Justice League Movie Villain Revealed?

[Brendon Connelly]

Marvel's The Avengers argued that it would take a particularly large threat to motivated the cooperation of several super-powered individuals in their defense efforts, and it seems that Warner Bros. are applying the same logic to Justice League.

Though the film has yet to secure a director, most likely hasn't cast a single role - returning Superman aside? - and could be months away from production, the script has been drafted for a while. Long enough, it seems, for significant details to leak.

Latino Review don't have many specifics to tell us just yet, but they are reporting the identity of the film's villain. According to their story, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and company will all be coming together to face off against Darkseid.

I understand that the character was Jack Kirby's cosmic interpretation of Hitler. That's what I call starting big.

Once Justice League is thought of on this scale, any mesh with Chris Nolan's Batmovies seems a little less likely. It certainly makes the casting of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a post Dark Knight Rises Batman-Nightwing-Whatever a little harder to expect.

On the other hand, it also promises scale and, if handled in a particular way, a real sense of doom, threat and even a deeper, tragic dimension.

As far as I can see, Darkseid and Marvel's Thanos seem like pretty similar characters - at least as far as the big two's "Rogues Galleries" go. Will these Justice League plans see both reaching the silver screen in 2015? Have Warner Bros. inadvertently doomed themselves to looking like a bit of a rip off?

[SuperJohn]

Yes. Yes, they will. Seems like exactly the villain they SHOULDN'T use.

[ChrisMcFeely]

Darkseid seems like the right way to go. It's an appropriately huge threat with some actual name power behind it. Avengers didn't go for the "name power" in its villain, just re-using a baddie from one of the other films and kitting him out with weird alien robot generics - the draw of that movie was it being about characters from different films teaming up. As the characters' individual films don't exist for the JLA, they're going to need to hang quite a lot on the scale of the threat to justify jumping straight to this film without build-up. They're clearly enough taking inspiration from Johns and Lee's first New 52 JL arc. Just... flesh that out some more so there's actual arcs for the characters within the narrative, and we'll probably be pretty good.

That is to say - if I believed this film was ever actually going to happen. Which I don't.

[uz000]

Since Avengers 2 will almost certainly feature Thanos (Marvel's Darkseid clone), this is going to make for some awkward comparisons. Essentially Justice League needs to come out before Avengers 2 otherwise I can't see it standing up to Whedon, Downey and the Hulk. Darkseid is way better than Thanos, but Whedon is a genius and so far Warner Bros are have shown they really don't have a clue how to utilise the DC characters except Batman. Taking Whedon on directly is a very stupid idea unless you have convinced Steven Spielberg to direct the film. Also, isn't Thanos supposed to feature in Guardians of the Galaxy?


Really though Warner Bros, all you need to do is make the Morrison/Porter White Martian story fro JLA 1-5. It would provide you with an origin story for the Martian Manhunter, change it slightly to be Wonder Woman's intro to the world and provide a suitable threat worthy of the League forming.

[uz000]

Darkseid seems like the right way to go. It's an appropriately huge threat with some actual name power behind it. Avengers didn't go for the "name power" in its villain, just re-using a baddie from one of the other films and kitting him out with weird alien robot generics - the draw of that movie was it being about characters from different films teaming up. As the characters' individual films don't exist for the JLA, they're going to need to hang quite a lot on the scale of the threat to justify jumping straight to this film without build-up. They're clearly enough taking inspiration from Johns and Lee's first New 52 JL arc. Just... flesh that out some more so there's actual arcs for the characters within the narrative, and we'll probably be pretty good.

You could not pick a worse story to base a JL movie from than the first Johns/Lee arc. That was seriously mediocre. However, given the influence Johns and Lee both have at DC it is quite likely. It would also be consistent with WBs not having a clue in how to use the DC properties. The more I think about it the more I believe this is what we will get. What a complete waste.

[ChrisMcFeely]

You could not pick a worse story to base a JL movie from than the first Johns/Lee arc. That was seriously mediocre.

Oh, I know. But the base idea of it is fine - it's an alien invasion plot masterminded by one of the biggest bads in the DCU. It would need some serious fleshing out of the characters and the villain's motivation would need to be more than "unelaborated seed for future story arc" to be moved up to "good" levels of story, but to take it as a starting point is far from the worst thing they could do.

Let's be honest, even the JLA cartoon struggled with its team-building story. The villains of that were crushingly generic. And while Bats, Supes, Flash and GL were all pre-existant in that universe and Martian Manhunter was part of the alien invasion plot so was incorporated fine, into into the middle of this sci-fi adventure is dropped "Oh by the way there's a magic greco-roman fantasy island of only women isolated from the rest of the planet by the power of the gods and a woman is going to come from there and be wondrous okay just go with us on this."

[ThatNickGuy]

Before I clinked on the link, I said to myself, "It better not be Darkseid. That'd be like blowing your load right at the start."

And that's exactly what I read. Ugh. I hope this is only a rumour.

[HED]

I'd rather they never do Darkseid versus Justice League in any of the films. I'm really tired of the match-up by now.

[tralfaz]

This is basically blowing their wad all over the place. They've got some dumbass writers and producers if they start off this big cause you can't top Darkseid.

[Adam]

As far as I can see, Darkseid and Marvel’s Thanos seem like pretty similar characters – at least as far as the big two’s “Rogues Galleries” go.

Thanos began as a rip-off of Darkseid, so you're not imagining things - although much like Deathstroke and Deadpool, etc., Thanos went on to become a full-fledged character in his own right, of whom I personally am a bigger fan.

This is basically blowing their wad all over the place. They've got some dumbass writers and producers if they start off this big cause you can't top Darkseid.

There's something to be said, though, for putting everything you've got into your opener, to make damn sure you have the chance to try.

Then again, while I think the threat of Darkseid could be matched, it is true that they wouldn't be able to come down in scale for the next movie, which would close off a lot of options...

Well, we'll see. One thing's for sure: a good JLA movie is as difficult a target as a good AVENGERS - and Marvel's already got one of the only men I have faith would pull it off. Time-Warner has its work cut out.