There will be a live action Justice League movie in my lifetime – but I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. The news last week that Hollywood scribe Will Beall had been hired to write a Justice League script means about as much to me as Will Beall being hired to write a new script for the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It means nothing! Scripts are being written in Hollywood all the time, especially for superhero movies. And they routinely go nowhere. So until Warner Bros. actually begins real, physical production on a Justice League movie, I’m not going to care about the insider gossip.

Though I am going to speculate about what I’d like to see in a live action Justice League movie!

They’ll be in their trailers

What characters should appear? Who should they fight? Should it try to tie in any of the previous Batman or Superman films? These are burning questions in a fertile geek mind like my own. Now, there’s no way in the flaming halls of Hell that I’d ever be hired to pen a Justice League script, but I’m still a pretty awesome and creative guy. Plus I saw The Avengers twice in theaters, so I think I know a little something about superhero team movies. And here are 6 things I would like to see in a live action Justice League movie!

6. Less Super Friends, More Avengers

————————————————

None of this

There’s no point in ignoring the $1 billion elephant in the room: Marvel’s The Avengers has made more money than God, proving that not only can a superhero team movie work, but it can be insanely popular and incredibly good! And no doubt its success is what has propelled DC to begin work on a Justice League film again. But the idea that there are people at Warner Bros. who aren’t spending every waking moment trying to follow that success with their own film boggles the mind. How do they sleep at night knowing that a Justice League movie isn’t already in production? WB are going to make this movie – but they should not feel compelled to do something different from The Avengers. In fact, they should follow the grand Hollywood tradition of just copying another successful movie. Deep Impact and Armageddon anyone?

The Avengers was the perfect superhero movie. There were no winks to the camera, no silly joking around with the superhero concept. All of the heroes were played straight and were treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. And Marvel didn’t cut any corners with them either. Each hero was taken straight from the comics. No altering the origins or the back stories or the characters in order to make them ‘fit’ what the mainstream audiences might accept. And it seems the public was very, very happy with these superheroes the way they were. So DC and Warner Bros. should do exactly that. No crappy changes to the characters. No need to make them dark and gritty. And for the love of God, do not make them campy!

Absolutely no bat-dancing!

The 1960s Batman show and the Super Friends cartoon are the embarrassing clothes that superheroes used to wear decades ago. Do you judge people for what they wore in the 70s or 80s? No! So don’t even begin to think that superhero movies should be anything like Batman and Robin. Make it straight, respect the characters, and it will be a good movie.

————————————————

5. The Heroes…

————————————————

Which one is the Iron Man of the group?

One of the great advantages that DC Comics has over Marvel is that more people know the DC heroes. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman; these are all household names and concepts. Even my grandmother knows that the Flash is the guy with super speed. The Marvel heroes, on the other hand, are simply not as well known. Nobody knew who Iron Man was before his big hit movies. Likewise Thor, Loki, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury and SHIELD. So Marvel’s approach of having several different solo movies to build up to The Avengers was brilliant, and it clearly paid off. But DC doesn’t need to worry about that. People know the main DC heroes. Their origins do not need to be retold in order for the film to make sense.

My proposed Justice League movie roster: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash.

My Movie League

In order for the movie to be a success, I want to see a small, controlled team of just major players. There are dozens of Justice League members in the comics, but none those extra members should appear in the movie. The Avengers had four main characters and a few side characters, but then Black Widow and Hawkeye were never going to be major players. So forget Plastic Man, Hawkman, the Atom, Green Arrow (More like Green Hawkeye, amiright folks?), Black Canary or anybody else. They are not needed and would only clog up the film. Martian Manhunter may be a classic JL character, but he’d be terrible for live action. Just a bulky green dude in a hideous costume with a complicated origin and powers too similar to Superman.

Sorry big guy

So keep the team small, keep it controlled and use well-known, popular characters. Superman and Batman are the heart of the team, the boy scout and the dark knight. Everybody knows them. Wonder Woman is the badass with sex appeal. Green Lantern and the Flash can be the comedy team. All five characters have unique powers and very unique looks. They don’t all need solo movie franchises to make the public aware of them – though the Green Lantern film in 2011 definitely earns him a spot on this team. Otherwise he would have been too unknown, too complicated to include. I guess that Ryan Reynolds bomb is good for something. But speaking of characters…

————————————————

4. Superman/Batman: The Motion Picture

————————————————

The only two that matter

Any Justice League movie has to actually just be about Superman and Batman. Despite including a whole team of superheroes, the true draw of a Justice League movie would be seeing the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight together on the big screen for the first time. They will put butts into seats. Each character has had multiple movies, each one very well defined in the public consciousness. Superman and Batman are household names. No time needs to be wasted establishing either character. We just want to see them team up, butt heads and eventually come together to save the day!

Marvel doesn’t have anything to compare with the drawing power of Superman and Batman. The only team up that could come close would be Spider-Man joining The Avengers, but Marvel gave away all their movie licenses. That’s why The Amazing Spider-Man movie that comes out next month is made by entirely different people than The Avengers. And why the X-Men will never meet the Fantastic Four will never meet the Avengers. But DC has all of their eggs in one basket, with the power to bring them all together.

————————————————

3. The Villains…

————————————————

I want all of them!

The Avengers surprised me by having Loki as the main villain rather than introducing somebody totally new. Not that the Avengers have a lot of really good villains to choose from, but I didn’t think they’d be so eager to repeat the bad guy from Thor. In hindsight, of course, Loki was fantastic in The Avengers! So this makes me think that it would be OK to use some of the villains who have appeared in previous DC superhero movies. Justice League doesn’t need to introduce anyone new. However, they should probably come up with a new idea instead of just repeating The Avengers‘ alien army storyline – so the white Martians are probably out.

An obvious choice of villain would be Darkseid. He’s big, he’s bad, he could take them all on in a physical fight and win. Plus he’s got legions of demon soldiers who follow his everybody – but again that would just be an invasion storyline. I don’t actually want Darkseid.

No, the villain for the Justice League movie should be…Lex Luthor.

Pictured here from that time he was President

But absolutely not the Lex Luthor of any previous movies. Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey were terrible, as was the character. Land claims? Please! I want evil businessman Lex Luthor, who seems untouchable on his skyscraper throne. The Avengers battled a mystical threat from beyond the stars. The Justice League’s main antagonist should be entirely human. Though I don’t know for sure what Lex’s big scheme might be.

I’ve never read many Lex Luthor comics, but no doubt he’s had more than a few evil schemes over the years. All-Star Superman had him teaming up with Solaris the Living Sun. That sounds kind of cool. Luthor might also team up with Brainiac to catalogue all of humanity, or Starro to enslave them. The whole world should definitely be in danger, with Lex Luthor right at the heart of it. But he shouldn’t be the only threat, since we’re going to want the superheroes to actually be able to hit someone. Lex isn’t going to put up much of a physical fight. Which is why I think Starro might actually be a good idea. Perhaps Lex finds Starro out in space and decides to use the alien’s mind-control spores to defeat Superman once and for all, turning Superman into his puppet. This would provide the catalyst for the various heroes of the Justice League to come together to save/stop mind-controlled Superman, and t hen the whole team would come together to stop Starro when the alien gets out of Luthor’s control. Boom, there’s your movie!

Though they might also consider teaming up Lex Luthor and the Joker…

————————————————

2. No Callbacks to Previous Movies or TV

————————————————

Let the man rest in peace

Superman Returns in 2006 was not a bold new attempt to launch a new Superman franchise. Instead it was a glorified love letter to the original Superman movies from the late 70s/early 80s. They even hired actor Brandon Routh because he looked like original Superman Christopher Reeve. The characters were the same, the dialogue was the same, everything was the same! Superman Returns sucked for this very reason. It’s why you haven’t seen a Superman Returns 2, and why the Superman franchise is being remade with next year’s Man of Steel. There have been dozens of DC superhero movies and TV shows of the past few decades, many of them very near and dear to people’s hearts.

But a Justice League movie must shed all of these old films and stand completely on its own. No references to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Even the Daily Planet must be different. Lex Luthor especially. So no crystalline Fortress of Solitude either. And not just for Superman. Christopher Nolan is ending his Batman trilogy this summer, and Christian Bale is done playing the Caped Crusader. So DC may want to continue the dark vigilante version of Batman, but do away with everything else. No Tumbler, no Lucius Fox, no anything from the trilogy, and definitely not from the original Batman films from the 90s.

Joel Schumacher is history’s greatest monster!

Likewise no having Wonder Woman spinning to put on her costume. No references to the Hall of Justice or the Super Friends. Nothing! No winks at the camera. No references to the old movies or shows. Maybe a fun Easter Egg here or there, an off-hand comment or something of the like. But no obvious, deliberate attempts to callback to the earlier movies. Let Justice League stand on its own. The only exception is maybe Green Lantern, and counting the Green Lantern movie as part of the same universe. Ryan Reynolds is still on contract. And for all the problems with the Green Lantern movie, the costume and the powers were pretty excellent. No need to recreate that entire mythos when they could just piggyback on the recent film.

But I don’t even want to hear the classic Superman theme music.

————————————————

1. Keep It Simple Stupid

————————————————

Please, oh please

For the love of all that is holy, please just keep it a simple movie. Speaking of the problems of Green Lantern, one of the big ones was that they over-explained everything, sometimes more than once. There were long scenes of exposition where they just kept explaining the Green Lantern powers to the audience. Meanwhile, how much time was spent explaining Iron Man’s powers to the audience in any of the Iron Man films? None! People can get it. People can understand and don’t need long, complex explanations.

Nor do they need plots stacked upon plots stacked upon plots. Just give us the good guys and have them fight the bad guys. The only subplot you need is the inner turmoil between the heroes. The Green Lantern movie had Parallax, Hector Hammond, untrustworthy Guardains and then a flashback to Amanda Waller’s marriage. Too much!

I hate movies that are so in love with their own concepts that they need 5-minute-long opening narrations just to get all the back story in place (Star Wars notwithstanding). M. Night  Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water comes to mind. Let the film, the characters and the villains progress naturally. Don’t tell us, show us. Even if you use someone like Brainiac or Starro, keep their stories as simple as possible.

As simple as a giant, mind-controlling space starfish can be

Is it too much to ask to make a simple, straight forward movie starring some of the most famous and popular superheroes of all time? It’s Superman and Batman teaming up to punch out Lex Luthor. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be filled with exposition. The Avengers did it, and Warner Bros. has been making movies for far longer.

I have faith that they’ll get a Justice League made eventually. But I don’t have a single shred of faith that they won’t mess it up.

————————————————

Honorable Mention: Make an Aquaman Joke

————————————————

Hero to millions!

Everybody loves Aquaman, they just don’t know it yet. My roster idea up there didn’t include Aquaman, but I want him to appear in the movie. Not as a member of the Justice League, mind you, but instead use him at the very end to create the greatest film cameo of all time.

In the epilogue, whether a mid-credits scene or a post-credits scene, make a big, over-the-top, hilarious Aquaman joke. It will be the talk of the Summer. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Aquaman. But the public mostly sees him as a joke. So use that to get a huge laugh out of them, but make sure they’re laughing with Aquaman and not at Aquaman. Have him do something really awesome like ride a giant whale monster onto the beach and ask to join the Justice League. Or maybe he takes out a bad guy with a giant squid. Something badass that will really wow the crowd.

Because that’s what you want to do with a movie like Justice League. You want to blow your audience away with awesomeness. The Avengers did it. Now it’s time for DC Comics to step up their game – with Aquaman!

————————————————

So what would you like to see in a Justice League movie? Any specific characters that you definitely want on the roster? Any villains who you think would be perfect? Were my choices good? Stupid? Genius? Tell me in the comments!