DC COMICS & THE WORLD OF REBOOTS: Just Make A Better Sequel

These days, it seems Hollywood studios must have a red button in their boardrooms that’s labelled ‘Reboot’.  At the first sign that a movie from a potential or even established franchise performs below the studio’s expectations(which these days means nothing short of opening weekend record breakage on a global scale), then that big old red button gets a corporate fist slammed down on it.  Panic!  Run away!  Re-cast!  Hire David Goyer!  Do something!

            Because, clearly, if a movie isn’t quite what every single human being on the planet wanted, then the only possible way to manage any future property dealing with the same material is to completely scrap it and start all over.  Effectively pissing away all that money you spent on the original in the first place.

This is a relatively recent phenomenon and an unsettling one.  Had this philosophy been in practice when Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, then we would never have gotten Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the most successful and well-regarded sequels of all time.

ORIGINALS ARE DEAD: Sequels. Remember those?

The Motion Picture was received poorly by critics and even amongst many disappointed fans who had shelved out the cash for their cinema tickets.  However, it made enough money so that the filmmakers could go ahead and make another one.  Taking on board complaints about the previous movie, they went and made it’s follow-up more fitting with what hungry Trekkies had really wanted in those wilderness years between the cancellation of their beloved show and the franchise’s ressurection on the big screen.

Khan’s producers didn’t panic and start all over again, effectively remaking Motion Picture.  They didn’t decide that, because Motion Picture didn’t quite nail it, that it’s very existence would hurt any future Trek outings.  No.  The Wrath of Khan has the Roman numeral II in it’s title, suggesting they weren’t pretending the previous Enterprise adventure had never happened.
They didn’t freak out.  They just learned from mistakes and made the next one better.

Imagine a world where this still happened regularly- a world where Tom Jane got another official shot from Marvel at punishing the shit out of criminal scum and where we didn’t need to see Uncle Ben’s murder occur twice in 10 years, under vaguely different circumstances.

It is warranted occasionally, of course, where the first attempt at bringing material to the screen has failed so obviously that there is clearly nowhere to go with that same continuity.  And if there has been a fairly significant amount of time passed since the last movie, wherein the very movie culture itself has changed enough that the material can stand a new approach filtered through an updated lens.  The movie Dredd fits both of these criteria, being a film that was very justified in it’s completely evident separation from 1995’s Judge Dredd.

DREDD: When reboots are necessary.

But perhaps, where this approach of completely scrapping continuity from a film that slightly underperformed is at it's most misguided is in the DC universe and their treatment of the Green Lantern character.

Their rebooting of Batman from Bale to Batfleck grew from a mix of Bale not wanting to continue in the role and the fact that Nolan’s universe doesn’t quite lend itself to the fantastic, thereby making it’s interaction with a world of flying Kryptonians and cybernetically enhanced high school football players, fairly jarring and unworkable.  All this means that we can understand DC’s recasting of the Dark Knight and indeed have it feel not drastically different from when Kilmer replaced Keaton.

But it’s the apparent dismissal of DC’s 2011 movie, Green Lantern, that is just flat-out foolish.  No matter what one thinks about the only movie outing of the emerald guardian, it is nevertheless a movie that establishes the character, providing a bit of groundwork already done and dusted for a potential Justice League movie.  And yet, it seems as though this movie is not to be included in the new continuity established by Man of Steel.

Good grief, DC.  Why not let Green Lantern be your Star Trek: The Motion Picture?  Learn from it’s mistakes(amongst which, I don’t think anyone would include the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan), and go make a better follow-up.  Why throw away the work that was put into that movie?  Lose the CGI suit and design him a physical costume maybe, but at least get something from it.

DOES THE JOB: Reynolds as Green Lantern

If indeed, they go to the extreme of not only scrapping Ryan Reynolds as Jordan, but actually scrapping Jordan altogether in favour of another Green Lantern, they’ll have done two things incredibly wrong.

One- they’ll be completely disregarding DC canon by establishing the Justice League without one of it’s true founding members, namely the original silver age Lantern, Hal Jordan.

And Two- they’ll have just wasted an entire movie, it’s multi-million dollar budget and a decent bit of casting.

Don’t be stupid, guys.  Get Mr. Reynolds on the phone.

Otherwise, face the reality of Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon laughing at you chasing your own tails, well into the future.