Zack Snyder and the Warner Bros. crew will be playing a year’s long catch-up game to the epic-ness that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Chris Nolan’s “Dark Knight” series ending, “Green Lantern” flopping and “Man of Steel” doing okay, but only making numbers close to that of the Iron Man and Thor sequels. DC is still looking to cash in on the ever-expanding super hero film universes.
What took Marvel and their adjoining studios to do in five films to lead up to the biggest hero team-up ever in “Avengers”, Snyder is attempting to do in just two films. They are hoping that “Man of Steel” and 2016’s “Batman vs. Superman” will be enough to whet the appetite of comic fans, and super-hero movie fans alike in order to blow us all away with the recently announced “Justice League” movie coming our way in 2018. Man, not even Marty and Doc went that far into the future.
Is it even possible to make this work? The next Superman film will introduce a new a version of Batman by way of Ben Affleck, the first cinematic Wonder Woman as played by Gal Gadot as well as Ray Fisher as Cyborg. It’s also possible they will introduce other members of the League like The Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter, or they could just wait to do that in the “League” movie.
Hero overload can be just as dangerous as the villain overkill did in “Batman and Robin” and Sam Rami’s “Spider-Man 3”. Having to develop three or more heroes plus a new villain, while telling a good story with interesting stakes and still find a way to be an entertaining film in nearly impossible. Even for the likes of heroes as epic as Batman and Superman.
The way I see it, the more super hero movies there are, the better. Even if Warner Bros. fails, we will see a re-imagining a few years later and there is bound to be somebody out there that can get it right, just remember back to ten years ago, no one cared to see an Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America movie. Now try to imagine a world with no “Avengers” movie. Spooky stuff.
–Robert L. Castillo
