After watching the new trailers for the upcoming Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, one thing has become incredibly obvious: DC comics did not learn their lessons from Green Lantern. What did they miss? Why do they continue to make the same mistakes?
The Green Lantern film came off as a disappointment to the studios after it earned $116 million at the box office and a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. The biggest flaw in the film was it stuffed far too much into one film. If you think about it the story in the film could have been spaced out into an entire trilogy. In movie one, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) gets his power rings, trains with it, and defeat Hector Hammond. Movie 2: Sinestro gets the power ring of fear and released Parallax. Movie 3: Parallax who has been mentioned and eluded to in the first and second film increasing its danger and threat is now on the loose and it’s up to Hal to defeat him and restore order. Doesn’t this layout sound much more preferable than the product we got? But DC is far too busy to look back and instead charges forward and make similar mistakes.
The trailer for the upcoming movie has a pretty basic lay out on how the film will break down. Batman wants to take down Superman who he sees as a threat, Lex Luthor will create Doomsday as a way to fight Superman, Wonder Woman will arrive to aid in the fight. Now there is even talk of the film introducing Bizarro while Lex Luthor is experimenting on General Zod`s corpse. Just like how they tried to introduce too much in Green Lantern, they plan to introduce far too much in the upcoming Batman v. Superman all in an attempt to get to Justice League faster. Why haven’t they learned their lessons and insist on getting to Justice League as quick as possible?
The reason is not hard to see, DC wishes to obtain the same success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They have been trying to copy the formula Marvel introduced which led to the Avengers. Green Lantern was to be the original starting point for DC’s cinematic universe but after the disappointment with its reception this plan was scrapped and they instead decided to make the marginally more successful Man of Steel, the new starting point to work toward a Justice League movie. Now with the coming of the second film in their cinema universe you would think they would make sure to not repeat the mistakes they made with Green Lantern. Unfortunately it looks like they still have a lot to learn. Batman vs. Superman sounds just as complicated and cumbersome as Green Lantern.
Could Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice still be a good film? It’s possible but the writing’s on the wall. The film will have a lot of moments it wants to feature. Not to mention they will have to starts whispers of some type of ultimate threat the heroes will have to face in the Justice League movie the studio wants more than anything. Don’t count on them learning from their mistakes anytime soon.
