Superman Begins

 

I doubt that's what it'll be called, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was.  Warner Brothers has announced that will be rebooting the Man of Steel's movie franchise with a darker and grittier film than 2006's Superman Returns.  Warner Brothers Pictures President Jeff Robinov had the following to say of the reboot:

 

Superman didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to," Robinov said of Singer's movie, which made just $215 million domestically. "It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned," he continued. "Had 'Superman' worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009, but now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman. We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the character allows it."

 

Have they failed to see the one big glaring error here?  Superman isn't a dark character.  Making a "dark" Superman character makes no sense whatsoever.  I'm sorry Warner Brothers.  I know you're riding high on the over $500 million grossing Dark Knight, but just because a darker Batman movie worked doesn't mean that suddenly turning every comic character dark is going to gross you a half a billion dollars.  Batman is dark, that's why Dark Knight works so well.  Superman, however, is a boyscout.  His character is supposed to embody hope and a brighter future and all that stuff.  Trying to make a "dark" Superman is going to turn out lame.  If they're not careful he'll end up looking like the Emo Peter Parker from Spider-man 3 who was trying so hard to be bad, but he can't be bad because he's Spider-man, and Spider-man isn't a dark and brooding character.

 

Also announced by Warner Brothers last week was their next few years lineup of films which pretty much boils down to them looking at Marvel's plans for the next few years and saying, "Oh, you wanna do that?  Well we can do that too!"

 

In addition to a "Batman 3" and a new "Superman," Warner Bros. also plans to release two other comic book movies (not including "Watchmen") by 2012. Among the likely candidates for the big-screen treatment are the Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and, of course, the Green Arrow, whose film, "Super Max" takes place in a high-security prison for meta-humans.

 

Like rival Marvel Studios — who this year released the mega-successful "Iron Man" as well as "The Incredible Hulk" — Warner Bros. plans to release standalone films for all of its heroes with the ultimate goal of creating a super team-up, Robinov told the Journal. "The Avengers," a superhero consortium of Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Ant-Man and Thor, will get a release in 2011.

 

DC's analogue, "Justice League of America," which had been slated to open next year, will instead wait until after the next four films. 

 

Basically, Warner Brothers listened to Marvel's press releases from back in June, then they watched the amazing success of Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk and realized they were going to be getting the pants beaten off of them for the next few years.  So they decided to try to one up Marvel by doing pretty much the exact same thing.  They're going to make a bunch of individual hero movies and will then bring all of the heroes together in one big Justice League movie.

 

On the plus side, us Geeks will have the next few years to glory in a slew of high budget superhero movies.  On the downside, not every film can be as great as the Dark Knight and Iron Man, so we're bound to have to sit through some serious crap along the way (I'm looking at you Ant-Man and Wonder Woman).

 

But this giant struggle will be interesting.  Who will win in the end?  The Justice League or the Avengers?  Personally, my money is on the Avengers, but that's just me.

 

Also, what I'm really waiting for is about 10 years from now, when comic movies have run their course, and the general public moves on to other genres.  As ticket sales start plummeting for superhero films, would Marvel and DC ever get so desperate as to allow a film crossover?  Just imagine the awesomeness of a live action Superman and Batman hanging out with Spider-Man and Captain America.  Sure, the film would probably be campy as hell, but it'd be fun to watch.