What if the DC Cinematic Universe Was as Good as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Part 1)

With the disappointment that was Batman V Superman igniting tons of douche bags with their constant Marvel vs. DC or Batman vs Superman discussions. I'm left wondering.... what if these movies were great! I mean what if they were really great.

Now I don't want to insult anyone who likes the current DC movies. I think that they may appeal to some newer audiences. Don't get me wrong, I am all for evolving the characters but they seem to have regressed some of my favorite superheroes. And you can't argue that people aren't kinda pissed about how the characters were treated in the new movie.

So, I just wonder if there is a way to keep parts of these interesting new interpretations while staying true to the original characters and not pissing off the fans. Rewatching Man of Steel and some of the other films I feel like there are a few small and a few big changes that can be made to uncover a really awesome movie.

So this is clearly too big a job for just one post so I'll spread it into a few post focusing on different movies in each one.

I think it would be good to start out with the first DC movie outside of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight universe which is really it's own thing. So let's look at Green Lantern from 2011. Back when Marvel itself had only released 3 films in it's new continuity. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2.

Green Lantern

Boy oh boy did this film have troubles. What's frustrating is that the Green Lantern Corps and universe is a fantastic place to start a new series. We'd open up with a space opera and it would be easy from there to introduce more of the more outlandish characters in the DC universe.

As it stands Green Lantern was kind of a mess of a movie. It overused CGI and even after spending millions on it, the effects looked terrible. We have a good intro to the character but we don't really get a sense of how powerful a Green Lantern can be. Also you never really get the bigger picture because the movie spends its entire runtime on earth, without spending any time developing the Corps or the fact that GL actually has to watch over a number of planets that just include Earth. Now I think they got a number of things right in this movie but they got a whole lot wrong. Here are a couple of things that they could have done to make Green Lantern not only a successful franchise but a start of the DC universe.

Choosing the Characters

A Green Lantern film needs a relatable character to introduce us to this universe. Remember most people don't know who Green Lantern is, nor that he's part of the DC universe. They currently went with Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan.


This may have been their first mistake. The original Green Lantern was Alan Scott but the character was reintroduced with Hal Jordan. Eventually Hal moved on and we got new Green Lanterns like Joh Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardener, and Simon Baz. Because the comics decided to bring back the Hal Jordan character DC seemed to have sent out this Memo that this was the only Green Lantern we'd see in all media. That was a huge mistake.

Most people who grew up in the 90's had their first introduction to the Justice League through Bruce Timm's animated Universe. And in this Universe the Green Lantern they went with was John Stewart.


Bruce Timm stated on the DVD commentary that there was no way he was going to make a show about a bunch of white guys ruling over the planet. This prompted him to include the only African American Green Lantern as well as HawkGirl, as founding members of the Justice League.

As awesome as the Marvel extended universe is, the DC animated universe included 8 separate tv series and 4 movies. It's still the best example of world building I can think of

For the films, not only did they choose a character that most people were unfamiliar with, they alienated a good portion of the people that did know the character by excluding John Stewart. Lots of people who watched that show, never got into the comics and consequently they only know John Stewart as the Green Lantern. And this movie paid John Stewart with the ultimate disrespect of not even mentioning him at all.

Christ DC!!! What the fuck were you thinking?!?

 What's even worse is DC tried to do what the Walking Dead TV show did in seasons 1 - 3,  and just replace him with another black guy in hopes we didn't notice. I'm sorry but Cyborg and John Stewart are not equals. Cyborg is a cool character but he's just a kid and lacks the military bachground that John Stewart has, which gives him the strength to stand up to Superman and Batman.

I know what you're thinking, DC isn't going to risk their new franchise on an African American lead. I mean sure they're afraid the same reason Marvel is, because movies with black protagonists don't do so well overseas. But here's an option: why not include both? I know it will divide our attention to have both Hal Jordan and John Stewart in the same movie, but that would allow them and their vastly different character types to play off each other in a buddy cop sort of way. Hal Jordan is a cocky, handsome, quick witted, but incredibly talented and brave pilot. John Stewart is dutiful, resolute, brave, and a born strategist and leader.

Lot's of chances for drama here

Since both are with the military we can place them both in the air force. John, being the meticulous and seasoned military man, will undoubtedly butt heads with Hal who may be excessively tardy and a showboat. As they're trained by Kilowag and Sinestro they eventually grow a mutual respect that becomes a friendship.

Also Ryan Reynolds as charming as he is, may not have been the best choice for Hal. I looove Ryan Reynolds, and he was a perfect Deadpool. But our Hal should be a bit younger. Perhaps an actor like Chris Pine, who has already shown he can portray that sort of character brilliantly in the Star Trek reboot. John Stewart could be played by a number of people. I personally thing that Idris Elba would have played it well. Especially considering back in the late 2000's he was saying that he'd like to play a superhero.

If nothing else a move like having John Stewart as the central character would already put them a huge step ahead of Marvel in the sense that they'd already have a film with an African American lead. Something Marvel still hasn't done and doesn't plan to do until the Black Panther movie, which will be 18 movies and 3 phases in. I mean think about that, something Marvel has failed to do for the first two and a half phases and ten years. DC could have done this right out the gate back in 2011.

The Villain

Parallax was a bad villain. I can't put that plainer. Between this, the Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Ang Lee's Hulk, it's pretty clear audiences don't respond to giant clouds as villains. While I'm sure that Parallax can be done well, the filmmakers didn't do a good job of portraying it on screen. People aren't afraid of enemies that are just giant evil masses. What's frustrating is that they had a whole universe to pick from. Keeping more of the movie in space and dealing with interplanetary struggles would have allowed them to choose any of the Green Lantern Corps intergalactic enemies.

At the end of the day the villain just wasn't interesting. There are tons of different types of villains but there are 4 key attributes you can use when making your villain interesting. Just about all great villains pull from one or more of these things. 

• The Scary Villain ex. The Terminator, The Jew Hunter (Inglorious Bastards), Darth Vader, Shere Khan (the Jungle Book), The Huns (Mulan)
• The Charismatic Villain ex. Hans Gruber, Professor Moriarty, Loki, The Joker, Gustavo Fring
• The Sympathetic Villain ex. Frankenstien's Monster, King Kong, Magneto, Carrie White (Carrie), Roy Batty (Blade Runner)
• The Detested Villain ex. Iago (Othello), The Purple Man, King Joffrey, Scar, Nurse Ratched

A Scary Villain is what lots of filmmakers go for and then screw up. Making your villain intimidating can be done through good writing, but with bad writing it can seem cliche. The trick is building tension whenever they're around. In the opening scene to inglorious bastards, The Jew Hunter isn't making threats or waving a gun around. In fact he's being very cheerful and polite. However, the viewer knows the threat is there and is afraid for the moment when the bloodshed happens. Darth Vader killed relatively few people in Star Wars: A New Hope, yet everyone feared him. Unfortunately we never really get that sort of real fear from Parallax. We know it's dangerous but we never really feel the fear. 

A Charismatic Villain just makes you want to watch them. Any villain who is so interesting that you enjoy every scene with them just because you love the character. Everyone was charmed by Hans Gruber in Die Hard. And Loki was a great foil to the Avengers. And who didn't watch and rewatch every scene with Heath Ledger as the Joker in the Dark Knight. Occasionally the charismatic villain may even be the central point of the movie. Take a look at the Godfather part 2. It may be Michael's story but if you look at his actions, you can't argue that he isn't the villain in this story, and even still he's mesmerizing in the role. Needless to say, there wasn't anything even remotely charismatic about the villain in Green Lantern.

Most of the great villains are in fact Sympathetic Villains. You may not agree with their methods or what they become, but you really can see the story from their point of view. Most sympathetic villains will tend to fall into two categories. The person who has the right goals at heart but goes about them in the wrong way. Someone like Magneto, who most people will agree makes some good points, but his methods are just too extreme.

The other type are the tortured souls who become monsters. These are people like Carrie, Frankenstein's Monster or Andrew from Chronicle. These are people who get used, abused and basically turn into a reflection of what was done to them. I believe this is something they tried to do with Hector Hammond before he was consumed by Parallax. This may have worked but we didn't have enough time or good enough scenes to really form that bond with this character so that we really feel bad about what happens to him. There are other characters who exemplify this like Killer Croc who has some portions of his backstory written so tragically it's nearly brought me to tears. 

Lastly we have the hated or detested villains. These are characters so rotten, so awful, so grotesque that you keep watching or reading just to see them get their comeuppance. Characters like the Purple Man or as I like to call him "The Super Rapist". You keep watching because you just want something horrible to happen to these villians. King Joffrey on Game of Thrones was just as hated, we watched and waited for years for that little bastard to get what was coming to him. And if you've ever read the Walking Dead Comic book, I could not put the book down until I read about the Governor finally getting killed for what he'd done. It's easy to overdo it in this section of villain as well. I see all to often in comic books rape being used as a plot device just so that we hate the villain and want to see them taken down. It's a pretty fine line when creating a hated villain who isn't more of a cartoon character than a person. And most really good detestable villains take from multiple hats. There were times when Ben from Lost was a very charismatic villain before he became a hateable villain. However as the story progressed he turned out to be one of the most sympathetic villains I've ever seen. 

In the end I don't know what particular villain would work best but I'd argue that picking one that's a mixture of these things would have done the movie a whole lot of good. Our hero is only as good as the enemy he fights. Choosing a vague, difficult to understand villain for the first movie didn't do it any favors. 

The Story

There were a few things that really could have been done to fix this up. I really liked us getting to know Hal Jordan, and him showing that he's a cocky steely eyed missile man. He's also compassionate and a good friend as well. But in the movie he seems to get an afternoon of training with Sinestro and then he's back to earth. 

This does a couple of things to weaken the character and the movie overall. 

• Having him train for like 2 scenes undermines the years of training it takes to wield the green lantern ring like a pro. 
• Keeping Green Lantern on Earth and having him only work locally really makes him seem like any other superhero who watches over a single city when really he has an entire sector of space. 
• One of the key conflicts that Hal Jordan has is that he was trained by Sinestro and he is friends with him. So when Sinestro turns evil it's that much harder for Hal to fight him. Having these two guys interact maybe twice in the movie was a huge mistake. Especially since they already introduced Sinestro forging a yellow ring of fear. 

I know there are plenty of fan scripts but here is how I would restructure the plot from the movie:

Hal Jordan is one of the best pilots working in the Air force. While there he's really dreaming of joining a special task force team that works with experimental technology and cutting edge jets. A team lead by none other than John Stewart. The two have very different life views Hal being a young womanizer who loves the thrills. John being a lifelong military man and is dedicated to his only girlfriend Shayera Hol. 

Hal tries out for the team and while Stewart respects his skills he thinks he's still to young and headstrong to be part of the team. When John gives him a direct order and Hal disobeys telling him that he can do this HIS way, John cuts him. In one of their early missions the team is destroyed but some unidentified flying objects, John nearly getting killed himself being saved buy a ship that no one can recognize. This will give John proper motivation to join the corps to fight what did this to his team which he feels responsible for. 

Trying to find survivors Hal actually finds the ship that saved John's that being Abin Sur. A dying Abin Sur passes on the green lantern ring to Hal who is shot up to meet the Guardians and the rest of the Corps. Sinestro among others is skeptical of a human being ready to take on the duties of a Green Lantern charging the human race with being warlike, and primitive.

While Hal begins his training he is told that Sinestro has found someone he deems much more worthy of the ring also from the planet earth. This earthling just happens to be... you guessed it, John Stewart. John and Hal see each other and can't believe that they're going to be working with one another.

John and Hal begin training with Kilowog and Sinestro trying to prove that they'd be the best green Lantern. Sinestro personally works with Hal, being extremely hard on him, clearly trying to get him to quit. John begins training with Katma Tui who he instantly likes and finds himself attracted to but won't do anything because he's already in a relationship. After some time the Guardians decide that because they are so different, they'd make a great team watching over that sector of space. 

While being trained they are taken out on patrols with other Green Lanterns learning the ropes. While at the same time the two begin to respect one another and also begin to suspect that a series of unrelated crimes are actually a larger conspiracy. 

While no one else at the Corps believes the two rookies about the conspiracy they go off on their own and expose a much more deadly threat (insert villain here) and they end up stopping a major operation with the help of the rest of the Green Lantern Corps. Sinestro calls out Hal and John for disobeying and order and Hal Responds "Hey you can't always follow the rules, can you?" Sinestro finally accepts that Hal is a worthy Green Lantern and the two become friends.

They chase the villain back to their larger evil plot and thankfully the rest of the Corps come to their aid and a gigantic space battle ensues. The enemy is forced to retreat into deeper space.

Realizing it's plan was disrupted by two earthlings it decides to send a small fleet earth as revenge. The John realizes what's happening and pleads to the Guardians to help himself and Hal save earth. The Guardians tell them that the primary target is still out here in deep space and they can't spare any other Lantern's to go to Earth.

John and Hal are on their own now, so they head back to Earth to try and stop the invasion without help. They head back to their hometown and Hal and John have to get the Air Force to support them in stopping the invaders. Hal and John were expecting a small force but it turns out as a last minute trick the villain actually sent a huge mass of his army to earth and no one to the other location where most of the Green Lantern Corps are headed. They fight valiantly and at one point all seems lost because they don't have the power to stop them. The Lanterns are about to be publicly executed by the invaders after they are defeated but at the last minute a green beam shoots out from the sky!!! It's Sinestro, Kilowog and Katma come to help them out. Hal ask them, but you were ordered to the other side of the galaxy. And Sinestro replies "You don't always do what you're told, do you Jordan?" with a laugh. They effectively fight off the forces, sending the Villain off world to hide. 

The world effectively saved and the entire planet introduced to both aliens and the Green Lantern Corps in one day. The Gaurdians praise their actions agreeing that they were the right choices to protect that sector of space. Hal and John, are now more than friends, they are trusted partners, take on the role as Green Lanterns together. 

Possible Cameos from other Superheros

I really think that one of Batman V Superman's biggest issues was they tried to introduce too many characters too quickly. Batman, Lex Luthor, Mercy, Jimmy Olson, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, the Flash, Aquaman all in one movie?!?! It's too much. I think they should drop a few easter eggs but outright cameos or hints at a new character should be one or two per movie. 

I personally think that they should introduce and Alien character next, and as cool as it would be if they hinted at the Martian Manhunter I think the obvious answer would be to hint at Superman. 

While most nerdy people know that Green Lantern shares a universe with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. A good portion of people don't realize that this is the same world. Superman is easily the most recognizable superhero around the planet. 

Now if I'm really being picky I would have him introduced, not in an after the credits scene, but during the climax. While the action is happening and something is about to fall on John or Hal, Superman catch it and lift it over his head. To which Hal might say something like "who the hell are you supposed to be?" And Superman replies "Just a guy trying to lend a hand." After that he could assist the two in the final fight. He wouldn't save the day, but he would help hold off some of the forces. Hal or John warning him that they're dangerous while Superman cooly replies with a smile "Don't worry fellas, I've got this." Then he rockets into a swarm of them punching right through their defenses while lasering most of the other ships. Watching all this John says "I'm reaaally glad that guy is on our side."

When it's time to take down the main villain Superman is rendered useless because the ship has some sort of shielding that causes him incredible pain when he touches it. You could even have a line where one of the Lanterns catch Superman and say "You can't let those energy fields touch you. What sort of Armor are you wearing." And Superman just kinda chuckles and says "yeah... armor... Look I can't help with that thing, you two have got to deal with it on your own." As Superman is such and overpowered character, it will be good to introduce something that he cannot overcome that isn't just Kryptonite again.

 In the end he can even refuse to take any credit for helping in front of the Corps or the press, saying to John or Hal " This is your show, I just showed up to lend a hand." Before they can ask more questions he looks off in the distance, and the camera zooms in on his ear, you hear the audio for a bank robbery and gunfire. Superman looks at the Lanterns and smiles then says "If you'll excuse me." Then zooms off as quick as he came. 

There are few upsides to doing this. 

1. Establishes that this is the same universe as that of the Superman franchise. 
2. It could make Superman look awesome and get people excited for his movie. Assuming they can make his intro as cool as they did the Hulk's in Avengers. 
3. It shows that Superman has weaknesses other than Kryptonite.
4. Being and alien he has a direct connection to the Green Lantern Corps.
5. It can establish his character as friendly, charming, selfless and a leader. 

There is a big problem that could arise by having Superman show up in the climax. Depending on how cool his action sequence looks it could upstage our two heroes. So while his scenes should be amazing, there should be very little screen time devoted to the big blue boyscout. 

Overall I think this would put the DC universe at a much greater place than they found themselves in 2011. This would be a great start to a new franchise. You'd already introduce the fact that this is going to be a universe with crossovers from other Superheros. You'd establish a brand new character with his own sequels. You'd have put in phase 1, an african american actor as the titular character. And you'd open the door for the next movie in the universe Man of Steel.

Next blog I'll jump into all the things they could do to make Man Of Steel an even stronger film.