Board Thread:DC Universe Discussion/@comment-3974095-20130611233337/@comment-1895174-20130722200234

It also doesn't help that any major storyline featuring Diana sucked big time (Amazons Attack is best left forgotten) and good stories are rare. Everyone can list good Superman stories. Everyone can list good Batman stories. Wonder Woman.... ehm... let me get back to you on that. I actually think there is a way to make a good Wonder Woman movie. Most superhero movies aren't straight adaptations of specific stories, tending to either be very loose adaptations (like Iron Man 3 and Extremis or X-Men: The Last Stand and The Dark Phoenix Saga), or are just completely original stories. It just needs the right people behind it. Unfortunately, the female lead (for whatever reason) tends to be something superhero movies screw up on. Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, Halle Berry in the X-Men movies, Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man, Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four, heck even Megan Fox in Jonah Hex - the female lead is one of the weaker parts in superhero movies more often than they should be. So a movie where that female lead is also the main character is something to worry about. Remember the idiots who yelled "why did they make Green Lantern white" when the movie came out? The only thing it did was inform the audience there was more than one Lantern. As long as they don't use Kyle or Guy (or Ryan Reynolds), it should be fine. Oh, and they'd better give him a decent costume too. It's been a while since the DCAU ended, so is John Stewart still that well known compared to Hal? And has Geoff Johns' run not made Hal more "current" (for lack of a better term)? If anything, it might make for a funny scene if John Stewart shows up and:
 * SM: Where's the other guy?
 * JS: It didn't work out.

The tone of MoS was so dark comic relief will not help it anything, I agree with that. Plus, another problem with Flash is he's wearing a unitard. Grown men should just not wear a unitard. They end up looking three sizes wider, which doesn't really fit with the sleak image of the Flash. I think a cinematic Flash would look something like his Injustice: Gods Among Us counterpart, where the costume looks more like armor. That being said, he still does look ridiculous. Captain America: The First Avenger was able to get around that character's date/ridiculous look by making him part of a USO show, something purposefully colorful and ridiculous-looking, and by making the wings on his cowl art painted on his helmet. I don't think a Flash movie in the same continuity as Man of Steel could get around those little lightning bolts on the side of his head. Yes, yes it can't go well.. We've got two heroes who can carry a truckload of stories, one woman (meaning she can, but the writers can't), Green Lantern who's better off on his own, and a couple of characters (Flash, J'onn) who can't even carry their own movie. I think Flash could carry his own movie. They just need to get the right people working on it and find the right tone (not Man of Steel's). After all, Flash right now is in no worse a position than Iron Man was prior to 2008. J'onn, on the other hand, really doesn't need to get his own movie since he is so tied to the Justice League. I wouldn't be against seeing J'onn in another hero's movie. Maybe even the Man of Steel sequel if it helped tie in to some cosmic threat (and because he isn't Batman).

As for Green Lantern being better off on his own, that's how most of these characters are. This shift in focus towards building "shared universes" is not only entirely unnecessary, but dangerous for superhero movies as a genre. It forces studios to make more superhero films at a much more rapid pace, exhausting characters and creativity. Not to mention how dangerous it is to die one franchise's success to the success of several other franchises. Oversaturation is no longer just a concern, but an inevitability.