Ten DC Characters Who Should Have Movies Before Justice League

Following on the heels of The Avengers‘ success this summer, Warner Brothers has commissioned a script for Justice League–and while Man of Steel is coming right up, and there are scripts in development for Wonder Woman, Aquaman and The Flash, it seems likely as they begin the process of courting directors that Warner is interested in doing Justice League first, and then spinning off solo films for characters that viewers get to know as a result.It’s an approach that’s not totally without merit; after all, while audiences got to know Iron Man, Thor and Captain America first through their solo films, the Incredible Hulk’s movies are pretty much ancient history by this point and there was little connection between the way the character was depicted in The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers–not even the same actor. That character went on to become a fan favorite and now there’s talk of giving him a movie or TV series of his own. So clearly, the way Warner is looking at doing it can be done.If you’re going to ape Marvel’s success, though, it seems as though it might be a better approach to more closely approximate the style in which they came to that success–in this case, by building to the team film with a series of solo movies before committing completely to The Avengers.That still doesn’t mean you can’t have a Justice League movie sooner than later–if you could get your act together start making these things on a pace approaching what Marvel is doing, you could have a Justice League movie on schedule and still get at least one or two films out ahead of it (particularly if one of them was a Green Lantern sequel, where a lot of the design and pre-production work is done for you). Assuming Warner were to do that, what DC characters could they tap for those couple of movies? Well, we’ve got way more ideas than they’ve got time to make movies, so let’s get on with the list.We’ll note up front, though, that for our purposes, Aquaman doesn’t appear on the list. It’s not that we don’t believe the character can carry a film, it’s just that to most non-comics readers, he feels as one-note as Hulk. And, like Hulk, it seems that he’s best-suited by being a major part of a team film, and has people rooting for him before they try to give him a solo film to support on his own.Green Lantern, likewise, is missing from this list (along with Superman) for the simple reason that he’s already had a film that can be incorporated into Justice League if they’re so inclined. I’m rooting for giving another Lantern (either John Stewart, Guy Gardner or Kyle Rayner would work for different reasons) a chance to shine, along with a throwaway line that the last guy “didn’t work out,” giving the audience a one-line handwave of the Reynolds failure not entirely unlike Punisher’s “Tried it, didn’t like it” explanation for his year as God’s assassin.Green Arrow (kind of)This one is kind of a cheat, but it would be nice to see Arrow segue into the DC movieverse. In the same way Marvel is aggressively developing at least one and probably two TV properties (Hulk and whatever it is that Whedon is involved in) that will tie directly the big-screen Marvel Universe, Arrow coming out around the same time as Man of Steel is Warner’s first opportunity to actually beat Marvel to the punch on something and establish that, yes, all of the Warner-owned DC movies and all of the Warner-owned DC television properties are going to be taking place in the same world.The only downside is that it might somewhat undermine the message previously out there that nobody has powers in the world of Arrow, but that came from star Stephen Amell and not one of the writers anyway, so there’s nothing to say they can’t remain spiritually true to that by simply not using Superman and Firestorm, while still hinting in some way that Arrow and Man of Steel take place in the same world.It also builds in whatever rogues Arrow establishes in the early going (so far, we know of Deadshot and Deathstroke, in addition to China White) as up-for-grabs in the DC movie universe. And that ain’t bad either.Batman