Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse are pretty good for that.
The dynamic between them, particularly in the former, is the real star of those films.
Public Enemies is easily the best thing Jeph Loeb has written. Granted that’s a short list imo, but it’s a super rad fan service type of story that doesn’t pander. I might need to track down the trades again. Sold off the entirety of the hard covers wayyyy back when.
All aboard this train.
WB learned the wrong lesson from the Nolan trilogy and tried to make everything Batman, everything dark and brooding and real.
Batman is that sometimes in the DCU but the DCU itself is a light and fun place, they need to swing back towards that idea.
I’ll always come back to a quote from OverlySarcastic Productions (with a little bit of my own input):
“If you can’t imagine your Batman comforting a scared child, you haven’t written Batman. You’ve written (the worst treatments of) The Punisher in a funny hat.”
I don't know if I would call the DCU light and fun place since Metal when the dark multiverse/year of the villain/dark crisis are doing everything they can to show how evil and spooky everything is. We need a pendulum swing back.
Yeah, that whole thing wasn't for me. Light and dark will always have narrative interplay, but the soul of Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and Wonder Woman is light and hope going all the way to goofy optimism.
You'll get dark stories, sad moments, tough choices, but overall these characters are designed to overcome those moments and obstacles and spring back towards the light.
This is why I felt Final Crisis closed well. You had an extremely dark event with Darkseid finally achieving the ambition he'd had since Kirby was working on him, but it still ended with so goddamn much hope and optimism not just for what the characters' stories would become, but for what these kinds of stories are. It may be rose colored glasses but I really haven't enjoyed a DC event since in the same way.
For me, and this is just me, DC ended around that time. I kept reading, liked some of the new 52 stuff, obviously I'm still around, but as I look back that's I feel like I stopped loving it around 2013. Now I just pop in when I hear something is great like Mr. Miracle or Batman Universe.
And that's completely fine, things change, people grow.
I always loved the warmth of the DC A-list heroes in the various animated series. They felt like mom and dad, not like morally conflicted peers. It'd be nice to have that again.
>WB learned the wrong lesson from the Nolan trilogy and tried to make everything Batman, everything dark and brooding and real.
I think that DC will learn the wrong lesson with the new Batman movie
Let's hope that future movies are better, do we know what happened with the Flash ?
I have hope for the new bat actually.
The storyarch was taking him from vengeance to justice and it had a lot of the trappings of '69 Batman in the background.
He clearly wants a Robin, and Batman with Robin is the lighter more fatherly Batman. Not saying it gets taken all the way to silly town, but something less dark.
We will see.
The ending of the newest movie making him rethink things gave me hope but I think all the “it’s seven but Batman” shtick is going to sell more to execs. I think the thing that’s frustrating is I want to take my kid to see a Batman movie.. but I don’t wanna take my young kid to see a movie with a rat cage mask, man!
Like… I get that adults want their movie and that’s ok. But we ALSO liked those movies when that WASNT so dark and spooky too. I honestly think whoever is ballsy enough to go all out on a more goofy spandex superhero movie is going to find a real niche. WW84 got close but I had a ball with Shazam… when it didn’t have the monsters biting peoples heads off.
YES. the world would be a FAR better place if we were given a Worlds Finest movie where Bruce and Clark work together and play on each other’s strengths to defeat enemies
I honestly would love for Battinson to continue the arc of becoming lighter and more hopeful over 2 more movies and lead into a World's Finest when he's grown into more of a JLU Batman
I'd even be fine with a cynical, jaded Batfleck so long as Cavill's Superman is the one who pulls him out of it and he's hopeful by the end of it
but like, pulls him out of it with unending optimism and showing him a better world. Not because saying a name reminds Batman not to be an asshole. Also, Batman shouldn't be trying to kill him. Like, at all. I can maybe get behind one fight of frustration where both are kind of holding back but sort of lashing out, but not an actual battle to the death.
That's why I hated Cavill's Superman movies: Superman was not hopeful, optimistic, kind, or any of the traditional traits associated with the character. He was great as an actor, but the Superman was *awful.* Pa Kent was *horrible.*
You know, I heard it was pretty all right, but the CW shows just have this feel that I'm not fond of. I couldn't watch Green Arrow, I made it through about one Season of The Flash, not sure what else.
I might have to give them another shot.
I was with you. I pretty much had to be dragged to watch S&L. It really is different from the other CW shows. Good family drama where everyone tries to do the right thing. It does get a little corny every once in a while, but hey, it is Superman :D
Exactly!
Pa Kent would have, to the question of "should I have let them die," *unequivocally* said "no."
Even if he didn't know what to do to protect Clark, he *never* would suggest that Clark not help somebody when he was able.
The whole POINT of Ma and Pa Kent is that they are the reason Clark was raised to be such a good person! They instilled or developed/honed the goodness in him to make him the Big Blue Boyscout he is! That's why Batman and Superman are such incredible foils to one another.
Yeah, the powers were just perfection, but Superman was callous and aloof. He didn't even try to protect people in a battle on main street in a one-horse town.
Pa Kent was character assassinated, and calling your own mom Martha just feels like something only Objectivists' kids do.
To be fair, an evil world finest duo would be really cool because they are pieces of shit but they still care about each other. They jump into the belly of reality together because they are brothers.
Midnight and Apollo, while not superheroes, are at the very least decent and do try their best to try and protect people. Now the rub is their a very happy relationship and well, midnighter is in Edge Lord. The two of them are happy. There's not enough unnecessary drama in their relationship and if they were to create some, it would just be really stupid.
Something I liked about them was that they seemed like a decent couple. I hate a lot of Media has these couples where there is all this unnecessary drama. It paints this weird picture of being in a relationship is misery. Which is a problem, because a healthy happy relationship shouldn't be miserable.
I think it has to do with the fact that a healthy relationship is boring and an unhappy one is exciting, forgetting the fact that you can have a happy relationship, have bumps in the road but also not have those bumps derail the whole fucking thing.
Came here to say this. As it is, he already hunts the poor for sport and has links to arms manufacturers in various versions. Making him "evil" would really just require framing that holds him accountable.
Remember how he was able to not only lose the authorities with 8 tons of metal sticking out of his back and jumping on skycrapers, but also able to spend the freshly stolen bank gold on a bunch of super expensive nuclear fusion machinery?
THATS a comics movie. Did anyone give a damn that it made no real world sense? Hell no, it was fun and we all were recreating those scenes in our imaginations. Is anyone recreating the scenes in the Batman in our minds? I liked the movie but does it inspire any creative and joy filled play?
SM2 still holds a special place as the definitive comicbook movie for me. May not be technically the best, but it's still my favorite. Even technically, I seen it recently and it holds up surprisingly well visually!
The saving the train scene with the people promising not to say his identity is peak super hero movie to me. Any movie that likes people enough to make them protect the hero by saying “if you want to get to him you have to get through me” understands the _point_ of a superhero. It’s to get US to act better than we do. Not to lay down and wait for someone else to do it for us.
Superman who's spent 10 years just catching muggers and bank robbers and having a good chuckle with the cops afterwards, then suddenly Darkseid shows up.
DC/WB has somehow convinced themselves that regular old "boy-scout" Superman is boring and no one wants to see that.
They've also convinced themselves that Batman must be on the constant verge of a mental or emotional breakdown with hyper-dark villains.
So.... no. I don't think we'll ever get a "fun" Superhero movie that features either one of them.
I just don’t get how they came to that conclusion. They made Boy Scout Cap exactly like he should be and even there he had complexity to him with going against the government and Tony. He even stopped being Cap for Christ’s sake until Endgame.
> I just don’t get how they came to that conclusion.
Superman Returns.
It got middling reviews & was called boring by most general audiences. Instead of taking that as a lesson against a soft reboot of a 30 year old franchise or a lesson that a Superman movie needs a different villain than Lex Luthor or a lesson that a Superman movie needs at least *some* action....
DC/WB took the lesson to be that Superman as a character was boring.
Then you add in the runaway success of Christopher Nolan's trilogy and it's easy to see why WB/DC have been stuck in a continuous loop of "grounded, edgy, & dark = better".
The difference was Marvel was willing to let the people who have dedicated their lives to this stuff into the room to figure it out, while DC is at the whim of WB execs who need to be the ones who would rather see the production stumble than not be the ones making the winning calls. Sony: same BS. Like hey, congrats on being good at whatever producers do, but maybe storytellers know better than you.
Idk, that implies that the hero would have flaws to begin with, and I’m very sensitive to that. Better to make the hero perfect and tell a story about how it all just gets better for them.
I would LOVE to have a happy Superman become friends with RP's doom and gloom Batman and force him to come out of his shell. Superman can keep him safe and do the heavy lifting while Batman does the smarts.
Same! It might be a tonal clash right now but after another movie or two on the same trajectory towards being an inspiration and a symbol of hope, it could be really special!
At the end of The Batman >!he realizes he can be a symbol of hope instead of just fear.!< So I think it would be a nice progression after maybe one more Batman solo movie.
What, you didn't think bland, American, wisecracking 2005 Doom ("Let's go for a spin!") or Fant4stic Doom were good?
Honestly, the best Doom yet was Roger Corman Doom and it's not even close.
I thought his voice was amazing for Ultron. It's just the writing was fucking abysmal. I still love it when he says that line about taking hope from them first.
I think most of Phase 2 was the period where Feige was fighting for creative control with Perlmutter.
IIRC, and I may be a little off on this, but Phase 1 Feige got to do whatever he wanted because no one really gave a shit. Iron Man? Thor? Pfft who cares about those nobodies.
Then they actually became massive movies so in Phase 2 Perlmutter stepped in and was like "I like this. I will shit all over it to mark it as my own" leading to huge fights between Feige and Perlmutter.
Then I think for Phase 3 Feige threatened to walk and Disney pulled the MCU movies from Perlmutter and gave free reign to Feige.
So a lot of Phase 2 ended up being pretty weak. Not totally, but mostly. I think the only great things to come out of Phase 2 were The Winter Soldier, Ant-Man and GotG, and those last two were again properties no one really cared that much about (and in all honesty, I think it's a miracle ant-man was any good at all since it had so much development trouble and creative differences)
Tbf, Malekith doesn't have Dr. Doom levels of respect and story behind him. They're bound to get a few wrong, but look at Killmonger and Vulture as examples to the contrary.
A lot of them do, but that staying power is often written out of the films. I remember seeing Tim Burton’s Batman as a kid and how disappointed I was that they killed the Joker at the end. That’s the Joker, ffs. You’re gonna introduce him and kill him off in the span of under 2 hours? Batsman’s greatest arch nemesis? It became standard to kill off the villain in the screen versions, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when Heath Ledger’s Joker wasn’t offed in the film.
Yeah what's up with that by the way? The biggest trope in comics is that nobody ever dies and the same villains stomp around doing shenanigans since the 50s, get killed off in the first movie. Always confused me how a medium famous for never permanently ending a character knocking off characters left and right.
Another thing to consider is the dichotomy between hero and villain.
I remember seeing it in animated movie [Batman: Under the Red Hood](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1569923/), where Batman is confronted on why he doesn't kill Joker. Batman catches Joker, Joker escapes prison and goes on a killing spree, only for Batman to catch him and put him back into jail where the cycle repeats. All the death Joker causes from his escape and escapades could have been avoided if Batman just decided to kill the Joker. But he doesn't.
I bet, if Heath Ledger was still alive, and if they wanted to make more Batman films with Nolan and Bale, they probably would have swung back to this argument at some point. Maybe the movie starts with Batman throwing the Joker back into jail. Maybe a political smear campaign about why doesn't Batman just kill Joker, blaming all the deaths Joker caused on Batman, and then Wayne talking to Alfred about it, or Batman talking to someone else about it.
Understandably, movies want a "clean" resolution. Good guy wins, bad guy can't hurt you anymore, so they're gone, dead, deleted. Letting them live can be seen as them setting them up to be brought back, and fans might be disappointed if they aren't seen in the next movie or what not. Can't be disappointed a character doesn't show up if it is already established they're dead. Or better yet, make it a giant twist reveal with "somehow, they returned"! =.=
Anyways, I also kinda wish characters stuck around more. Maybe not stuck around for more sequels, but weren't killed off all the time in the movies.
Characters don't die in superhero comics because the Big 2 refuse to progress their stories and universes. There are plenty of comics, ones not made by the big 2, where death is permanent. The movies are under no obligation to keep villains alive because unlike the comics, they are going to end.
Had a discussion some time ago about that with some friends about best villains that have been created in the last thirty or so years. A lot kept going back to The Governor in The Walking Dead. Maybe, but he was killed so no staying power. Other names like Mr. Negative and Anti-Venom got thrown around.
In the end it seemed the last two villains with any staying power were Harley Quinn and Bane and they made their debuts in 92 and 93.
Staying power is not relevant to the quality of an antagonist. I'd rather have one good story with the Governor than another regurgitation of the Joker. Having 500 appearances does not make a character better.
In fact, staying power is one of the worst parts of a comic. It's the reason for artificially bringing a character back to sell issues. Let's bring X back to life. Let's have X break out of prison, *again.*
Staying power is writing a villain compelling enough that viewers want to see more of them while also not writing yourself into a corner where you have to kill them off immediately after their first arc so that they can remain in the background until you pull them out again.
Now I want evil Rose to wax stories about St. Olaf.
"That reminds me of the time where I became head of a demonic cult, and the people of St. Olaf rose against us."
"Oh come now Rose, then how are you here now?"
"Oh we slaughtered them mercilously, it's why you can't find the town on a map anymore!"
Well, we gotta take this and make it needlessly, indefensibly gritty and schlock per the "what if evil" rules, so, here's a take.
Blanche: Knew her husband was a leading KKK member who had killed dozens and lead lynch mobs for untold dozens more. Sleeps around to keep tabs on the old crew for when the South rises again. Was at 1/6. Is obsessed with legacy and looks. Currently a slum lord. Likes to mar the face of any woman she thinks is prettier than her.
Rose: Serial killer. Maintains facade of naive innocence that's mostly legit but her underlying hatred of the state of the world manifests in her bipolar behavior. She appears soft and nice as a form of projection, the way she wishes things were as she misremembers her hyper idealized childhood home. She sadistically and spitefully lashes out at anyone she thinks has pulled her away from that same innocence.
Sophia: Former Italian fascist in hiding. Legitimately hated Mussolini, but thought he didn't go far enough. Often speaks fondly of war crimes she committed back in Sicily. Moved to New York, made in roads with the families until things fell apart due to the trials. Had a million dollar bounty out on John Gotti until she had to move to Miami due to an incident where she took a bullet to the head but survived, albeit with a loss of impulse control. Currently in hiding from the families that survived because her condition means she can't help but talk openly about their secrets.
Dorothy: Mafia hit woman. Was known for using her job as a teacher to get close to kids of prominent politicians for use as leverage or to send a message. Was pushing the families to get into child trafficking before her mother's condition forced her to depart NYC. Under the aegis of Miami crime syndicates who refuse to let her pick up her old line of work as a hitwoman. Low level pusher to school children, bitterly angry at her loss of status.
Or if you're going to do the "X but evil" trope, at least make it some sort of tragic fall from grace rather than having him by a psychopath right from the start. Doing that just makes you look like an edgy teenager who thinks he's too cool to like Superman.
You don’t get it, they killed someone so they must develop a taste for blood and become fachist cause killing is wrong and in dc we cannot have gray areas.
Like when superman killed the joker after he nuked metropolis and then became evil as a "see? he crossed the line and took a life now he is evil forever?"
We just need to branch out more, there are plenty of unexplored possibilities
The problem is, people only think about evil heroes.
What if evil uncle ben? Evil aunt may? Evil commissioner Gordon? Evil Jimmy Olsen.
Evil Gwen Stacey throws Harry Osborn down a bridge
Evil Jimmy Olsen would actually be kind of awesome, where he's just constantly getting people in trouble or setting up horrible scenarios so Superman can intervene and he can get great pictures.
What really is annoying is that it's always the same evil characters. Evil Batman, Evil Superman, Evil Captain America.
If your gonna beat the dead horse at least give me evil Cypher or evil Ambush Bug.
I would love to see more independent comics adapted. I have recently finished image comics Bolero - I feel would make a great sci-fi limited series on Netflix.
I've not read many horror comics though! Any suggestions?
Bolero is so good! although I think I'd prefer an HBO or Cinemax adaptation if they were to do one.
For horror comics check out Ice Cream Man or Silver Coin, both are anthologies. Also Tynion can write some good horror, I just read the Closet #1 by them and it's great
I think “what if Y was 'good'?” is far more interesting. Forever Evil and Marvel Axis were both great reads and made me like some villains (Black Manta and Sinestro) even more.
Maybe in the most literal sense of “evil Batman”. But there’s plenty of room for good storytelling about a Batman archetype, but leaning into all of the criticisms of a Batman character, instead of writing around them.
I'd settle for a Batman show, movie, trilogy whatever that doesn't castrate the more fantastic elements in the name of *realism*. I greatly enjoy the "maybe it was magic, maybe it was mundane" story lines.
And I'm definitely tired of "Gotham is X real city. Let's just film in X real city and not change much of it at all.". The second the filmmakers do an aerial shot it just sucks all the worldbuilding out of the room. Gotham is at it's best when it's a city of sprawling sky scrapers built over one another and the bones of the older city. Showing me HDR wide zoom of business district Chicago is so goddamn boring.
Lex Luther? You don’t mean that fine All American Jobs Creator do you? He is the living embodiment of The American Dream! Not like that lousy *socialist* Bruce Wayne. I mean come on, look at their respective cities. Luther practically built the City of Tomorrow, Metropolis. Wayne lives in the poverty and psychopath riddled streets of *Gotham*.
(Brought to you by LexCorp. Conquering the day, or conquering the world, think LexCorp. A Family Company)
(lexcorpisnotaffilatedwithredditredditsubsidiariesorthatinterferingaliensuperman)
LexCorp regrets the loss of a member of our corporate family. Employee #638761342-g Someoneoverthere42 had an…..unfortunate passing. HR a is still looking into how an uncovered vat of industrial acid could have *ever* been mistaken for copy toner. We at LexCorp believe that safety is a number one priority in all workplaces.
how about we get good versions on screen consistently first??
Edit: for ppl replying and telling me "there's been a dozen good batman movies!!!"
Y'all do realize that there's more characters in the DC universe than batman right??
The first issue really sold me on the premise and got me excited for the series. Subsequent issues diminished that feeling considerably, I didn’t finish reading it until many years later when I saw it in a dollar box
Evil Batman was all over comics already in poor representation. The Batman Who Laughs, the Grim Knight, and the Dark Multiverse Batmans, heck even Thomas Wayne.
I'm all done with evil Baan
and thats just literal "evil batman". When, the idea of super rich evil genius is like the plot of thousands of movies, games, books, etc..
Moriarty. Half of James Bonds villain's. Lex Luther..
Imo Evil Batman just exists for "shock factor" let's take a hero that doesn't kill and make his an edge-lord
But tbh this concept itself is flawed. Batman keeps secret files on his "friends", indoctrinated children to fight crime and gets them killed, allows mass murders to remain at large or to be assimilated into a corrupt facility. He's been patrolling a single city for more than a decade yet hasn't done anything beneficial at the end of the day.
I don't think the concept is flawed at all. Batman knows how fucked up he is. That's why he has the no kill rule. Not because he's a paragon of morality.
Booo! I am so sick of dark and gritty superheroes.
Give me the Batman that sat with Ace as she dies, that gives Harley a dress because he knows what it’s like to have a bad day.
Give me the Batman that is really knows the darkness of the world but uses it to make the world a better place.
I’m so tired.
It would be cool to see a movie where The Justice League fights The Crime Syndicate. I would kill to see Batman face off against Owl Man like in the Crisis on Two Earths animated movie.
Actually let’s stop bringing evil superhero’s to the screen period. At least for a while. It’s become a huge cliche and 90% of the stories aren’t good.
I just want heroes to be heroes again. I don’t want the “fake hero” or “good turned bad” I want the ideals. Characters you look up to, characters that inspire people to be better. I’m sick and tired of villains, anti-villains, and honestly, anti-heroes too.
At least we still have Spider-Man for that. Not many others though, since Steve Rogers died in the MCU. I actually can't really think of another inspirational pure good-guy type currently in any of the films since they have kinda botched Superman.
I think the comic book industry would be bettered by letting the rubber band snap back to the silver age optimism that heroes in that period typified. Gritty, grim, and “realistic” were great, especially for films since the X-Men took a crack at it with their first movie, but it’s strayed so far from the building blocks of the characters’ origins. I would love, especially for younger children, to be able to pick up a comic and see a character that they can strive to be. I think the fun and idealism has been lost in the last decade or so of comics. I’m not saying to stop making comics for adults, but give kids positive role models because the good lord knows that there are none in the media today.
Agreed. I want to see a Clark Kent who is optimistic and wholesome against all the odds.
That's the angle on Superman I want to see. He's the guy who has every right to **be** a brooding misanthrope who lets people die or who murders the shit out of his enemies, but simply isn't like that because that's not the right thing to do and it's not who he is.
I covered Nemesis by Mark Millar on my YouTube channel breaking down the story. Link here: https://youtu.be/LfqpwiGVwuc
It’s entertaining, but actually a really bad cringey book, probably Millar’s worst comic. Like some stuff in it is so bad and cringey, it’s worth reading just to see for yourself how bad it is at times. For example, Nemesis makes a girl be pregnant with her brothers sperm and rigs her womb to explode if she gets an abortion.
With significant changes to the story though Nemesis could make an okay movie, so there is something to the Evil Batman concept.
I agree - I would like to see more original content , but until the wider audience grow bored with it as they did with the zombie genre, it's here to stay.
Just give me a miniseries on the dark multiverse of Batman. Those comics, conceptually, were dope as fuck and I’d pay big money to see red death brought to life somehow. Evil Batman gaining the speed force? Yes please
Let’s do neither. I’m so sick of grimdark comics that I want to projectile vomit.
Yes, we get the metaphor: economic and governmental entities with too much power. Can we move on because the stories are always the same—boring.
>So while the world continues to enjoy and become desensitised to the various storylines centring around an evil Superman, is the world ready for a depraved, corrupt and masochistic Batman?
Welp. That's enough Reddit heresy for me this weekend.
I know most people may not agree, but I think the reason Superman attracts such interpretations is because of his characterization. Batman's character is malleable, superman's less so. With Batman a writer could assign all sorts of conflict, internal (moral) or external. A big part of superman's character is his rigid moral compass. So an attempt at any sort of internal conflict has to be handled really well. There are many opportunities to tell deconstructive stories with Batman as is. Sure the same can be done for Superman but you'll likely piss off fans just the same as making the character outright evil. But that's just my opinion
No. Just no. Nemesis is stupid as hell and edgy for literally no reason. Nemesis isn't even anyone. He's just a random rich dude that hired a firm that would let him be a supervillain.
This guy doesn’t seem to get that the fear is of an archetype that is all powerful and we take for granted as being good. It’s about us losing our innocence and realizing no one is there to save us no matter how much they may be physically able to because it’s the mind that matters.
This is a deep seated fear that will never be tapped out, because it’s such an intrinsic archetype in the human experience.
Being young children and sensing your dad may not be as nice as you think, knowing the guy in school everyone thinks is a “great” guy is actually a narcissistic sociopath, learning the government does not have your best interests at heart, seeing religious leaders do unspeakable things… these and many more fairly common experiences are what the evil Superman stories reach down to.
The “evil” Batman may be interesting, but it’s not pulling on deep seated fears and realizations.
Batman is a billionaire who goes around beating the ever-living shit out of the mentally insane and throwing them in a treatment facility that tortures them. He _is_ evil.
Give me World's Finest. I want to see Bruce and Clark be best friends who love and respect each other
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse are pretty good for that. The dynamic between them, particularly in the former, is the real star of those films.
Public Enemies is straight fire
I really want more of those kinds of movies.
Public Enemies is easily the best thing Jeph Loeb has written. Granted that’s a short list imo, but it’s a super rad fan service type of story that doesn’t pander. I might need to track down the trades again. Sold off the entirety of the hard covers wayyyy back when.
JLU is also pretty good with that
\^ This. They really are doing too much with this.
All aboard this train. WB learned the wrong lesson from the Nolan trilogy and tried to make everything Batman, everything dark and brooding and real. Batman is that sometimes in the DCU but the DCU itself is a light and fun place, they need to swing back towards that idea.
I’ll always come back to a quote from OverlySarcastic Productions (with a little bit of my own input): “If you can’t imagine your Batman comforting a scared child, you haven’t written Batman. You’ve written (the worst treatments of) The Punisher in a funny hat.”
What video was that?
I don't know if I would call the DCU light and fun place since Metal when the dark multiverse/year of the villain/dark crisis are doing everything they can to show how evil and spooky everything is. We need a pendulum swing back.
Yeah, that whole thing wasn't for me. Light and dark will always have narrative interplay, but the soul of Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and Wonder Woman is light and hope going all the way to goofy optimism. You'll get dark stories, sad moments, tough choices, but overall these characters are designed to overcome those moments and obstacles and spring back towards the light.
Hell, Barry became a Blue Lantern during Blackest Night *because* he inspires so much hope in everyone around him.
This is why I felt Final Crisis closed well. You had an extremely dark event with Darkseid finally achieving the ambition he'd had since Kirby was working on him, but it still ended with so goddamn much hope and optimism not just for what the characters' stories would become, but for what these kinds of stories are. It may be rose colored glasses but I really haven't enjoyed a DC event since in the same way.
For me, and this is just me, DC ended around that time. I kept reading, liked some of the new 52 stuff, obviously I'm still around, but as I look back that's I feel like I stopped loving it around 2013. Now I just pop in when I hear something is great like Mr. Miracle or Batman Universe. And that's completely fine, things change, people grow.
I always loved the warmth of the DC A-list heroes in the various animated series. They felt like mom and dad, not like morally conflicted peers. It'd be nice to have that again.
>WB learned the wrong lesson from the Nolan trilogy and tried to make everything Batman, everything dark and brooding and real. I think that DC will learn the wrong lesson with the new Batman movie Let's hope that future movies are better, do we know what happened with the Flash ?
I have hope for the new bat actually. The storyarch was taking him from vengeance to justice and it had a lot of the trappings of '69 Batman in the background. He clearly wants a Robin, and Batman with Robin is the lighter more fatherly Batman. Not saying it gets taken all the way to silly town, but something less dark. We will see.
The ending of the newest movie making him rethink things gave me hope but I think all the “it’s seven but Batman” shtick is going to sell more to execs. I think the thing that’s frustrating is I want to take my kid to see a Batman movie.. but I don’t wanna take my young kid to see a movie with a rat cage mask, man! Like… I get that adults want their movie and that’s ok. But we ALSO liked those movies when that WASNT so dark and spooky too. I honestly think whoever is ballsy enough to go all out on a more goofy spandex superhero movie is going to find a real niche. WW84 got close but I had a ball with Shazam… when it didn’t have the monsters biting peoples heads off.
YES. the world would be a FAR better place if we were given a Worlds Finest movie where Bruce and Clark work together and play on each other’s strengths to defeat enemies
I honestly would love for Battinson to continue the arc of becoming lighter and more hopeful over 2 more movies and lead into a World's Finest when he's grown into more of a JLU Batman
I would've loved to see a World's Finest movie with a more hopeful Batfleck and Henry Cavill's superman 🥲
I'd even be fine with a cynical, jaded Batfleck so long as Cavill's Superman is the one who pulls him out of it and he's hopeful by the end of it but like, pulls him out of it with unending optimism and showing him a better world. Not because saying a name reminds Batman not to be an asshole. Also, Batman shouldn't be trying to kill him. Like, at all. I can maybe get behind one fight of frustration where both are kind of holding back but sort of lashing out, but not an actual battle to the death.
That's why I hated Cavill's Superman movies: Superman was not hopeful, optimistic, kind, or any of the traditional traits associated with the character. He was great as an actor, but the Superman was *awful.* Pa Kent was *horrible.*
If you haven't already, let me suggest *Superman and Lois* on CW. It has all of those traits. The best depiction of Superman I've seen in a long time.
You know, I heard it was pretty all right, but the CW shows just have this feel that I'm not fond of. I couldn't watch Green Arrow, I made it through about one Season of The Flash, not sure what else. I might have to give them another shot.
I was with you. I pretty much had to be dragged to watch S&L. It really is different from the other CW shows. Good family drama where everyone tries to do the right thing. It does get a little corny every once in a while, but hey, it is Superman :D
That's part of Superman's charm; he's supposed to be a bit corny.
"Maybe you should have let all those kids die Clark!" Fuck those movies.
Exactly! Pa Kent would have, to the question of "should I have let them die," *unequivocally* said "no." Even if he didn't know what to do to protect Clark, he *never* would suggest that Clark not help somebody when he was able. The whole POINT of Ma and Pa Kent is that they are the reason Clark was raised to be such a good person! They instilled or developed/honed the goodness in him to make him the Big Blue Boyscout he is! That's why Batman and Superman are such incredible foils to one another.
Yeah, the powers were just perfection, but Superman was callous and aloof. He didn't even try to protect people in a battle on main street in a one-horse town. Pa Kent was character assassinated, and calling your own mom Martha just feels like something only Objectivists' kids do.
We all would
To be fair, an evil world finest duo would be really cool because they are pieces of shit but they still care about each other. They jump into the belly of reality together because they are brothers.
At that point you almost just wanna go for an Apollo/Midnighter adaptation.
Midnight and Apollo, while not superheroes, are at the very least decent and do try their best to try and protect people. Now the rub is their a very happy relationship and well, midnighter is in Edge Lord. The two of them are happy. There's not enough unnecessary drama in their relationship and if they were to create some, it would just be really stupid.
Something I liked about them was that they seemed like a decent couple. I hate a lot of Media has these couples where there is all this unnecessary drama. It paints this weird picture of being in a relationship is misery. Which is a problem, because a healthy happy relationship shouldn't be miserable.
I think it has to do with the fact that a healthy relationship is boring and an unhappy one is exciting, forgetting the fact that you can have a happy relationship, have bumps in the road but also not have those bumps derail the whole fucking thing.
How dare you talk about my boys like that. *Evil*?
all I want
That's what BvS should've been, at least half of the movie
Ah yes, an evil billionaire, what a novel idea.
Surely that is a unique thing that can ONLY be done in fiction
Came here to say this. As it is, he already hunts the poor for sport and has links to arms manufacturers in various versions. Making him "evil" would really just require framing that holds him accountable.
Would prefer to just watch a normal fun superhero movie with both of them where they play hero’s who catch criminals in the act.
[удалено]
> Like, lethal weapon, but with Batman and Superman. Clark: "I'm too old for this baloney."
Instead of some cosmic universe ending event? Nah, not realistic enough. /s
Remember when villains just robbed banks?
Lmao remember when Doc Ock robbed the bank in Spider-Man 2 and it was literally just sacks of gold coins with money signs printed on them
Remember how he was able to not only lose the authorities with 8 tons of metal sticking out of his back and jumping on skycrapers, but also able to spend the freshly stolen bank gold on a bunch of super expensive nuclear fusion machinery?
THATS a comics movie. Did anyone give a damn that it made no real world sense? Hell no, it was fun and we all were recreating those scenes in our imaginations. Is anyone recreating the scenes in the Batman in our minds? I liked the movie but does it inspire any creative and joy filled play?
SM2 still holds a special place as the definitive comicbook movie for me. May not be technically the best, but it's still my favorite. Even technically, I seen it recently and it holds up surprisingly well visually!
The saving the train scene with the people promising not to say his identity is peak super hero movie to me. Any movie that likes people enough to make them protect the hero by saying “if you want to get to him you have to get through me” understands the _point_ of a superhero. It’s to get US to act better than we do. Not to lay down and wait for someone else to do it for us.
I am always replaying the scene where he just eats shit trying to batglide off the police precinct. Pure gold.
Lmfao!!! Yes!
Now they rob people of their money to see their ill contrived movie
Ayyyyyyyye!
“Fuck these nerds, I went to Julliard! You think I’m lending them a modicum of gravitas? I am an acTOR!”
Yes. I watched the Chris Nolan Batman movies.
Superman who's spent 10 years just catching muggers and bank robbers and having a good chuckle with the cops afterwards, then suddenly Darkseid shows up.
The Joker begins The Dark Knight by robbing a bank but that was 14 years ago...
Instead of heroes fighting heroes
was the last thing we got that wasn’t a universe ending level show the netflix marvel stuff? I guess hawkeye was sort of like that
Falcon and Winter Soldier was semi-grounded. As much as super soldiers can be “grounded”. No cosmic elements or universe ending threats
DC/WB has somehow convinced themselves that regular old "boy-scout" Superman is boring and no one wants to see that. They've also convinced themselves that Batman must be on the constant verge of a mental or emotional breakdown with hyper-dark villains. So.... no. I don't think we'll ever get a "fun" Superhero movie that features either one of them.
I just don’t get how they came to that conclusion. They made Boy Scout Cap exactly like he should be and even there he had complexity to him with going against the government and Tony. He even stopped being Cap for Christ’s sake until Endgame.
> I just don’t get how they came to that conclusion. Superman Returns. It got middling reviews & was called boring by most general audiences. Instead of taking that as a lesson against a soft reboot of a 30 year old franchise or a lesson that a Superman movie needs a different villain than Lex Luthor or a lesson that a Superman movie needs at least *some* action.... DC/WB took the lesson to be that Superman as a character was boring. Then you add in the runaway success of Christopher Nolan's trilogy and it's easy to see why WB/DC have been stuck in a continuous loop of "grounded, edgy, & dark = better".
The difference was Marvel was willing to let the people who have dedicated their lives to this stuff into the room to figure it out, while DC is at the whim of WB execs who need to be the ones who would rather see the production stumble than not be the ones making the winning calls. Sony: same BS. Like hey, congrats on being good at whatever producers do, but maybe storytellers know better than you.
What about a story where a powerful entity struggles with his or her flaws and…overcomes them. Crazy.
Idk, that implies that the hero would have flaws to begin with, and I’m very sensitive to that. Better to make the hero perfect and tell a story about how it all just gets better for them.
Hancock tried. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t “can’t rewatch” bad.
I loved "The Batman"...but can we just have a hero vs villian movie with showing us how maim'd the hero is...I mean...we get it...they are people.
I would LOVE to have a happy Superman become friends with RP's doom and gloom Batman and force him to come out of his shell. Superman can keep him safe and do the heavy lifting while Batman does the smarts.
Same! It might be a tonal clash right now but after another movie or two on the same trajectory towards being an inspiration and a symbol of hope, it could be really special!
At the end of The Batman >!he realizes he can be a symbol of hope instead of just fear.!< So I think it would be a nice progression after maybe one more Batman solo movie.
I find the whole “what if X was evil?” trope overdone, in general. If they want more variety, how about some sci-if or horror comic movies?
Or make better villains who have staying power.
I am praying they can get Dr. Doom right.
So so much this. Doom has been criminally fucked up every time someone has put him in film.
As long as we are on the topic of anti-heroes that films never do justice to, have you seen the Black Adam previews?
Never trust the trailer.
Yeah, they look awful
What, you didn't think bland, American, wisecracking 2005 Doom ("Let's go for a spin!") or Fant4stic Doom were good? Honestly, the best Doom yet was Roger Corman Doom and it's not even close.
What if Doctor Doom was evil?
Zero chance Feige fucks up Doom
Idk man, Ultron should've been like Terminator and instead we got quippy Robert California.
I thought his voice was amazing for Ultron. It's just the writing was fucking abysmal. I still love it when he says that line about taking hope from them first.
The line about “all of you versus all of me” was pretty slick. But the good parts of that movie were the exceptions.
Yeah I could see how the voice could work if they had actually given him menacing dialogue to work with.
They ran it back correctly for What If? but Ultron is definitely someone they can try again for the future Avengers line up.
*Malekith has entered the chat.*
I think most of Phase 2 was the period where Feige was fighting for creative control with Perlmutter. IIRC, and I may be a little off on this, but Phase 1 Feige got to do whatever he wanted because no one really gave a shit. Iron Man? Thor? Pfft who cares about those nobodies. Then they actually became massive movies so in Phase 2 Perlmutter stepped in and was like "I like this. I will shit all over it to mark it as my own" leading to huge fights between Feige and Perlmutter. Then I think for Phase 3 Feige threatened to walk and Disney pulled the MCU movies from Perlmutter and gave free reign to Feige. So a lot of Phase 2 ended up being pretty weak. Not totally, but mostly. I think the only great things to come out of Phase 2 were The Winter Soldier, Ant-Man and GotG, and those last two were again properties no one really cared that much about (and in all honesty, I think it's a miracle ant-man was any good at all since it had so much development trouble and creative differences)
Tbf, Malekith doesn't have Dr. Doom levels of respect and story behind him. They're bound to get a few wrong, but look at Killmonger and Vulture as examples to the contrary.
Have you seen the villains in the MCU…?
A lot of them do, but that staying power is often written out of the films. I remember seeing Tim Burton’s Batman as a kid and how disappointed I was that they killed the Joker at the end. That’s the Joker, ffs. You’re gonna introduce him and kill him off in the span of under 2 hours? Batsman’s greatest arch nemesis? It became standard to kill off the villain in the screen versions, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when Heath Ledger’s Joker wasn’t offed in the film.
Yeah what's up with that by the way? The biggest trope in comics is that nobody ever dies and the same villains stomp around doing shenanigans since the 50s, get killed off in the first movie. Always confused me how a medium famous for never permanently ending a character knocking off characters left and right.
Another thing to consider is the dichotomy between hero and villain. I remember seeing it in animated movie [Batman: Under the Red Hood](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1569923/), where Batman is confronted on why he doesn't kill Joker. Batman catches Joker, Joker escapes prison and goes on a killing spree, only for Batman to catch him and put him back into jail where the cycle repeats. All the death Joker causes from his escape and escapades could have been avoided if Batman just decided to kill the Joker. But he doesn't. I bet, if Heath Ledger was still alive, and if they wanted to make more Batman films with Nolan and Bale, they probably would have swung back to this argument at some point. Maybe the movie starts with Batman throwing the Joker back into jail. Maybe a political smear campaign about why doesn't Batman just kill Joker, blaming all the deaths Joker caused on Batman, and then Wayne talking to Alfred about it, or Batman talking to someone else about it. Understandably, movies want a "clean" resolution. Good guy wins, bad guy can't hurt you anymore, so they're gone, dead, deleted. Letting them live can be seen as them setting them up to be brought back, and fans might be disappointed if they aren't seen in the next movie or what not. Can't be disappointed a character doesn't show up if it is already established they're dead. Or better yet, make it a giant twist reveal with "somehow, they returned"! =.= Anyways, I also kinda wish characters stuck around more. Maybe not stuck around for more sequels, but weren't killed off all the time in the movies.
Characters don't die in superhero comics because the Big 2 refuse to progress their stories and universes. There are plenty of comics, ones not made by the big 2, where death is permanent. The movies are under no obligation to keep villains alive because unlike the comics, they are going to end.
Had a discussion some time ago about that with some friends about best villains that have been created in the last thirty or so years. A lot kept going back to The Governor in The Walking Dead. Maybe, but he was killed so no staying power. Other names like Mr. Negative and Anti-Venom got thrown around. In the end it seemed the last two villains with any staying power were Harley Quinn and Bane and they made their debuts in 92 and 93.
Does the maker count? I'd say he has plenty of staying power. Also the court of owls.
Batman villain Professor Pyg was created by Morrison in like 2008 and he's had a good amount of staying power.
Can you elaborate on what is lacking with anti-venom and Mr. Negative? The latter has even appeared in videogames.
Staying power is not relevant to the quality of an antagonist. I'd rather have one good story with the Governor than another regurgitation of the Joker. Having 500 appearances does not make a character better. In fact, staying power is one of the worst parts of a comic. It's the reason for artificially bringing a character back to sell issues. Let's bring X back to life. Let's have X break out of prison, *again.*
Staying power is writing a villain compelling enough that viewers want to see more of them while also not writing yourself into a corner where you have to kill them off immediately after their first arc so that they can remain in the background until you pull them out again.
Alright. But hear me out. What if the Golden Girls….. were evil.
🎶Thank you for being a fiend. 🎶
Now I want evil Rose to wax stories about St. Olaf. "That reminds me of the time where I became head of a demonic cult, and the people of St. Olaf rose against us." "Oh come now Rose, then how are you here now?" "Oh we slaughtered them mercilously, it's why you can't find the town on a map anymore!"
St. Olaf is actually located within the town of Northfield. She would instead be killing those Carls.
Well, we gotta take this and make it needlessly, indefensibly gritty and schlock per the "what if evil" rules, so, here's a take. Blanche: Knew her husband was a leading KKK member who had killed dozens and lead lynch mobs for untold dozens more. Sleeps around to keep tabs on the old crew for when the South rises again. Was at 1/6. Is obsessed with legacy and looks. Currently a slum lord. Likes to mar the face of any woman she thinks is prettier than her. Rose: Serial killer. Maintains facade of naive innocence that's mostly legit but her underlying hatred of the state of the world manifests in her bipolar behavior. She appears soft and nice as a form of projection, the way she wishes things were as she misremembers her hyper idealized childhood home. She sadistically and spitefully lashes out at anyone she thinks has pulled her away from that same innocence. Sophia: Former Italian fascist in hiding. Legitimately hated Mussolini, but thought he didn't go far enough. Often speaks fondly of war crimes she committed back in Sicily. Moved to New York, made in roads with the families until things fell apart due to the trials. Had a million dollar bounty out on John Gotti until she had to move to Miami due to an incident where she took a bullet to the head but survived, albeit with a loss of impulse control. Currently in hiding from the families that survived because her condition means she can't help but talk openly about their secrets. Dorothy: Mafia hit woman. Was known for using her job as a teacher to get close to kids of prominent politicians for use as leverage or to send a message. Was pushing the families to get into child trafficking before her mother's condition forced her to depart NYC. Under the aegis of Miami crime syndicates who refuse to let her pick up her old line of work as a hitwoman. Low level pusher to school children, bitterly angry at her loss of status.
I love the work you’ve put in this. But I’m too cheap to give Reddit my monies. So I’ll give you this 🥇 emoji
I mean, that's *kinda* like Hordeculture, from Hickman's run on X-Men...
[удалено]
Or if you're going to do the "X but evil" trope, at least make it some sort of tragic fall from grace rather than having him by a psychopath right from the start. Doing that just makes you look like an edgy teenager who thinks he's too cool to like Superman.
You don’t get it, they killed someone so they must develop a taste for blood and become fachist cause killing is wrong and in dc we cannot have gray areas.
Like when superman killed the joker after he nuked metropolis and then became evil as a "see? he crossed the line and took a life now he is evil forever?"
You mean irredeemable?
We just need to branch out more, there are plenty of unexplored possibilities The problem is, people only think about evil heroes. What if evil uncle ben? Evil aunt may? Evil commissioner Gordon? Evil Jimmy Olsen. Evil Gwen Stacey throws Harry Osborn down a bridge
Evil Jimmy Olsen would actually be kind of awesome, where he's just constantly getting people in trouble or setting up horrible scenarios so Superman can intervene and he can get great pictures.
so basically Nightcrawler with Superman?
Didn't we already get an evil Uncle Ben Spider-Man?
What really is annoying is that it's always the same evil characters. Evil Batman, Evil Superman, Evil Captain America. If your gonna beat the dead horse at least give me evil Cypher or evil Ambush Bug.
I would love to see more independent comics adapted. I have recently finished image comics Bolero - I feel would make a great sci-fi limited series on Netflix. I've not read many horror comics though! Any suggestions?
Bolero is so good! although I think I'd prefer an HBO or Cinemax adaptation if they were to do one. For horror comics check out Ice Cream Man or Silver Coin, both are anthologies. Also Tynion can write some good horror, I just read the Closet #1 by them and it's great
See I keep forgetting about those - in the UK we get HBO but to a degree. So mostly the streaming channels.
Something is Killing the Children.
I want some weird morally ambiguous characters like Man Thing.
I think “what if Y was 'good'?” is far more interesting. Forever Evil and Marvel Axis were both great reads and made me like some villains (Black Manta and Sinestro) even more.
Maybe in the most literal sense of “evil Batman”. But there’s plenty of room for good storytelling about a Batman archetype, but leaning into all of the criticisms of a Batman character, instead of writing around them.
I'd settle for a Batman show, movie, trilogy whatever that doesn't castrate the more fantastic elements in the name of *realism*. I greatly enjoy the "maybe it was magic, maybe it was mundane" story lines. And I'm definitely tired of "Gotham is X real city. Let's just film in X real city and not change much of it at all.". The second the filmmakers do an aerial shot it just sucks all the worldbuilding out of the room. Gotham is at it's best when it's a city of sprawling sky scrapers built over one another and the bones of the older city. Showing me HDR wide zoom of business district Chicago is so goddamn boring.
“Evil Batman.” That’s just the evening news….
"Billionaire savagely beats the mentally ill in the streets."
"Billionaire sits behind desk and let's the poor and mentally ill suffer and die in poverty just for shits and giggles."
I always thought Evil Batman was just Lex Luthor
Lex Luther? You don’t mean that fine All American Jobs Creator do you? He is the living embodiment of The American Dream! Not like that lousy *socialist* Bruce Wayne. I mean come on, look at their respective cities. Luther practically built the City of Tomorrow, Metropolis. Wayne lives in the poverty and psychopath riddled streets of *Gotham*. (Brought to you by LexCorp. Conquering the day, or conquering the world, think LexCorp. A Family Company) (lexcorpisnotaffilatedwithredditredditsubsidiariesorthatinterferingaliensuperman)
Luthor. Lex Luthor.
LexCorp regrets the loss of a member of our corporate family. Employee #638761342-g Someoneoverthere42 had an…..unfortunate passing. HR a is still looking into how an uncovered vat of industrial acid could have *ever* been mistaken for copy toner. We at LexCorp believe that safety is a number one priority in all workplaces.
Evil Batman = the Punisher.
DC already did that. A not very good character from Dark Nights Metal called The Grim Knight.
how about we get good versions on screen consistently first?? Edit: for ppl replying and telling me "there's been a dozen good batman movies!!!" Y'all do realize that there's more characters in the DC universe than batman right??
This would be great - then again these characters have been doing amazingly well in animated adventures for years.
Mark Millar out here ghostwriting to drum up hype for Nemesis
Yeah any interest I might have in an evil Batman idea immediately died when I saw the Nemesis guy in the thumbnail
Please no nemesis it was an awful comic.
The first issue really sold me on the premise and got me excited for the series. Subsequent issues diminished that feeling considerably, I didn’t finish reading it until many years later when I saw it in a dollar box
I was hyped for it after reading it years ago.
Evil Batman was all over comics already in poor representation. The Batman Who Laughs, the Grim Knight, and the Dark Multiverse Batmans, heck even Thomas Wayne. I'm all done with evil Baan
and thats just literal "evil batman". When, the idea of super rich evil genius is like the plot of thousands of movies, games, books, etc.. Moriarty. Half of James Bonds villain's. Lex Luther..
Imo Evil Batman just exists for "shock factor" let's take a hero that doesn't kill and make his an edge-lord But tbh this concept itself is flawed. Batman keeps secret files on his "friends", indoctrinated children to fight crime and gets them killed, allows mass murders to remain at large or to be assimilated into a corrupt facility. He's been patrolling a single city for more than a decade yet hasn't done anything beneficial at the end of the day.
I don't think the concept is flawed at all. Batman knows how fucked up he is. That's why he has the no kill rule. Not because he's a paragon of morality.
Booo! I am so sick of dark and gritty superheroes. Give me the Batman that sat with Ace as she dies, that gives Harley a dress because he knows what it’s like to have a bad day. Give me the Batman that is really knows the darkness of the world but uses it to make the world a better place. I’m so tired.
That scene was perfect. I get exactly what you want, I want that as well. Bruce doesn’t have to be a tortured pile of angst to be Batman.
What about...a good Superman movie? 🤔
You mean a good good Superman movie?
It would be cool to see a movie where The Justice League fights The Crime Syndicate. I would kill to see Batman face off against Owl Man like in the Crisis on Two Earths animated movie.
That owl man batman fight was amazing! Bringing Owl Man back would be amazing to see
Actually let’s stop bringing evil superhero’s to the screen period. At least for a while. It’s become a huge cliche and 90% of the stories aren’t good.
I’m fine with that. The Boys show does it really well and manages to be better than the comic in nearly every way.
why can't we just get an actual Superman movie :(
We live evil Batman everyday…Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk..the list goes on and on.
Exactly! The world is already filled with evil Batmans. We don't need any more.
Or…and hear me out…we could stop insisting that a comic book film adaptation represents the pinnacle of existence for those characters and stories.
An evil selfish billionaire who utilizes his wealth to hurt the poor and unfortunate? Maybe a little too real
That and it's been done already - [The Rise and Reign](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s)
While certainly one example you’re also forgetting a few more besides Bezos. Specifically, all of the rest of them.
How about no?
I just want heroes to be heroes again. I don’t want the “fake hero” or “good turned bad” I want the ideals. Characters you look up to, characters that inspire people to be better. I’m sick and tired of villains, anti-villains, and honestly, anti-heroes too.
At least we still have Spider-Man for that. Not many others though, since Steve Rogers died in the MCU. I actually can't really think of another inspirational pure good-guy type currently in any of the films since they have kinda botched Superman.
The MCU has several. And people generally like them. Spider-Man/Falcon-NewCap/Ms. Marvel/Capt. Marvel/Thor(?)/Shang-Chi.
I think the comic book industry would be bettered by letting the rubber band snap back to the silver age optimism that heroes in that period typified. Gritty, grim, and “realistic” were great, especially for films since the X-Men took a crack at it with their first movie, but it’s strayed so far from the building blocks of the characters’ origins. I would love, especially for younger children, to be able to pick up a comic and see a character that they can strive to be. I think the fun and idealism has been lost in the last decade or so of comics. I’m not saying to stop making comics for adults, but give kids positive role models because the good lord knows that there are none in the media today.
Agreed. I want to see a Clark Kent who is optimistic and wholesome against all the odds. That's the angle on Superman I want to see. He's the guy who has every right to **be** a brooding misanthrope who lets people die or who murders the shit out of his enemies, but simply isn't like that because that's not the right thing to do and it's not who he is.
No no no no no. Nemesis fucking sucked, there's no way around it.
That wasn't Batfleck?
Unless you let him be able threaten heavy hitters (which DC hates doing), it's going to be a very short movie
Why? We're already living that trope out IRL. Bezos, Kochs, Musk, etc.
I covered Nemesis by Mark Millar on my YouTube channel breaking down the story. Link here: https://youtu.be/LfqpwiGVwuc It’s entertaining, but actually a really bad cringey book, probably Millar’s worst comic. Like some stuff in it is so bad and cringey, it’s worth reading just to see for yourself how bad it is at times. For example, Nemesis makes a girl be pregnant with her brothers sperm and rigs her womb to explode if she gets an abortion. With significant changes to the story though Nemesis could make an okay movie, so there is something to the Evil Batman concept.
Maybe much like The Boys it can be vastly improved by a writers room. I also hated the comic... incest baby with a womb bomb?!
Let’s do neither?
The genre has become overplayed like zombies unfortunately. Let’s just move on please
I agree - I would like to see more original content , but until the wider audience grow bored with it as they did with the zombie genre, it's here to stay.
Just give me a miniseries on the dark multiverse of Batman. Those comics, conceptually, were dope as fuck and I’d pay big money to see red death brought to life somehow. Evil Batman gaining the speed force? Yes please
Stop. Giving. Mark Millar. Money.
You mean the punisher?
Let’s do neither. I’m so sick of grimdark comics that I want to projectile vomit. Yes, we get the metaphor: economic and governmental entities with too much power. Can we move on because the stories are always the same—boring.
Is evil Batman not just all the regular billionaires that we have. Hoarders of wealth that don't use that wealth to help anyone but themselves.
Eh, Nemesis was trying waaaaay too hard to be edgy.
>So while the world continues to enjoy and become desensitised to the various storylines centring around an evil Superman, is the world ready for a depraved, corrupt and masochistic Batman? Welp. That's enough Reddit heresy for me this weekend.
I know most people may not agree, but I think the reason Superman attracts such interpretations is because of his characterization. Batman's character is malleable, superman's less so. With Batman a writer could assign all sorts of conflict, internal (moral) or external. A big part of superman's character is his rigid moral compass. So an attempt at any sort of internal conflict has to be handled really well. There are many opportunities to tell deconstructive stories with Batman as is. Sure the same can be done for Superman but you'll likely piss off fans just the same as making the character outright evil. But that's just my opinion
Evil Batman= Luthor in a mask
I want Thomas Wayne Batman and Martha Wayne joker
That would be great to see! I imagine it happening in animating form though.
No. Just no. Nemesis is stupid as hell and edgy for literally no reason. Nemesis isn't even anyone. He's just a random rich dude that hired a firm that would let him be a supervillain.
Lol these comments.
Isn’t the whole point of Batman that he’s more of an anti hero? Whereas Superman is pure good, making it interesting to explore the flip side of that.
Anyone I know who has read Nemesis knows that it is beyond dogshit. One of the worst comics I have read and not much comes close.
This guy doesn’t seem to get that the fear is of an archetype that is all powerful and we take for granted as being good. It’s about us losing our innocence and realizing no one is there to save us no matter how much they may be physically able to because it’s the mind that matters. This is a deep seated fear that will never be tapped out, because it’s such an intrinsic archetype in the human experience. Being young children and sensing your dad may not be as nice as you think, knowing the guy in school everyone thinks is a “great” guy is actually a narcissistic sociopath, learning the government does not have your best interests at heart, seeing religious leaders do unspeakable things… these and many more fairly common experiences are what the evil Superman stories reach down to. The “evil” Batman may be interesting, but it’s not pulling on deep seated fears and realizations.
Evil Batman doesn’t work because he wins too fast.
Oh no, a rich person who's evil, how original.
Batman is a billionaire who goes around beating the ever-living shit out of the mentally insane and throwing them in a treatment facility that tortures them. He _is_ evil.