Man of Steel 2 Speculation

Man of Steel 2… let’s do some discussion and prediction.

I was not a fan of Man of Steel in the sense that I’m not a fan of Final Fantasy. By that, I mean I will admit that both “look nice” from a certain standpoint but the visuals in both are just not my cup of tea because both are overly expensive and focusing more on flash and spectacle and less on giving us any real substance or quality story. But Man of Steel has a lot of issues I was not fond of. To put it bluntly and in the simplest way possible, Warner Bros just doesn’t “get” Superman. The whole “hope” thing was cute, but it was all they had. The original Superman wasn’t just about hope. He was about justice and about helping people. He did EVERYTHING and ANYTHING to protect the lives of innocent people. In Man of Steel, I can only imagine how many lives were lost with his reckless disregard for anything in his path. Plus, killing the villain? I’ve never known Superman to kill anyone. That’s the one rule he shares with Batman, and there’s a good reason for that. Several, actually.

But let’s stop focusing on Man of Steel because I’ve already talked about it at length AND Man of Steel 2 is spinning the rumor mill. Let’s focus on that instead.

So the rumors from the workings of MOS2 are interesting. First it was conceptually presented as a “Batman Vs. Superman” flick. Going so far as to quote the comic (and now animated film) The Dark Knight Returns in which Batman pretty much tells Superman that he’s good enough to beat him and everyone will know it. Let’s get one thing clear from the get go, I’m not opposed to a scene where Superman and Batman argue/tussle for a bit. I’m not opposed to the two of them having clashing ideals that cause them to not get along at first. Hell, I feel that struggle and overcoming of that struggle made World’s Finest a much stronger animated film than quite a number of other Batman/Superman adventures.

But the concept of the film being “Batman Vs. Superman” is depressing. Because, as I just said, that’s a concept you have for a scene. The whole movie being about that speaks volumes of just how much Warner Bros, Christopher Nolan, David Goyer, and maybe even Zack Snyder fail to understand these heroes. Now, perhaps that’s just what they’re saying it is to get attention and have a marketing blurb to work with for the coming year and half. You know what, fine. But it’s a desperate cry for attention because they’re worried that the negative reception Man of Steel has gotten up to now will negatively impact their profits for Man of Steel 2. So they’re bringing it Batman because that’s something, until recently, WB hasn’t fucked up yet. But looking back at how Dark Knight Rises went down, I can’t say that makes me any more optimistic either.

Let’s discuss the next elephant in the room, who the heroes are. Henry Cavil returns to play Superman. While his performance wasn’t anything special or impressive, he at least looked the part and has potential for improving into something great. And it’s really hard to tell whether it was his acting that lacked any kind of impact of if it was the rest of the film and its direction/production that kept him from being able to do more with the role. Playing opposite or alongside him (it’s really hard to know what they’re going for here) is Ben Affleck as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Sigh… here we go.

Let me get one thing out of the way. I have NOTHING against Ben Affleck playing this role. No, how he was in Daredevil has no impact on what happens here because that was YEARS ago and Mr. Affleck has certainly improved in many ways since then. He’s won awards. He’s a well-known face. I would have gone with an unknown and make this project more interesting and risky, but I have nothing against the decision they made… HOWEVER… This feels like another bad decision by WB and not because Ben Affleck is bad. No, the reason I think it’s bad is because they are doing exactly what Marvel did with Robert Downey Jr.

It’s no secret that Batman and Iron Man are essentially the JLA and Avengers (respectively) source of money, resources, have lots of cool toys, and use their vastly superior intellects to match up with their more physically powerful allies. They’re the same guys on different teams. One is played by RDJ, an actor who fell out of Hollywood due to a variety of addictions and it took a while, but he made his comeback with Iron Man and has been one of the biggest names in Hollywood since. My theory is that Warner Bros feels they can replicate that. Affleck himself has had a career lull for a while and has only recently, in the past couple years, started making a comeback. Not that copying Marvel is an inherently bad strategy, but I don’t think WB can pull it off to nearly the same degree. After all, they tried launching with a less than stellar Superman film. This shaky start is only going to be harder to recover from the longer they take to move forward with this big project and we’re waiting TWO YEARS until the next DC movie… so… yeah, not really expecting them to maintain any kind of forward momentum.

Two other heroes have also been announced/rumored to be included as well. Discussions of Wonder Woman and Nightwing have taken place and they are apparently in the film (again, unless this is all just rumor mill nonsense). Can I just ask… why is this something people consider a good idea? Yes, I’m aware that Avengers had multiple heroes that all co-started in the same film. But there are a lot of differences between this and Avengers. First, the writers/director for Man of Steel 2 lack the abilities that made Joss Whedon turn Avengers into the success that it was. Hell, they lack the talent that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini had when putting together the DCAU, which was before Avengers and exceedingly successful.

Second, Avengers had several movies of build up for each central character. We got to know them and see what they could do prior to Avengers. In MoS2, we may already know where Superman and Batman come from, but Wonder Woman hasn’t been on TV or film in a live-action role in YEARS. Odds are most audiences won’t know who she is or why she’s relevant to what’s going on. And I don’t think Nightwing has ever been shown in live-action… ever. Granted, I’m glad we’re getting him instead of a college-age (or older) Robin like we had in Batman & Robin (which never made any sense to me anyway). But we also haven’t had a Robin in a good number of years/films either. So I find it hard to believe most audiences will understand that Nightwing is just what Robin does/becomes after a disagreement with Batman… and that in mind, why is Nightwing even here anyway? Yeah, they resolve their differences eventually, but since we know nothing of Nightwing at all, why even bother? I say just make it Robin and be done with it. He’s recognizable and requires less explanation.

But what bothers me most is that the first appearance of either of these characters won’t be in a Wonder Woman or Nightwing movie or TV show. Instead, they are supporting characters in a movie about Batman and Superman. Neither of them really have a steak in that fight and one of them probably couldn’t do much to help either side anyway. Wonder Woman has a lot of character and backstory that she deserves her own movie to explain all that and not be shoved into the corner of this crappy concept for a movie. And Nightwing, like it or not, has a lot of story to him as well. Hell, I want to see a Judas Contract movie simply because I want to see the Teen Titans and Slade in live-action too. I know a lot of fans who’d want that. Granted, we’ll never get it but still.

Moving on to the villain(s) next, we still have no true confirmation as to who will be playing the villain role yet. However Zack Snyder has been quoted mentioning something about Lex Luthor, which has caused most fans to believe that Luthor will be in the film. Credible source or not, even with Lex in the film, I already am disappointed because they probably won’t get Bryan Cranston to play the role. I don’t care if you think he’d just be Heisenberg. I’d much rather see him in the role than anyone else who could possibly fit the bill. Besides, Heisenberg would make a much more interesting character than Lex anyway.

The issue I’m seeing here though is we have potentially FOUR heroes against one villain. Yes, that’s what happened in Avengers (somewhat). But Loki also had an army and cosmic-powered allies in the background. Here we just have Luthor… so far. So either we have AT LEAST one more villain to expect or we’re not getting four heroes after all. And perhaps even both those notions are true. Regardless, who would the second villain be?

The leading theory is Joker because a live-action adaptation of World’s Finest would probably be the BEST thing they could do to save this franchise before it falls further into the gritty and depressing shithole it made itself. But a lot of people are sensitive about that since you have people who want to respect Heath Ledger’s last role and others who are just trigger happy “Nolan-Nuts” who think you can’t improve on that Joker and it shouldn’t be attempted. Good as it might have been, I feel we can do better. There’s always room for improvement and Ledger’s Joker still wasn’t the glorious Mark Hamill Joker (voice acting or not, it’s still the best Joker). Maybe getting Troy Baker (the voice actor for Joker in Akrham Origins) would be a good start. At the very least you’d been getting a Joker veteran with talent.

Outside of Joker, I’m hard-pressed to think of who else would be our second villain. Logically speaking it’d have to be a Batman villain because otherwise there’s little reason for Bruce to even leave Gotham City. Sure, maybe a business deal with Lex, but like in World’s Finest, that was all a front so he could go to Metropolis to get intel on Joker. I’ve already done a post on what Batman villains I’d like to see take the spotlight with Lex. Hell, here’s a link (read on first). Go read that if you have time and interest because I won’t repeat all the details. To sum up the list: Mr. Freeze, Clayface, or maybe Riddler though he deserves his own movie instead.

Hm... upon inspection... this was a post I either didn't save or did actually post... interesting...

But then this leads to the next question… if the rumor is true, why is Wonder Woman there? Maybe to challenge Superman, but that seems really pointless in a movie already dubbed “Batman Vs Superman.” Perhaps she has a cameo, but it still doesn’t explain WHY she’s there. I don’t know any of her villains, but I want to say we might see one of her usual foes pop up (again, if her rumors are true).

Another theory I just thought of, however, would be Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson. He just showed up in a recent videogame, so the Batman audience (or a portion of it) is now more familiar with him (if they already weren’t). He’s the reason Nightwing exists (for the most part) and is one of Nightwing (Dick Greyson’s) bigger foes. And he’s an assassin/gun-for-hire. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was hired by Lex to execute Superman (because people think that might work). Batman and Nightwing team up to try and stop him. Superman meets them before they meet Deathstroke and he doesn’t like/trust them. They tussle, and so on. In fact, put Deathstroke as my “most likely, but least desired” option. Why? Because while he is interesting as a villain for Nightwing, he’s boring anywhere else. In the Batman game, he isn’t one of the foes that reflect an aspect of Batman’s psyche, thus he’s irrelevant. In the animated works, Slade was always a Dick Greyson antagonist anyway. If they did it right, maybe, but given the WB track record, I doubt it.

That the long debate I’ve been having over the upcoming Superman movie. And I’m sure I’ll find more issues with it soon enough. Anyway, I’m off to more adventures. Adios.