Geekshow

Ravings of a Big Bad Geek!!! – Shazam!

To Shazam, or not to Shazam? That is the question. And if you’re a big DC fan like me, odds are you’re not going to like the answer very much.

As many of you now well know, Warner Bros. has put a halt to the production of their comic book superhero movie Shazam: The Legend of Billy Batson. After Wonder Woman, this is now their second superhero movie that the Warner Bros. execs have cancelled which I was looking forward to immensely. Hot off the heels of the (overrated in my opinion) Dark Knight, Warner Bros. execs have decided to take their whole super hero line in a new direction and make them more dark and dreary like last summer’s box office smash. Never mind that The Dark Knight mainly worked for audiences because the character was supposed to be dark and dreary. Since it made the big money, everything else they make must now be exactly like it. Stop me if you can already see the major problem I have with this line of thinking.

Yes, it seems that a group of spineless morons plague the executive offices that inhabit the studio at the Warner Bros. lot. They see the major success of The Dark Knight and learn the exact wrong thing about it that they should have. They think that because the movie was darker, more realistic, and more gritty, they think that that is now what the mainstream movie going audiences are interested in seeing today. So by their thinking, they must now quickly cash in on it’s success and make their other super hero movies in development just as dark, just as realistic, and just as gritty. How in the hell could they get it so wrong?!

First off, the only reason why dark, realistic, and gritty worked for Batman was because that was how the character should have been portrayed. The movie stayed true to the source material, the feeling that a Batman movie should give off, and the characters motivations, and that was what the audience responded to. What WB should have done was take all of their developing super hero movies, and then make them just as true to the source material and characters as possible. From what I read of the development of the Captain Marvel movie, the people involved with making the movie were doing exactly just that! They even got the fanboys involved in letting them help pick who should be cast as the villain, Black Adam, in the movie. That was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson by the way. A perfect choice in my opinion. But now, it appears as though I’ll never get to see the former wrestler wearing spandex again because the studio all of a sudden wants to make everything more like Batman. “We want everything to be more like the majorly successful Batman! We want more Batman! BATMAN! BATMAN!! BATMAN!!!”

God, I’m so sick of that superhero noob!

Needless to say, I’ve never been that much of a Batman fan. Or should I say, Batman-Worshipping Fanboy? I mean I like the character, but there are so many more worthy characters that the DC Universe holds that I would kill to see them realized on the big screen. In the modern era of movies, Batman has been done six times. SIX!!! And as for characters such as Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, The Flash, Zatanna (my favorite), and the aforementioned Captain Marvel; Their total comes to zero. That’s a big fat 0! Say what you want about the quality of the Marvel superhero movies, but at least they got them made! It’s seems that DC can’t make a superhero movie unless it has the name Batman or Superman in the title. And since they screwed up with the last Superman movie by not making it a full on reboot from the previous films, it seems as though as the only thing we’ll be getting from DC out of the next few years or more is just more Batman.

I only really loved the Burton films anyway. Now those were real comic book films come to life!

It seems as though there might be some hope for WB’s superheroes in the future though. Watchmen will be coming out in a little more than a month, and the ill-fated Justice League movie got that mercy killing in development that it deserved. I can only hope that the failure to get the Joss Whedon’s written and directed Wonder Woman off the ground doesn’t put that movie on hold for too long at the studio. It still amazes me that the final member of the DC Big Three hasn’t had a real movie yet. Unbelievable. Me thinks that Warner Bros. must be run by Bizarro or something because everything they do seems to be ass backwards.

At least we still have the DCAU created by Bruce Timm. If not for that, then it would be a hard thing for anyone to stay a fan of DC superheroes without any form of entertainment outside of just the comics themselves. We can only hope and pray that the WB execs get the message and make their superhero movies right, and make them memorable.

SpikeBad – Ravings of a Big Bad Geek!!!