Mark Millar has strong feelings about the mooted Justice League movie:
I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date.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… You can get away with stuff in comics that in live action’s just a bit sucky – the best one is definitely Aquaman. 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? 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.
I’m unsure about how much I agree about this, to be honest; certainly, there’s an argument to be made that DC’s characters are the product of a specific time that is now long-gone, but I find the idea that the DCU characters are inherently more flawed or cinematically-unsuitable than the successful-in-celluloid Marvel heroes somewhat more ridiculous. Is “World’s Most Powerful Telepath” really more suited to movies than “World’s Fastest Man”?
February 7th, 2013 at 9:43 am
Nah, and he’d be saying just that were he working on DC films.
Gah, I’m contributing to the publicity he’s after …
February 7th, 2013 at 9:46 am
Mark Millar is RIGHT: out of date! Batman could NEVER support even one movie much less a tent-pole franchise. And Superman just can’t appeal to the crucial young demographic – could you imagine him having a successful show on something like, say, I don’t know, the CW network? (and don’t even get me started on Green Arrow…) And how could they ever pull off something like the Flash – special effects for that would be craaazy difficult, I mean you’d need like, computers or something to do the graphics. Martian Manhunter? WTF? Nobody cares about aliens, amirite?
OK, sure I will grant millar that the green lantern movie sucked – but not b/c of green lantern as a concept. It’s just down to the creative approach: Schumacher v Nolan. How do you have atlantis underwater? Hey man, if you can’t figure it out, get out of the way and let somebody who can, do it (and who says there has to be an atlantis or even aquaman – that’s like saying an avengers movie has to have ant-man (I mean, who’d ever make a movie about ANT-MAN?))
February 7th, 2013 at 10:10 am
He’s paid by Disney/Marvel to work on and promote their properties, duh.
February 7th, 2013 at 10:46 am
He’s just trash-talking the competition.
February 7th, 2013 at 10:58 am
Check your facts, Poehler. Millar doesn’t work for Marvel or Disney.
February 7th, 2013 at 1:50 pm
they should take the money they would have spent on a jla movie and fund like 50 or 100 years of dc animated series.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
The Flash is the simplest character there is. A man who runs fast. Hard to see how that could ever be outdated.
February 7th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
I don’t think Millar is too great at math.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
The saddest part is that it sounds like even Millar doesn’t believe his own crap anymore. It doesn’t even sound like he tried to come up with problems anyone could think were legitimate. If he’d gotten his Fox Marvel films job before Avengers came out, he’d be all “Characters from fifty years ago? A god, a ww2 soldier, a monster and a robot man – how would they possibly interact? That’s definitely going to lose money”.
If he was saying the actual people at WB probably won’t be able to make it good, then there’s some real dogs in their track record to back that up, but that no one could? Ridiculous. Probably just worried that they’ll base it on Morrison’s take, and that it’ll top the film that referenced his work.
February 8th, 2013 at 6:02 am
Tenebrous Says:
February 7th, 2013 at 10:58 am
“Check your facts, Poehler. Millar doesn’t work for Marvel or Disney.”
Well, IMDB lists him as, “Creative Consultant” for the next Fantastic Four movie, so his impartiality may be called in to question! I hope they deal with their Cold War origins in the movie, trying to beat the Reds in to space! Created 52 years ago, now, that’s relevant!
February 8th, 2013 at 5:59 pm
Basing the Justice League on Morrison’s run? That’s what I’m worried about. Be prepared for the audience to break out in unintentional laughter when one of the white Martians lets Batman trap him in a cicrcle of candles. Instead of you know, flying over the candles. Or just walking inbetween them.
February 11th, 2013 at 10:18 am
I don’t think it is a matter of the characters being out-of-date, but more that they were not created with the idea of them ever existing in the same world or ever interacting with each other. Superman obviously stood alone as did Batman when they were first created. They did not meet in a D C comic for several years after they were created and, if my memory serves, were first tossed together on a radio show.
The sheer absolute power of Superman makes him difficult to team with anything.