Let the Marvel and DC battle continue! While Mark Millar is not Kevin Feige, he is the voice for the Marvel properties over at Fox, so he does have some heft in the cinematic world of superheroes. As a comic writer, Millar is an often controversial figure and these latest comments are not going to help his reputation with DC fans.
In an interview with Sci Fi Now, Millar let rip with some very blunt comments about how Warner Bros and DC are approaching their JUSTICE LEAGUE movie. Check out his stance:
“I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date.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…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.”
So, I am guessing he is not a fan? I agree with Millar in the sense that DC characters outside of Superman and Batman do not lend themselves very well to the big screen. I just watched GREEN LANTERN again last night and the story is just so convoluted that it doesn’t translate well without the benefit of dozens of issues of comics to tell the vast backstory and explain elements that cannot be condensed into a two hour movie.
Millar continued his criticism, basing it on the fact that DC is not formatted to exist in a 21st century world:
”Now the stuff I grew up with… I adored the DC stuff growing up but really, how do you do a movie about Green Lantern? His power is that he manifests green plasma from his imagination and uses them as weapons against someone? Even that in itself if you just imagine then watching a fight scene with a guy who’s like a hundred feet away making plasma manifestations fight someone – it’s not exactly raucous, getting up close and personal. The Flash has door handles on the side of his mask and if he doesn’t wear that mask, I’ll be pissed off, you know what I mean? They’re in a weird, weird situation – if you’ve got a guy who moves at the speed of light up against the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold or whatever, then your movie’s over in two seconds. 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?”
I hate to say it, but the man makes a good point. While I think the core of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Flash can make a good movie, there is not much to mine from DC that would lend itself well to a standalone movie. But, maybe some DC fans out there could lend some perspective>
JUSTICE LEAGUE will potentially hit theaters in 2015.