Geek- Every year at San Diego Comic-Con, the two largest comic book publishing companies use the opportunity to make big announcements and hype up their fan bases. With the advent of the superhero blockbuster cinematic universe as a viable way to make tons of money, the battle for attention at Comic-Con has only gotten more fevered. It’s very possible to be a fan of both movie, television, and streaming line-ups from both Marvel and DC, but it is also something of a tradition to pick a side to pledge allegiance to.
In the spirit of unity, let us not pick a side, but in the spirit of organization, let us split the big 2016 hero media reveals into DC and Marvel chunks. This covers the Warner Bros. DC Comics movies and the CW DC Comics shows. The good news about this one is there is tons of video you can watch (and judge) right now.
Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins looks like she’s managed to take one of the best parts of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and volley it into an exciting standalone film. DC and Warner Bros are way ahead of Marvel on this one with Wonder Woman being the first solo film in the new DC Cinematic Universe since 2013’s Man of Steel. In comparison, Marvel’s Captain Marvel doesn’t come out until March 2019, over a decade after Iron Man kicked that series off and eight years after Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow debuted in Iron Man 2.
This Wonder Woman trailer is light on plot (although there are pieces of it in there) and spends more time establishing that we’ll learn about Diana’s origins on an island inhabited only by women, and she’ll kick some ass in a World War. We’re only briefly shown the other characters in the movie and given no reason as to why Diana accompanies Steve Trevor back to the world of man, but the focus of the trailer is Diana. Oh, and the movie somehow finds the visual balance between grit and color that Man of Steel had and Dawn of Justice missed.
Zack Snyder having anything from the Justice League is a bit surprising. The most we’d heard from the film came from a very exclusive set visit for some BvS-hating critics who got to visit Justice League and see a completed scene of Bruce Wayne recruiting Barry Allen. Luckily, that scene wasn’t just finished to be described by writers, we got to see it too.
The problem with the Justice League footage is that it’s primarily made up of two scenes where Bruce Wayne is trying to recruit Aquaman and The Flash. There’s a moment of brilliance when Ezra Miller puts together that the man in his hideout is Batman while dodging a batarang in slow motion, but otherwise this clip is selling the Ocean’s Eleven of the DC Cinematic Universe. That could be great, except that’s not what this movie is.
The shot of the Motherbox buried in the ground confirms: we’re still building to these heroes fighting a big CGI blob in the middle of some desolate environment. Just having that knowledge hanging over a few jokes from Bruce Wayne (not good jokes, just things that are easily identifiable as jokes) is enough to leave a sour aftertaste in my mouth.
How much do you like Will Arnett? If the character he’s been playing on Arrested Development, BoJack Horseman, and Flaked is up your alley, you’ll probably love Lego Batman. The Lego universe is distinctly separate from the DC Cinematic Universe’s’ canon, so like the Lego Movie before it, this brick animated film will get to skewer the conventions of Batman.
Arnett’s flawed hyper-masculinity will now be applied to the Bat, who is being parented by Alfred and saddled with Robin. Robin picking his costume and ripping the pants off is great, and the Lego style is visually distinct as always, but Lego movies don’t always make the best trailers. This trailer feels like it is coasting, I’m just not sure if it’s coasting on Lego, Batman, or Will Arnett.
The CW had back-to-back-to-back-to-back superhero TV show panels on Saturday and the only one that didn’t bestow any new footage on us was Supergirl, the relative newcomer to the network (both Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow are going into season two, but Supergirl’s debut was on CBS).
Supergirl is adding Superman (Teen Wolf’s Tyler Hoechlin) to this season and the CW Flarrowverse, and anything that requires the Super cousins to team up has to be a large threat. Will it be whatever landed in that pod from the end of season one? We were told The Vampire Diaries actor Chris Woods was in that pod, but were not told who or what he is playing.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is going through a bit of a change from season one where the team of superheroes fought a single big bad called Vandal Savage. Instead, Legends of Tomorrow season two is all about teams. After breaking the Time Master’s hold on the timeline, the Legends (now with a Maisie Richardson-Sellers Vixen joining the team) have to protect the timeline themselves.
At the end of last season Hourman showed up to tease the Justice Society of America, and even though it’s not in the footage we got, we know the line-up of the JSA that will be appearing. Commander Steel is a metahuman with super strength and speed, Dr. Mid-Nite is blind in the daytime but has goggles that lets him see at night, Obsidian has shadow-based powers that can be interpreted a few ways on T.V., and Stargirl can fly and shoot energy bursts thanks to her magic staff. Hourman will also be returning.
That’s not the cool thing, though, the cool thing is that Legends is going to introduce a Legion of Doom supervillain team. What makes it cooler than the JSA is these aren’t generic bad guys we’re meeting for the first time, these are villains we already know from the other CW shows. Damien Darhk and Malcom Merlyn from Arrow are joining up with Eobard Thawne from Flash and Captain Cold from Flash and Legends.
We knew going into Comic-Con that Wentworth Miller (whose character died at the end of the first season of Legends) was somehow going to be on both The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow this year. This new team of villains idea explains how.
Since the Legends trailer shows that Darhk will be introduced there fairly early on, I think it’s safe to start thinking about the CW four-show crossover they have planned as an event against the Legion of Doom. With the Legion being antagonists that have already caused chaos across the existing shows, bringing Supergirl into the fold as a last resort makes good plotting sense.
The Flash
If that is the case, the first half of the new season on all the CW shows should probably be a slow build to that Legion of Doom showdown and Flash holds the key to how that could happen. Flash season three is doing Flashpoint, where Barry has gone back in time and changed everything by saving his mother from Reverse Flash.
Thing is, Reverse Flash shows up in this trailer, as does a whole bunch of alt-universe stuff (Wally as Kid Flash, some other black-suited Reverse Flash?). The Flash panel said that Flashpoint will echo down through all the other CW shows, which means that The Flash is probably the key to understanding how Wentworth Miller is back as Captain Cold and how Katie Cassidy is going to return to Arrow as Black Canary even though she’s dead, too. Also, because Flash and Legends are now both dealing with the consequences of time travel, we can’t tell if the caged Reverse Flash in this trailer needs to be released to be part of the Legion of Doom or if he already was part of the Legion of Doom and is deeper into his own timeline as…
…ouch, my head.
As far as CW shows go, Arrow is Batman. So just like Bruce Wayne was a brooding loner until everyone got tired of that, Oliver Queen has to form a Batfamily around him to keep us interested. Either by being dead or being mad at Oliver, the old Team Arrow has disbanded, so it’s time to train Team Arrow version two with newcomers Evelyn Sharp (Madison McLaughlin) and Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez).
The big bad looks to be Prometheus, who is just a guy who trains to be a badass. Unlike his comics counterpart, it sounds like TV show Prometheus will be motivated by Green Arrow’s past failures, not by the murder of his hippy parents. Considering the comic book version is independently wealthy, I’d side-eye any new money that sweeps into Star City this season.
Fuente: www.geek.com
