Top Five Comic Book Films We'll Never See

Title- Top Five Comic Book Movies We'll Probably Never See
Qualifiers- No, I won't settle for a "compromise". Adapt the comics or get out; I'm historically not much of a superhero team guy;
Sequence- unranked;

* Legion of Super-Heroes- To me, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. You've got to tie the team back to Superboy. Not Superman. Not young Clark Kent. Superboy. It's got to be Superboy. You need to establish the team as being part of his legacy. Even A THOUSAND FREAKIN YEARS FROM NOW WHEN KIDS THEMSELVES HAVE SUPERPOWERS, they STILL thrill to the adventures of the first and greatest superhero. They look back and say "shit, that guy was AWESOME" and aspire to follow his example.
Why It Ain't Happening- That means you need the Superman movie to be done in a certain way and, for better or for worse, I just don't ever see that happening. But anyway Superboy is an obvious can of worms, legally speaking. More broadly, it's hard to think of a Hollywood filmmaker with the cojones to take on a superpowered team of teenagers set a thousand years into the future with "goofy" names like Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad. And of the few who might be willing to even consider the project, 10:1 they'll want a gay Invisible Kid and Miley Cyrus as Saturn Girl.

* The New Avengers- I seriously DIG this team. I like how it's primarily made up of street level characters, most of whom don't necessarily get along too well with others or otherwise just aren't traditionally team players. Tons of room for conflict and character arcs and stuff.
Why It Ain't Happening- I mean, shit, the name ALONE pretty much guarantees this one will never see the light of day. Confusion in the marketplace much? "Durr, what's the difference between the Avengers and The New Avengers?" Except it's actually sort of understandable. But whatever. Say you bypass all that. Say you call the team The Defenders (which, in a sense, might be the more accurate label anyway). You've still got something else. Look at the roster[/b]- Captain America, Doctor Strange, Victoria Hand, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, Thing, Wolverine and, soon, Daredevil. Sure, Marvel Studios owns the rights to a fair number of those characters... but they DON'T own the rights to several important members and that key issue would be fatal, I'd think.

* Birds of Prey- I think there's an interesting market here. Say whatever you want about how shitty the TV show was (and it was most certainly that at times), I think there's some mojo to a group of female superheroes.
Why It Ain't Happening- Frankly, (A) WB has a demonstrable lack of vision on these sorts of things and (B) they're ENTIRELY too beholden to Nolan Almighty. As a result, I can't readily picture a BOP scenario springing forth from the Batman universe he's set up. Oh sure, you could finagle something, I guess, but you'd need another Batman movie or two to make it really believable. But that just about brings us back to WB's lack of vision.

* Aquaman- My take on Aquaman is that he's forced into the mold of being just another superhero by the public when, when you boil it all down, he's the ruler of Atlantis. He's not a superhero, he's a king who has powerful friends. He's a man of one world trying to force himself to live in two, and often being misunderstood on both sides for his troubles.
Why It Ain't Happening- The public at large (in both the DC universe and, God knows, the real world) have no understanding of this. That perception is a mighty big hurdle to jump.

* Justice Society of America- I don't mean the modern incarnation, I'm talking about the good old fashioned Pre-Crisis/Earth 2 version. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, the Jay Garrick Flash, the Huntress, Hourman, Sandman, Dr. Mid-Nite, etc, all set on Earth 2 back in the World War 2 era. Basically a Golden Age mash up of Earth 2 goodness.
Why It Ain't Happening- Basically we're talking about a Golden Age/Action Comics #1 type of Superman with relatively few superpowers. Gee, why would the Siegel Parasites EVER have a problem with that? Plus, WB is probably protective as hell about Batman at the moment. Bitten as they were by Singerman, odds are they won't give even an Earth 2 Batman a daughter (ie, the Huntress). On top of that, they're probably still stinging from Green Lantern's failure so something tells me they're not eager to dump more money in a film with even a different Green Lantern in it. The remaining characters have little or not marquee value to entice would-be ticket buyers. But the icing on the cake? It's necessarily a period piece (although the success of X-Men and, hopefully, Captain America may soften this angle a little bit).

-- Runners-Up
Irredeemable- I see people calling for this all the time and I just don't get it. It's the ongoing exploration of a Superman archetype who falls from grace, going from World's Greatest Superhero to Earth's Worst Enemy. As it's presented in the comics, at least, the structure of the story all but demands a TV format. It's a lot like The Walking Dead in that regard.

Crisis On Infinite Earths- Apart from inserting a lot of the same JSA issues here, you can mostly easily boil this down to "too big".

World's Finest- WB has had years to adapt this fucker. If they haven't done it yet, it's because they're not going to. See BOP.

Lobo- WB is run by monkeys, what can I tell you? And to be fair, there's, at best, limited franchise potential here as Lobo is sort of a one-note character.

Punisher: MAX- If they haven't gotten it right with the Punisher after three attempts, why should I believe the fourth one will somehow be any better?

Kingdom Come - Because the Bros. Warner are retarded morons who would hire someone like Martin Campbell or M. Night Shymalan to suck the fun and original themes right out of it in order to make their own "vision".

It's their M.O.

Apologist Puncher wrote:Kingdom Come - Because the Bros. Warner are retarded morons who would hire someone like Martin Campbell or M. Night Shymalan to suck the fun and original themes right out of it in order to make their own "vision".

It's their M.O.

Kingdom Come is the sort of comics adaptation that I'd really like to see but only if done right. But you also have to consider how the general public just wouldn't get it. Superman & Batman old? And not even the same Superman & Batman?! Superman with a noticeably different costume (but at least one that doesn't suck)? An alternate future where Capt. Marvel goes nuclear? So on & so forth. I'm sure Joe Public would really support that! However, if you think about it, WATCHMEN worked as a film even though the public didn't support it. I suppose KC could work, at least as a film, but whether box office or not? With 'the brothers Warner' at the helm, I wouldn't hold my breath!

However, if it were done as an animated film, that might could work for the DVD market. I'd just rather have the real thing though.

non_amos wrote:\Kingdom Come is the sort of comics adaptation that I'd really like to see but only if done right. But you also have to consider how the general public just wouldn't get it. Superman & Batman old? And not even the same Superman & Batman?! Superman with a noticeably different costume (but at least one that doesn't suck)? An alternate future where Capt. Marvel goes nuclear? So on & so forth. I'm sure Joe Public would really support that!

Keep in mind that the 'Kingdom Come' story has multiple flashbacks that explain EVERY change.

So that's a non-issue.

However, if you think about it, WATCHMEN worked as a film even though the public didn't support it. I suppose KC could work, at least as a film, but whether box office or not? With 'the brothers Warner' at the helm, I wouldn't hold my breath!

Like I said when it came out, the Big Blue Dong put a lot of people off, and affected the final box office numbers.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

However, if it were done as an animated film, that might could work for the DVD market. I'd just rather have the real thing though.

The Bros. Warner will NEVER do a theatrical animated film, especially not using DC Comic characters. They are too afraid of going up against Pixar and Dreamworks.