Warner Brothers Wakes Up - Kinda

Warner Bros. has recently announced that they had decided to mine the DC Comics superheroes available to them through corporate synergy due to the success of The Dark Knight. Although prior to this announcement, some talk had been running through the executive offices as to what to do with the Superman franchise, and The Flash, Green Lantern and Captain Marvel movies are in various stages of development, the recent acknowledgment that they have superheroes at their beck and call seems to be a move that any other corporation might have made long before now.

Marvel, based primarily upon the success of Sony's Spiderman franchise but specifically the first Spiderman and X-Men movies, quickly managed to get these franchises going, adding the Fantastic Four to the list of successful series (although why these shoddy productions are a success is a mystery) and has twice made poor to middling movies based upon The Incredible Hulk. The latter Hulk was from Marvel’s own studio, which earlier this past summer proved itself with Iron Man.

With the success of Iron Man, Marvel boldly announced a slate of movies that included an Iron Man sequel, Thor, a two-part Captain America film and ultimately a movie with all of the characters combined, The Avengers.

Warner's on the other hand, after smartly restarting the Batman franchise, acted too wishy-washy in response to Superman Returns. So, as The Dark Knight zoomed past Star Wars as the second highest grossing film of all time, the suits at Warners finally woke up with one late to the party brilliant idea, “Lets make more superhero movies” and a second totally bone headed one: “Lets reboot Superman and make it dark, like Batman.”

Once again, a major studio decides to copy success (this time from themselves) without understanding what should be copied. Why were The Dark Knight and Batman Begins so successful? Hmmmm....not good script, not good actors, not good direction ...oh I know, because it was dark!! Maybe just maybe, Superman Returns did not meet expectations (but let's face it, grossing $392 million worldwide is not failure) because as a movie it was good but not great. Maybe just maybe, Superman Returns would have done better if it had been an ACTION movie instead of a romance. Maybe, just maybe, Warner's should try to copy the emphasis placed on putting together talented people to make a movie, rather than assume a single element makes all the difference. Batman's darkness is organic, and the darkness within him is the reason Bruce Wayne is Batman. Moreover, the source material for the movie, not the least of which is Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, leads to Bruce Wayne's dark character and the look and feel of the movie. Superman is who he is because he rises above the human negatives.

How can the artists hired by Warner Brothers know what it takes to be successful, and then have those elements lost on those raking in the money? Anybody who has seen The Dark Knight knows that the movie was a great film, and deserves the money that it is making, because of a great script, great acting, and good plotting that happen to include action elements and a dark mood.

Message to Warners: Your hero is pre-sold – just make a good movie. We will show up.