevitably lead to unfair accusations of sexism, due to the unfortunate issue of Wonder Woman's gender upsetting women in the audience who feel like by saying, "Wonder Woman isn't good enough for her own film," what DC is actually saying is, "Women aren't good enough to be the lead role of an action film."

This is a sensitive issue in Hollywood right now. Now, if DC did a Wonder Woman solo film to establish the character first, the whole issue could be avoided.

edited 3rd Dec '12 7:41:13 AM by TobiasDrake

They could suck it up and just give her a damn movie and if it fails then they can do the whole trinity thing and if anybody bitches they can slap them in the face with the box office numbers of her solo film.

Hm.