Well, let's consult the Wiki page on Justice League villains and go through it... Silver Age: Vandal Savage - He'd have to have a superweapon of some kind, as he himself has no powers. Same thing for Per Degaton. Brainiac - I think this would be the best bet, Marvel's use of Ultron notwithstanding. The "planet-stealing" aspect of the character could make for buckets of awesome. Starro - the original JLA villain! A...rapidly multiplying extraterrestrial starfish. Maybe. The mind control aspects of this character could make for some interesting developments (though that might get too near to Loki in the Avengers). Amazo - sure, why not. Ideally as a pawn of some human villain. Hector Hammond - done in Green Lantern Doctor Light - by himself, not all the impressive. Bronze Age: Darkseid - yep, opportunities for fun both on Earth and Apocalips. Ra's al-Ghul - already done Eh, all the other Bronze Age villains suck (not that they couldn't be "re-imagined" to better forms) Modern Age: Maxwell Lord/Checkmate - yes, definitely Doomsday - can't see him being the main threat, but one of the bad guy's combatants? Oh, yes. Those are the obvious choices. Of course, Lex Luthor could be a villain fit for the whole Justice League, especially if he were President.
Solomon Grundy. An unstoppable undead engine of destruction, strong enough to slap Superman around like a little bitch. The threat could be that not only is Grundy rampaging across the country, but he's leaving some sort of "Grundy plague" in his wake. Despero. Savage super-strong alien with mind control powers. Despero is quietly taking over the world by manipulating the minds of world leaders. I dunno, there's JLA villains who could work without recapitulating the alien invasion thing that Avengers did. Heck, reach elsewhere in DC lore and do Black Adam or maybe Mordru. For that matter, make the Big Bad Lobo and have him hunting down the heroes at the behest of unknown parties and that's what brings them together as the JLA.
I like the idea of Mordru. Before Darkseid was elevated to ultimate badass #1, Mordru was the supreme threat, essentially immortal, unable to be killed, the only way he could be defeated was by sealing him in an impenetrable airtight tomb. He actually *frightened* the superheroes, the very thought of him made them shit their spandex. And he controls magic, which means Supes can't just punch him out. Mordru was actually the villain in one of the Justice League cartoons, although unfortunately he was only in the background as the episode focused on the stupid Booster Gold character and his dumbassery.
works for me on a number of levels. I trust these folks after what they did so far (Count Vertigo, by the way, was VERY well written and played) and one of the obvious implications would be that Black Canary has something to offer besides martial arts and fishnets. It's kind of an interesting brainstorming subject to consider what second tier (i.e. not Supes/Bats/WW/GL) DC characters really work well within the Arrow universe. For instance, maybe you shout-out the existence of Batman here without actually showing him by bringing Nightwing to town. Among those I'd love to see (in rough order): 1. Kent Nelson - probably not directly identified as Dr. Fate, or if so not specifically shown to be magical per se but handled in an "implied" fashion like Count Vertigo. 2. The Question - what's not to like? 3. Hal Jordan (presumably without manifesting the Green lantern abilities since that would probably be too expensive) 4. Booster Gold (seems kind of unlikely, Time travel would be another level) 5. Amanda Waller - duh. 6. Ted Grant - sentimental favorite, possibly retired older vigilante who tells Ollie about "the old days"...maybe kept around as a recurring character/mentor type. Others with some potential: Jon Jones - the cop, although this might be getting too "Smallville" as would, potentially, Carter Hall Ras Al Ghoul/Vandal Savage - the former is more fun, the latter probably more available Xantana - seems obvious Professor Ivo and/or T.O. Morrow - Because why not? Manchester Black - just for the Brit angle, use him as a sort of "anti-hero" rather than a full on villain similar to the Huntress. Cyborg - DC seems to be all about pimping this guy Any other member of the Justice Society not previously ruled out. And if you really want to tie into the Superman universe....some version of Supergirl (By the way, has anyone else noticed that "Arrow" is basically a straight rip of the Mike Grell version of Oliver in "The Longbow Hunters" and thereafter?
I grew up on Legion comics and he was always the premier opponent to them (rivaled only by the Time Trapper) - always had a good ride when he showed up.
maybe I'm just TOO addicted to the Timmverse - but I really like the whole ball of intrigue surrounding Amanda Waller, General whatshisname and the whole "the government hates and fears superheroes" business. You could expand on that maybe by tying in Professor Ivo and Amazo as one of their devices to counter the precived threat...or by opening some unintended can of worms in some other way. Wouldn't be a problem to have Luthor involved, as either the president, or just a very powerful businessman with an agenda of his own who's bought enough politicians to get his way, maybe even to be directly involved in the counter-effort. I think under the marvel-circumstances, this will probably work better than anything that smacks of "alien invasion" (I'd also make a point of sneaking in the sub-plot of the government holding Jon captive and his being freed by the newly-formed (sorta) JL and joining their effort to overcome Cadmus. Indeed, depending on how cleverly you script it you could maybe set up the "coming together" with some Suicide Squad attacks on the individual heroes and that gives them common cause to try and figure out what the fuck is going on.
when Ant man comes out and Wonder woman still hasn't, whoever at Warner is responsible for that should feel obliged to commit ritual hari-kari
Steel? Never gave him a minute's thought. I'd much prefer to see Cyborg in a film. I've always liked the Cyborg character, originating, as he did, in the Wolfman/Perez Titans. He's currently one of the Justice League in the comics. Makes sense to have him the film.
Lots of other villians to consider Gorilla Grodd, Ultra-Humanite, the Key, Felix Faust, Circe, Morgan Le Fay, Dr. Destiny, the Crime Syndicate (evil versions of the JLA), Eclipso, Lord of Time, the White Martians, the Queen of Fables, just to name a few. Then the team ups of Super-Villians, but I think they'll need to wait a while for that as they rose up due to the existence of the League in the first place. Plus Benecio Del Toro sure seems to want to work on Justice League Dark. Me, I'd go with Waller and the Suicide Squad as the government response to the JLA. It fits the 'gritty' concept they are going with, is different than the Marvel take, and you could introduce back stories for several villains that way.
One thing that no movie has yet done is super-team vs. super-team. Hollywood suits might (reasonably) worry that it would be too tough to establish backstories for all villains. But I could see an Injustice Gang/Secret Society thing working well if they just highlighted like 3 villains. Or if they did the Earth 2/mirror universe thing. They could do a different type of alien invasion story than Avengers or Man of Steel. Something like the White Martian storyline a while back.
It would take some doing, but some people do have the wherewithal and the interest to be on both the big and the little screen. It would help that Flash isn't carrying the movie. I guess I see WB as having the ultimate decision-making power, and the ability to get whoever's running the show on the movie and the tv show to play nice. They would probably tell the tv showrunners to tailor their version of the character to what was in the movie. Because honestly, the role of Flash (or any non-Superman/Batman/WW hero) would probably be a max of 15 minutes of screen time. I don't see it as being that difficult to avoid conflicts with an ongoing series. I'm fairly sure they issued some dictates to Zack Snyder about what he could and couldn't do. The Smallville thing isn't a good example because by design, it was supposed to be a different take on Superman. So it would not make sense to force all takes on Superman to be like it. And even within "MoS" there were some nods to Smallville (references to "the Fordham boy" was to Whitney, and I think there was a Sullivan farm/business that I'll take as a nod to Chloe and her dad Gabe.). But even in that hypothetical situation, if they said "We want all Superman references to be like Smallville," and Zack Snyder didn't want to do it, it's not like WB would not be able to find someone willing to do that project that way for the kind of money we're talking about. I'll disagree about Catwoman -- if you can't find a sexy, amoral, brilliant and funny thief interesting with or without Batman, don't know what to tell you. In the New 52, I'm assuming they have divorced Steel's origin from the Death of Superman arc.
It used to be easier in the old days. Batman The Movie? They just threw a big episode (of the West/Ward show) up on the screen. Hell, overseas, BTM had "sequels", made out of episode arcs. HELL, even into the 80's. Overseas, the Hulk pilot, and the "married", episode were films. "He-Man She-Ra Secret Of The Sword", was the just the She-Ra pilot. Wait, they still do it... "Clone Wars", was just the Clone Wars pilot. TV film overlap can be handled, and easily, it just takes business will. Y'know...it'd be an interesting experiment...put out the Linda Carter pilot, and the John Wesley Shipp (Flash) pilot, and see what they get in ticket sales. Imagine if they were huge. It would certainly expose the lie that films NEED to be 200 million dollars.
Yes, but that's all they were: nods. The reference to "Fordham" was a throwaway; it could've as easily been made Brad Wilson or some random name. You couldn't tell a Superman origin story on film and maintain continuity with "Smallville." It just wouldn't work. And it shouldn't. See the film Catwoman. And I'm not saying you CAN'T make a "sexy, amoral, brilliant, and funny thief" interesing; I'm only saying a large part of what makes Catwoman CATWOMAN is that she has this complicated relationship with Batman. If you take that away, you might still have something you could make a good film about, but it would be less Catwoman and more...something else. Didn't know that. Still doesn't interest me much as a character.
Actually, the Death of Superman arc for MoS #3 would be awesome. Honestly, Supes and Batman are so iconic that you can go In Media Res with them. You don't NEED to tell their back stories any more. I thought MoS was a good take on it, but I would have been just as happy as launching with Clark as the established hero.
Also, can we just go ahead and cast Gina Torres as Amanda Waller across all media vehicles and be done with it?
DC needs to catch up with the Marvel movies fast, and double-headers may the way to do that. End MoS2 with an old woman washing up on an island, rescued by women of a certain stature and when asked her name responds "Oh goodness, call me Granny. Everyone else does." And open MoS3 with the US waking up to find angry Amazons, and we've got Wonder Woman introduced. Have a space-based enemy - maybe a re-jigged Imperiax (visually good, not too close to Thanos or Ultron comparisons being more Galactus level) - for JLA1, hitting Earth and pursued by Abin Sur who dies at the beginning with the ring being taken up by Jordan and you've got the core quartet of the JLA constructed in 4 movies. No doubt a bunch of fans would be up in arms about it just being those four at first, just as they were with the Avengers not having Pym or Vision, but different media have different demands - even Avengers was Iron Man and Friends, with each character getting their own moments to shine but RDJ being the spine of the movie. No doubt JLA will have to do similar as action ensemble movies are a difficult balance. There also needs to be a good reason for Earth being attacked, the usual bumf about it being the nexus of the universe and all that is a little crap, I'd have it that Darkseid wants the codex in Supes personally. As for the series/film shared universes - I don't see much of an issue as long as the two rarely cross over and use different characters in the main. In the case of The Flash, if the series does well you could have a different Flash in a film - Barry Allen gets injured or killed and the moniker gets passed to Garrick or West.
Granny Goodness would merely be a prelude to Darkseid. I thought Smallville did a pretty good job with the character, making her seem like a sweet old lady and then giving her a chilling edge. Obviously, for a TV show, the grander Apokaliptic elements were very downplayed. [wyt=Granny Goodness on Smallville]hkmyLK6Usx4[/wyt]
I don't know, the innocuous name married to malevolent actions always makes a nice counter. And have her played by someone like Judi Dench or Helen Mirren... I'm hoping they'll retcon the Amazons history too - don't think their Greek mythology origins plays as well in a vaguely realistic world as Marvel did with Asgard. Could even tie them into Kryptonian history. And thinking about it, the Codex could tie into a lot of the stories as DC builds its roster - have Supes leave the Earth at the end of JLA1 (maybe with Hal as he goes to Oa) to stop attracting trouble, thus giving other characters to shine in his absence, and have him back for MoS4/JLA2 to face Brainiac thus introducing Kandor and the technology to remove the Codex and make use of it. Mars then becomes New Krypton, opening up the introduction of Martian Manhunter as the world engineering disturbs the slumbering Martians... There are a lot of possibilities there if WB/DC play them smartly.
Why? IMO it'd be better if they produced a small number of good Batman/Superman films than spamming us like Marvel have.
Reports are that Snyder and co. are looking for an older actor to play Batman, so it sounds like a new origin story is out. (Of course, Batman's origin can be told mostly in retrospect.) Names being bandied around are Gerard Butler (I think he'd work), Ryan Gosling (just...no, and, besides, he isn't "older"), Joe Manganiello (played Flash Thompson in the Raimiverse Spider-Man, nearly got to play Supes in Man of Steel), Richard Armitage (currently working on The Hobbit), and, the said-to-be favorite, Josh Brolin (he would definitely work).
You've also got to steadily keep in mind, that to keep secrets in the internet age, these studio folks aren't at all above outright bald-faced lying. Nolan flat out lied about no Robin in his universe. Snyder lied about Cavill not being the JLA Superman. So...don't at all rule out Joseph Gordon Levitt's Robin/Batman being the World's Finest Batman. They've bent over backwards to say Nolanverse won't get involved, but...they LIE. I won't take it off the table in my theorizing until the MOMENT they cast a different Batman.
^They certainly could lie, but the moment someone is cast, it's going to be public information. BTW, I'd say that Nolan and Snyder only quasi-lied... JGL's character in DKR may have had the name "Robin" (given only as a throwaway line at the end), but he didn't really serve the role of Boy Wonder in the film; and, IIRC, Snyder only said it wasn't certain that Cavill would be the Justice League Superman. (In fact, since there is not yet a Justice League movie being put together, the statement would be neither true nor false...) I actually hope they don't go the JGL/continuation-of-the-Nolanverse route. I don't see JGL really working as Batman (and he'd look like a midget standing next to Cavill), and, while the reality of the Nolanverse is still welcome, I want to see a grittier, darker Batman.
There are a lot of similar characters in both companies roster, and if Marvel keep putting out the movies then DC will find itself boxed in. There is also the fact people will eventually tire of superhero movies, so DC need to make the most of their characters ASAP. And I don't think Marvel have been spamming, the current cineverse has been pretty solidly good quality with some surprising risks being taken.
Okay, here's their short list for Batman casting... Source- http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/28048/six-actors-up-for-the-new-batman
