Can a Justice League movie happen?

   With Marvel's The Avengers out, four years of cinematic history was rolled into one feature (technically the crews and actors worked on it a lot longer than 4 years).  This was the plan since Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were made.  Whether these plans would have actually saw the light of day was sort of up in the air for a bit, but it came together and it looks like tons of possibilities are opening up (Ant Man, Dr. Strange, F4 reboot, etc.).  Once the other Marvel propeties revert back to Marvel (X-Men and Spider-Man are owned by other studios as far as live action film goes) then these characters can be folded into the larger MCU (Avengers going against the X-Men or the whole mutant element to society being talked about at all in the other Marvel movies makes me a little giddy).

  DC on the other hand... All of DC's properties (more or less) are owned by Warner Bros.  Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash... all of them.  That's why it was easy for the Justice League animated shows to be made and for Smallville to include so many other characters from the DC universe.  DC's cinematic eggs are all in one basket, but there are currently no plans to make a Justice League movie (I in all honesty would love to see a Justice Society movie, but that's another topic for another post).

  There were plans for a JLA movie for a while, with a completely different continuity than Dark Knight or Superman Returns, but it fell through.  A lot of people thought Green Lantern was going to be a stepping stone, but it didn't do great at the box office.  So where does something like a JLA movie stand?

  I think with the massive, massive success of The Avengers, that DC would look at that and be like, "Huh.  Marvel made this continuity and had a plan to combine the characters, and it made a sh!t ton of money.  Why don't we do that?"

  It would take like five years, but if they started now.  They could make it happen.  Start with Man of Steel.  Man of Steel comes out next year.  It has no connection to Superman Returns and start fresh with a new look, cast, and continuity.  If they would just put a cameo of another hero in the movie after the credits, they could start the buzz that could feed into a JLA movie.  My vote is for The Flash, but I don't think they're going to do that.

The Dark Knight rises comes out July 13th.  This series cannot be in continuity.  Don't get me wrong, The Dark Knight may be my favorite movie... ever (even that's debatable), but the Nolanverse wouldn't work very well in the JLA universe and Christian Bale probably wouldn't be interested in being in a JLA movie.  After Man of Steel a new Batman movie needs to be planned that would match up with MoS continuity and maybe have that Superman make a cameo appearance post credits.  Should the new Batman be a reboot or a stylistically different sequel to TDKR?  I don't have an opinion on that, but as long as the result is good, I don't care.

Last year's Green Lantern could have been the start of a broader DC Cinematic Universe.  The movie got mixed reviews.  I thought it was okay, but that the animated movie First Flight had a better plot overall.  Some people were upset about Ryan Reynolds, as Jordan or thought the characterizations were wrong or the graphics were bad.  The plot was wasn't up to par and that is my main complaint (I could go on and on about GL, but I'm not in this article).

So should they pull a Hulk and reboot?  Should they throw down a GL sequel with a new creative team?  I don't know, but if the result is good, I don't care.  All six movies in the MCU are awesome in my opinion and having a mediocre or bad movie in the DCCU would just be disappointing.

So Warner needs to get their crap in gear, take a cue from Marvel and start working on a Justice League movie.  Man of Steel needs to be the beginning of that, it just needs to be.  Then a new Batman or GL.  The Flash, Wonder Woman, and then a JL movie with Martian Manhunter or maybe Aquaman (or both) as the breakout characters that premiere in the movie.  Whether they do that or not is up in the air, but seriously, after seeing Marvel pull it off and make a lot of money, they would be stupid not to.