Mark Millar, famous comic book creator and creative consultant to FOX on their area of the Marvel movie universe, isn’t too keen on a Justice League film. Speaking to Sci-fi Now, Millar said that the characters in Justice League are out of date and that the film is an “excellent way of losing $200 million.” Harsh words there Mr. Millar, harsh words indeed.
“I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date,” said Millar. “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.”
His point about the characters being out of date isn’t exactly a valid one. Batman and Superman may be old, but they are still extremely popular in today’s society. If you need proof of that look no further than Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. People can’t get enough of Batman, and anticipation is pretty high for Zack Snyder’s upcoming Man of Steel.
Millar then went on to comment about Green Lantern, The Flash and Aquaman.
“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? 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.”
Millar is really hating on DC here but most of his comments should be disregarded. He’s just poking holes wherever he can it seems and I wouldn’t worry too much about them. I think the Justice League film will do just fine. Of course, it will ultimately depend on the cast and crew that the studio assembles, and the script they have, but something tells me that this is too important of a project to drop the ball on. Everyone knows what’s at stake here, right?
It’s also odd that Millar is bashing the film now too given that he approved of the whole idea just a few months back. I wonder what’s changed? Maybe he’s just bitter about something? We’ll likely never know why Millar has it out for the Justice League but I’m almost positive that the film will not lose $200 million.
UPDATE: A news story just broke that tells us Warner Bros. has apparently trashed Will Beall’s script because it is “terrible.” So there may be truth to Millar’s words after all. Looks like I may be eating my words.
Reports are saying that “the script has been half-baked from the beginning and characters have been removed and added seemingly at studio executive will.” Does this mean that the project will be scrapped all together, or will they just get a new script? I’m sure most of the decision rests on how well Man of Steel does but still, you have to wonder if Warner Bros. is getting cold feet now.
What do you guys think? Is the Justice League film in trouble?
