Here’s the essential problem of making a movie about the Justice League: Wonder Woman and Superman, between the two of them, can pretty much beat anything that moves senseless. Throw in Batman and most of the DCU can just kinda call it a day. So, you need a heavy hitter, and that heavy hitter is… Well, there’s a list of like five guys, so you can probably guess who it is, even if it’s a terrible idea.
Yup, it’s Darkseid.
Really, this was kind of a given, but it’s still a bad idea because of timing. Justice League is being fast-tracked to hit in 2015… the same year Marvel is supposed to drop The Avengers 2. So, we will have two movies about a group of heroes fighting an intergalactic foe with an enormous amount of effects in theaters, possibly within a few months of each other.
Justice League loses here. First of all, your average nerd knows Thanos is a ripoff of Darkseid, but your average filmgoer doesn’t: Justice League will look like the highest-budgeted mockbuster of all time. Secondly, The Avengers 2 will have been essentially plugged by three sequels to popular and well-reviewed movies over three years, plus Guardians of the Galaxy and possibly Ant-Man.
Justice League will be the followup to Man of Steel, which may or may not be a huge hit. Apparently Warner Bros. is waiting to see how Supes does in theaters before pulling the trigger on a team movie.
On the bright side, at least they’re thinking BIG. It’s pretty annoying to go into a theater and find studios writing for the trade, so at least if Justice League comes together, it’ll be an appropriately epic film.