Justice Be Done

A recent interview with Mark Millar has got a lot of people talking. I skimmed the printed version in the last issue of Sci-Fi Now. Needless to say, it made my blood boil.
http://www.scifinow.co.uk/news/33956/justice-league-film-is-an-excellent-way-of-losing-200-million/

Let's go through this step by step.

First of all, I'd like to point out that Mark Millar is a smug and odious bullshitter whose massively overrated work output amounts to the South Park of modern comics: vicious juvenilia masquerading as caustic satire. We can readily dismiss him as an authority on the comics industry, let alone Hollywood. He's a trash talker, plain and simple, and as for these latest comments about the DC pantheon- well, I have no doubt he'd be saying the exact same about the Marvel characters if the tables were turned.

Millar says: “I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date...The characters were created 75 years ago, even the newest major character was created 68 years ago, so they’re in a really weird time.”

Uh-huh. And Captain America was created- this may shock you- all the way back in the 1940's! It was, like, the War or something. Most of the other famous Marvel characters debuted in the 60's, so they're not exactly 'current' either. I think what he's getting at here is his belief that DC's heroes are too old to be relevant.
We will come back to that.

Millar says: "Green Lantern... his power is that he manifests green plasma from his imagination and uses them as weapons against someone? Even that in itself if you just imagine then watching a fight scene with a guy who’s like a hundred feet away making plasma manifestations fight someone – it’s not exactly raucous, getting up close and personal."

You could make the same argument about almost any superpowered character. Whether or not a fight scene works is entirely down to choreography and direction, it has fuck all to do with nature of a particular hero's powers.

Millar says: "The Flash has door handles on the side of his mask..."

And? Cap has wings on the sides of his mask. Gee, however could they pull that off in live action?
Nope, not gonna work, tell the studio the Captain America movie is cancelled. We'd be a laughing stock.

Millar says: "If you’ve got a guy who moves at the speed of light up against the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold or whatever, then your movie’s over in two seconds"

As opposed to Spider-Man fighting Doctor Octopus?

Millar says: "Aquaman can’t even talk under water. If you think about it in comics it’s fine, you just have a speech balloon, but how do you have Atlantis and people talking under water? Are they gonna talking telepathically? Is it going to be body forms?"

Wow, such profound insight. On the other hand, you could ask someone who has actually read and knows stuff about Aquaman, beyond shit Super Friends jokes in The Big Bang Theory. Next he'll be telling us how they'll never get away with all that "BIFF! BAM! POW!" if they try to make a Batman movie.

Millar says: "The actual logistics of each member of the Justice League is disastrous, and you put them all together and I think you get an excellent way of losing $200 million"

Well, we kind of know Superman and Batman work in live action, as does Green Lantern, even if the movie he was in failed. The Flash runs fast, Wonder Woman flies... I think they can manage it.
This is actually a variation of that old chestnut 'DC superheroes are too powerful'. Well, the Hulk's physical strength is basically limitless, Thor is an actual, literal God. Nobody is questioning their screen credibility. That is to say, they aren't now, with over a billion dollars under Marvel's belt from The Avengers alone.

Millar's points are not only wrong, they're basically what pundits were saying about all comic book properties before the modern superhero movie renaissance. As with Singer's X-Men, Raimi's Spider-Man and Nolan's Batman movies, it's all a question of the having the right people behind the camera, people who understand tone and timbre, people who get it. Once those producers and writers and directors are in place, issues like this cease to be issues at all. These movies almost never lose money, even so-called flops like Hulk or Elektra cleaned up, as did those that were patently dogs (both Fantastic Four movies, quite a few others).

A final word on Superman; as Grant Morrison quite rightly pointed out, the perception that Man of Steel is no longer popular/ relevent with Joe Public is a fanboy issue, due largely to their disappointment with Superman Returns. However we the fans may regard them, the television series Superboy, Lois and Clark and Smallville were all hugely popular and successful, and Returns was by no means a flop- bear in mind the overall budget for the movie includes the many millions blown on aborted projects like Superman Lives. Returns was a solid success, financially if nothing else. The audience is there, it's all a question of presenting a bold, new vision of the character, a truly 21st century Superman.

Personally, I'm more than ready for Man of Steel to save us all.