There is No Justice After All

DC will try to shoehorn a Justice League movie while
the iron is hot.

Once upon a time, DC comics ruled the saturday morning cartoons and the Justice League was seen by every kid around. Detective Comics released a couple of blockbuster movies but their franchises died in their fourth installments- Batman & Robin and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. That all changed with the turn of the century when Marvel finally worked out how to make comic book movies work. DC had to regroup and did so successfully with the Dark Knight series. At the same time, Marvel unveiled it's plans to make an Avengers movie. To do so Marvel decided to create a full universe where these characters could interact. Once the Avengers made $200 million in it's opening weekend, DC became jealous and continuously leaked rumors that they are planning a Justice League movie. However, last month DC said they're making a Superman/Batman team up movie with Ben Affleck donning the cowl of the Dark Knight. While fans whined about Bat-fleck, they keep overlooking that this film is doomed from the start.

As a Justice League movie's future began to get cloudy when DC's Green Lantern flopped at the box office and the Dark Knight wrapped up in a way that the public loved though it didn't make sense, the Superman reboot was to start up the "New DC", but they didn't introduce Lex Luthor in Man of Steel at all. With the introduction of Luthor and a NEW Batman, the Man of Steel sequel has got A LOT on it's plate. If the goal is to release the film in 2015 against Avengers: Age of Ultron, DC will have to step their game up.

The Avengers was a game changer for comic book movies

In 2008, Marvel carefully planned out how to make the Avengers a reality. Starting with Iron Man (it also used the "credit's scene" effectively) to tell Tony Stark's origin and introduce Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be used a month later in The Incredible Hulk with Tony Stark making a cameo. A couple years later, Iron Man 2 included the Black Widow and Hawkeye made a cameo in Thor a year later. Iron Man 2's credit scene had Agent Colson finding Thor's hammer. Lastly, Captain America: The First Avenger finished the pre-Avengers plan when it connected itself to Iron Man's father Howard Stark and then to Nick Fury. ALL OF THAT PLANNING TOOK YEARS. By the time Avengers premiered in 2012, it felt organic and not just thrown together. If you watched the film without seeing the others, you were introduced to each character well without needing much exposition. It blended together each film's style, made it's own while not making the characters completely dependent on each other.

DC may not have realized that Christopher Nolan screwed them with the "popular" ending of the Dark Knight Rises. While Bruce Wayne gives up being Batman (which he's never done willingly) that means they have to reset where the timeline is when he appears in Man of Steel 2 or introduce the "new character" as Batman. Does that sound like it's going to work? Rumor has it that Batman's involvement is far less than the working "Superman vs Batman" title would indicate, but even that sounds like it's being forced. Again, Ben Affleck isn't the biggest problem here. If DC wants to get to a Justice League movie by 2017, they will need to find a way to make Wonder Woman, Flash and possibly Martian Manhunter movies as well as a Green Lantern sequel/reboot. The other problem for DC: these are main characters, not bit characters. Marvel got away with cameos for Black Widow and Hawkeye, but DC may not be able to do that with these characters.

Anyway, we'll see the answers to these problems in 2015, but it's far from a homerun for DC. 

Imported Movies Can Lose in Translation

America likes it's imports -beer comes to mind- but Hollywood likes to import ideas too. As far as movies go, Quintin Tarantino adapted the Seven Samurai and spun it into Reservoir Dogs. Hollywood has adapted many foreign films and "Americanized" them with varying results. Christopher Nolan adapted the Norwegian film Insomnia as a gritty detective story in Alaska with great performances by Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hillary Swank. The Ring and The Grudge were both imports with box office success in the states. The Grudge's strategy was to use the same director and it would make the transition easier. This brings me to a 2003 Korean film called Oldboy that was recommended highly from a friend of mine. The film was on IMDb's list for the Top 250 Movies of all time. It presented a great twist and one of the greatest single shot fight scenes of all time. The "twist" was one that turned the film completely on it's head and I find myself recommending it to everyone.

The original Oldboy takes place in Korea and begins with a man holding another man over the edge of a building. He tries recalling something very little... like his name. We're quickly taken through the last 20 years of Oh Dae-su. Dae-su was a drunk, but a joyous man with a mischievous side. One night while on a bender, Dae-su is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel-style room. He is fed three meals a day and his only friend is a TV, which shows the time passing with the news -including the murder of his wife whom he is framed and his daughter is orphaned. As time passes, Dae-su stops drinking and works out by punching a wall. Twenty years later, on the day he plans to escape, Dae-su is released. He tries to piece together who he is now while he befriends a twenty year-old girl Mi-do. As Dae-su is consumed with revenge, his focus is off and he tracks down the men who imprisoned him until he meets Woo-jin Lee, the man who imprisoned him. He asks two simple things and promises to kill himself if Dae-su succeeds: who am I and why did I imprison you? As Dae-su turns over the clues, he fails to see the forest through the trees.

Last month, Oldboy made it's Americanized debut with Josh Brolin and Spike Lee directing. The film has no real desirable location, but it centers with more of a back story on Joe Doucett in a negative light. He is imprisoned for 20 years and set free. The film follows many of the plot points of the original until the third act (possibly because of the American audiences wouldn't understand the simple plot). It's actually unfortunate because the audiences are smarter and better than what they thought. Should you chose this movie, you'll understand.