DC Universe Animated Original Movies

[Randall]

That... is actually a pretty good idea.

Sure, it's a marketing thing with the new live action miovie, but as tie-ins go, this sounds pretty good. Certainly, I look forward to it more than Batman: Under the Red Hood!

And a cartoon series for GL could really work, too. I see Alan Scott becoming a supporting charcater in the second season

[GeorgeC]

Batman: Under The Red Hood is just a bad idea based on an equally poor story.

(I still like the casting of Greenwood as Batman, though. Should be good! That may be the saving grace for me. Otherwise, color me as unimpressed and largely ambivalent or mildly hostile towards anything written by Judd Winnick. He's just not a good writer. Mediocre at best...)

I NEVER liked the Death in the Family storyline. It messed things up for a bit but I can understand why people didn't like Jason Todd. The storyline is also the poster-boy for why editorial decisions shouldn't be made by phone-ins and popularity contests.

What most people don't understand -- because human beings are generally horrible at history and content to be ignorant of it -- is that Jason Todd was never intended to be characterized as a sassy, back-talking brat. When Todd premiered in the early 1980s, he was as close a clone to Dick Grayson as you could get without being an identical twin.

(It's been my observation for years that most comic book fans are remarkably ignorant of continuity and the history of the medium... For all the arguments about who's stronger or faster, most fans don't bother to do much research or actually read anything published 10-20 years before they started collecting!)

After Crisis On Infinite Earths was finished, Batman editorial revamped the Jason Todd character and the main Batman writer at the time, Jim Starlin, made a conscious decision to make Robin-III (Todd) as unlikeable as possible.

A lot of storylines and ideas are based on people's whims and what they think will sell NOW... It's less about the long-term impact of those decisions and whether they best serve the legacy and integrity of characters.

Frankly, Teen Titans and Batman would have been better-served if Dick Grayson hadn't been allowed to age past 16!

The aging of DC's sidekick characters has been at least a minor, if not major, disaster where continuities and team books are concerned. You have not only the "growing up and out of" partnerships and teams but also the added realization of what do you do with a sidekick when they're no longer a junior partner?

(The sidekick aging also skews relationships. It makes the mentors more like young uncles or big brothers instead of parental figures. In earlier stories, you could make the case the sidekicks were 10 years old(!) and that their mentors were in their late twenties to mid-thirties. Nowadays, editors don't want any major characters being older than 35-36. Their former sidekicks are now 23-25 in most cases. Yeah, that really works!)

It's a question that's hitting both The Flash (re: Wally West) and Batman (Dick Grayson) hard now. The mentors have or are in the process of returning... Wally's largely redundant now that Barry's back and has been written into a corner by horribly incompetent editing and bad storylines for the past 5-7 years.

The Nightwing comic had bad sales and the character has had no direction for many years...

.... and far more people are aware of the fact that Grayson IS the original Robin than the fact he became Nightwing.

[gaastra]

Looks like all "main" wb movies and all DC comics movies will be in 3-d from now on!

This includes animated films.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/03/18/all ... z0ia8sZej3

" Warner Bros will be releasing five movies in 3D in 2010 and nine movies in 2011. Alan Horn announced at ShoWest that all the studios tentpole movies, superhero films, and big special effects releases, will be distributed in 3D. He called it the new standard for the company. And yes, he was clear that this includes all of the future DC Comic Books films. That means that the new Superman and third Batman will be released in 3D."


Plus they will raise the price of 3-d movies!

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/theate ... ket-prices

[eddievalient]

And yet, someone made a Nightwing fanfilm (an adaptation of the story "A Knight in Bludhaven") that's actually not bad considering the obviously low budget.

[GeorgeC]

I doubt this is going to happen for everything.


When the bottom-line drops in on Hollywood, the 3-D experiment will end just like it always has -- within 2 years.

It's just not worth the extra tens of millions it adds onto big-budget action films and DOES NOT especially fit welll with lower-budget films.

The studios are more cash-strapped than they have been for a while. (The top people are overpaid and are not returning well on the dollars spent on them.)

3-D is a desperate attempt to lure audiences back to expensive theaters with a quick-fix gimmick.

They always bring this junk back in when new tech hits... Face it, many people are staying home with more affordable DVD rentals/buys and better television and audio equipment than ever.

Most people are more than happy to view 2-D flat films. Many of us who LOVE film PREFER 2-D... It shouldn't be a matter of technique dominating every darn film. Some films lend themselves to black-and-white; others are short, others are made-for-TV. This business of mandating 3-D for everything is absurd and as bad as the tech still is I hope it blows up in Hollywood's face!

Why spend $60+ for a family or date for the films when home viewing is a slim fraction with fewer of the headaches of the megaplex? Why spend money on a new film ((or the millionth remake in today's climate) that looks "questionable" even in previews (a lost art) when you can invest in a quality classic that's going to satisfy everybody?

IF the memorable stories and characters aren't there, people won't come. They really shouldn't waste their money if they have any common sense. Most of us know the good films are not the overmarketed $120 million+ monster-budget features. The glitz, beautiful people, and salacious stories can't disguise the lack of meaning in most newer pictures.

They're not even good popcorn films!

====>>> It's a lesson the people running the business now have not learned yet. They pay way too much attention to stock reports, their iPhones and Blackberries and don't know how good stories are told. Too many people get hired based on the covers of the entertainment magazines they appear on! <<<=====

The law of averages will catch up with them.
(And hopefully, if there's any sense more of the button-pushers will get sacked without big news of the golden parachutes that are really steaming people up...)

With most people on tighter budgets for frivolous entertainment, I just don't see this flying...

3-D is the same old 3-D that gave people headaches in the 50s and 80s. There's just no need for it.

[LotsoA113]

Yeah I don't want EVERYTHING to be 3D. But there's a problem keeping this from being just a fad...the number 1 film of all-time just came out and it was in 3D. Like Brad Bird said, Hollywood is a dumb shark and will follow everything that's popular. Obviously, 3D is popular so Hollywood is gonna follow that.

For now at least.

[Randall]

Could this be the next-to-be-announced DCU animated feature?

I found this on the event schedule for the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, occurring later this month:

Batman: Year One Animated
Screenwriter Tab Murphy and director Bruce Timm talk about adpating Frank Miller's Batman: Year One for DC/Warner Bros.

http://www.calgaryexpo.com/program-schedule

Wow. This is the first I've heard of the project. I must see that panel!

[GeorgeC]

I kind of wish DC and WB would put a moratorium on direct-to-DVD Batman projects for a while...

The character is overexposed as it is and they're starting to adapt some really questionable stories now starting with Red Hood and NOW this!

I'm not a fan of Winnick's or Miller's writings in general. They seem to take a harder stance on the character, grim it up too much for my likes, and what they've done to the women isn't pretty, either.

When he was still alive, Bob Kane (Batman's more prominent co-creator) had some problems with what Miller did in both Dark Knight and Year One. He didn't care for the swastika-chested she-freaks in DK or the way Catwoman was altered into a "woman of the night" for Year One. It seems to be sleaze for its own sake and already Miller was developing a horrible reputation for the way he portrays women in comics... It's gotten worse since then and definitely is a pattern for him.

There's already a very good Batman animated TV series on the air now that's getting neglected by Cartoon Network for whatever stupid reasons. It's taken a very classic approach to Batman and injected badly needed levity and other humor to a character that seriously needs it along with spotlighting some very neglected DC Characters. I sure wish CN would rerun the episodes again because now they don't get run more than once a week while everything else on the schedule gets 2,3, or a million repeats! How many times can they rerun Ben 10 or any of these teen-based series??? Even Chowder and Flapjack don't get rerun that much!

I'm very, very glad I have a DVD recorder with a built-in HD now. I was able to record probably the best animated adaptation of Batman's origin this past Friday, The Brave & The Bold episode, "Chill of the Night." It also featured the ghostly guest stars of The Spectre and The Phantom Stranger. If people thought Gary Cole was an excellent Jim Corrigan in the animated short bundled with Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Mark Hamill was arguably better as a traditionally mean-spirited Spectre -- you know, the one with a macabre sense of humor who ALWAYS got the bad guys in the end! (He "arranges" accidents or grisly ends for his foes.) The Spectre is The Grinch to Batman's "Happy Harry" if you get my drift...

To top that all off, the episode had a who's who of Batman-connected voice actors -- Adam West as Dr. Thomas Wayne, Julie Newmar as Martha Wayne, Kevin Conroy as The Phantom Stranger, and Mark Hamill (mentioned already) as The Spectre.

[Randall]

I'd certainly prefer to see other DC characters get their own movies, but unfortunately they know that Batman will always sell. I wonder how well the Green Lantern animated film sold.

[EricJ]

The Superman and Batman "historic storyline" titles pay the bills, while Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were there as exercises to work out storyline bugs on the stalled live-action movies--
Since they don't have too many other stalled DC movies to "practice" animated features on (are they doing a LA Flash?), they'll probably be sticking to historic Supe/Bat titles for the time being.

(And while the shorts are a good "rehearsal" idea to test-market the underused heroes, was anyone just sort of underwhelmed with the execution of the Spectre short?
With not enough time for context, motivation or character development, felt like I was watching an American version of the "Hell Girl" anime.)

[Randall]

Incidentally, that link at the top of this page now shows that the panel I referred to has a new description that leaves out "Batman: Year One." Perhaps word leaked too early.

[Ben]

Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were there as exercises to work out storyline bugs on the stalled live-action movies

I'd love to see your official backup for this statement, as opposed to it being fanboy conjecture.

[EricJ]

Consider it very rational fanboy conjecture.
(And Lionsgate isn't exactly immune to it either, with their animated studies of Thor and Iron Man before the fact.)

[Ben]

Wouldn't those have actually been Marvel?

[Randall]

I'm sure Eric realizes those are Marvel propertes. But the point is, that these conglomerates like to "prime the pump" to create greater consumer awareness of these brands before bringing out the more expensive live action features.

And yes, Flash is getting produced, so we'll likely get a Flash DTV too. Then maybe Shazam!/Captain Marvel if that film pans out.