August 30 2012
Warner Bros. must be kicking themselves that they let Joss Whedon get away.
io9 essay describes how Warner Bros. is now playing catch up trying to mimic Avenger's success with Justice League, after letting Joss go from Wonder Woman.
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About membership.
Oh, right, they're too compartmentalized to ever think of using him for a live action project.
GreatMuppetyOdin | August 30, 08:51 CET
Canis_Latrans | August 30, 08:52 CET
[ edited by GreatMuppetyOdin on 2012-08-30 17:56 ]
GreatMuppetyOdin | August 30, 08:56 CET
Perhaps if they'd taken some of the advice they'd received over the years they could've shared in the Superhero Movie Glory that is Joss? Ya know?
Feeling the told-ya-sos. A bit.
Tant pis, as my people would say, if they were more French-y and less mongrel-y.
QuoterGal | August 30, 09:06 CET
I think that gets the award for the most awesomely inadvertent slash of the day.
BrewBunny | August 30, 09:31 CET
And to be fair, anyone "I told you so-ing" WB needs to consider that Joss was following many beats Marvel already had on the table. WB essentially veto'd Joss's vision for WW which I assume because the story seems to suggest they just wouldn't get excited or communicate what they didn't like. I have faith in Joss, but it's a fallacy to believe because Joss hit a home run with what Marvel gave him, it logically follows that WW would have been a massive success. I believe in Joss as a storyteller, but I can also say he doesn't always write stories with universal appeal. And I don't mean that as a defect in the slightest. Unfortunately, THAT'S usually what the studios are thinking about.
I think if WB is truly kicking themselves, it's not about Joss. It's about who they gave Green Lantern to and that they didn't give SOMEONE Wonder Woman to do. Marvel seems diligent about putting stuff out there. DC seems to like to sit there and receive pitches until someone goes "yea!" Essentially, Marvel seems like they have a business plan with a schedule and DC is like the artistic guy I knew in college.
[ edited by azzers on 2012-08-30 18:34 ]
azzers | August 30, 09:34 CET
kicking themselvesreally desperate to hire proven talent becausethat they letJoss Whedonget away.Sunfire | August 30, 09:37 CET
+1 to her post.
Ninjaka | August 30, 09:59 CET
Dean | August 30, 10:11 CET
Azzers, I'm kind of with you on the io9 mentioning Joss constantly and in the weirdest places. I remember reading a list of things not to do when writing science fiction. One of them was "don't try to speak like Joss Whedon". As much as I love Joss, let's not pretend that he's the dude everyone takes their cues from. Maybe moreso now than before Avengers, but at the time, it felt like they were assuming everyone in the world had seen Buffy and Firefly and loved them so much they would immediately start copying his style. Any good writer should already know it's never a good idea to immitate someone's style. If Whedonesque dialogue comes naturally to them, a good writer is going to write in a similar style. If it doesn't, they won't. It was kind of pointless to drag Joss into it, and it seemed as though they were just trying to mention Joss in some capacity. Not to fan-hate on them or anything, it's just that I feel like continuously mentioning him will just make non-fans feel like they never want to hear his name again. You know, the Community syndrome, where fans keep saying how amazing the show is to the point where it can never be as good as new viewers expect it to be.
Mitholas | August 30, 10:17 CET
Dean | August 30, 11:07 CET
You would think but back in 2008 they tried to do a Justice League film which would of had two different actors playing Superman and Batman seperate from the solo films with Brandon Ruth still attached to a Superman Returns sequel at the time and Christin Bale and Nolan still in the middle of their Batman trilogy.Plus you still had Tom Welling playing Clark Kent on T.V. on Smallville.
So you would have three different live action Supermen at the same time and two different Batmen.
Then there is the Green Lantern question.Since Green Lantern bombed,will they use Justice League to reboot or bring Ryan Reynolds back?They could also use the John Stewart Green Lantern as they were going to do back in 2008.
Buffyfantic | August 30, 11:34 CET
But I'm just glad he has found a home with Marvel where his work is valued. I'm sure he'll have fun developing S.H.I.E.L.D. with JMo, and he'll come up with all kinds of fun new ways to torture the Avengers.
embers | August 30, 12:10 CET
Boto | August 30, 12:59 CET
To be fair, Warner/DC wanted a movie about Wonder Woman. What Joss gave them was a movie about his interpretation of Wonder Woman. Not the same thing, and the two never reached a meeting of minds. I seriously doubt Warners is kicking itself for not going ahead with an end product they didn't want. Now with the Avengers, it's a very different story. Joss stayed true to the source material; with Wonder Woman he did not.
[ edited by Dean on 2012-08-30 23:24 ]
Dean | August 30, 14:10 CET
Really? How do we know? Is Joss's Wonder Woman script available somewhere?
I'm also a little skeptical about what "true to the source material" means in the context of superhero movies. It seems like most of the characters have multiple origin stories, multiple timelines, multiple different interpretations. Was what Joss was proposing for WW really so radically different from any of the various "canonical" comic versions out there?
Yoink | August 30, 14:37 CET
Dean | August 30, 14:48 CET
Well, ye-sss. But that seems a pretty long way from "staying true to the source material." There's no Ant-Man in Joss's film, there's no Wasp. The tesseract isn't from Avengers #1. Hulk's characterization is radically different--etc. etc. etc.
I'm not really seeing why any of that is any less "failing to stay true to the source material" than Joss's treatment of the character of WW. After all, character is pretty malleable in the superhero world (beyond who is a "goody" and who is a "baddy" and certain key traits like Spiderman's quippiness and so forth). Look at the radically different interpretations we've had of Batman's character over the years--and all of those can find some precedent in the "canon."
Yoink | August 30, 14:57 CET
[ edited by Dean on 2012-08-31 00:15 ]
Dean | August 30, 15:10 CET
They've said it started scripting last summer (during the Avengers shoot ;) ) and it's certainly no coincidence that WB announced their plans weeks after Avengers smashed records, if it had failed JL wouldn't have seen the light of day for a while. It's also true they were on the verge of going for JL:Mortal in 2007-2008 but that movie was cancelled for more than just the writers strike and during that time MS have put them on the defensive in everything except Batman (pretty huge except but still).
They did try and capture the "Marvel formula" for solo movies with Green Lantern and script orders for Flash etc but had to rethink those plans when GL flopped. And Superman has done from being separate to probably being the "kickoff movie" for JL.
For the record I was never particularly enthused by what I read about Joss's WW, but I do think he had one of the best shots at the time of doing a successful movie. The less said about that failed TV pilot the better. I hope happens one day, I did quite enjoy the 2009 animated movie (with bonus Nathan voice). Regardless you *know* there were a few peaks at the treatments and drafts from 2006 after opening weekend.
Heavs | August 30, 15:26 CET
Rowan Hawthorn | August 30, 16:13 CET
Well, that isn't quite right. I have a schizo reaction. I like Marvel live action movies much, much more than the DC versions. I like DC cartoon shows more than Marvel (the very recent Wolverine series made in Japan has to be the worst superhero rendition I've ever seen, instead of being 5'3, 280, he looks to be 6'6 and 190).
On the other hand, while I subscribe to about 20 DC comics each month, I get only two Marvel comics (Mark Waid's Daredevil and the new The Age of Apocalypse - I did get Uncanny X-Force until recently). But I buy rather few DC book versions of events, while my bookcase is overflowing with Marvel collections. The two labels seem to do things very differently. I won't buy Marvel individual issues partly because they will tell an 8 issue arc in four different comic lines, and I can never manage to subscribe to all the right ones.
All that said, the Justice League movie just seems like a preposterous idea. Marvel spent several years building up to The Avengers. If DC were to do the same, then it might be a different matter. but I don't see then wanting to take the time and patience and dedication to do that.
So my main connection to DC will be Wednesday comic book day, while Marvel will be collected editions of their books (I did, for instance, just order a used copy of Ed Brubaker's Captain America Omnibus, something I'd been intending to get for ages, and I spent the afternoon rereading Frank Miller's Daredevil Born Again on the beach). But I can't see myself getting excited about DC superhero movies any more than I can see myself increasing the number of Marvel issues I subscribe to.
Njal | August 30, 20:05 CET
Think Thor in Captain America's underpants.
Wilhelm | August 30, 20:45 CET
It can't be, because he never finished a script. In his own words (this is sourced on Wikipedia) he completed an outline, but never had a first draft of a full script. Given that he worked on this for two years, that would be red flag #1 for me.
He also said that he was going to use an original villain, rather than one from the comics. That would be red flag #2 for me, and a huge one. I think that completely misses the point of doing a comic adaptation. The adaptations that have tended to do the best are the ones that capture what made the characters successful in the comics in the first place. Going with an original villain is pretty risky in that context.
(And before someone says WW has a crappy rogues' gallery, her's really isn't any worse than most superheroes. The ones that have a great one, like Batman and Spider-Man, are very much the exception. I think Circe, Cheetah, or Ares would have made fine movie villains. I also like Dr. Psycho and Giganta, but they might have looked weird in a movie.)
None of this means that he wouldn't have made a good WW movie, but I have my doubts and I'm not surprised WB had some too.
[ edited by Mad Axe on 2012-08-31 23:56 ]
Mad Axe | August 31, 14:55 CET
gossi | August 31, 15:03 CET
http://www.avclub.com/articles/joss-whedon,14136/
Mad Axe | August 31, 16:25 CET
@theonetruebix | August 31, 16:33 CET
I don't know (what they did or did not like), because when I asked Joel Silver, point blank, "Well, if they don't want what I'm doing, what do they want?" he said, "They don't know."
That's a huge difference compared to the Avengers. Marvel gave Joss structure (a few points that he had to hit) and at the same time gave him a lot of freedom. (He wanted Thanos; he got Thanos.) Is there anything to indicate that WB has a vision, beyond "put out something"? The recent Batman movies were good because Nolan had that vision. The last Superman movie, and X-Men 3, failed in large part because the scripts were rushed and incoherent.
OneTeV | August 31, 20:12 CET