Board Thread:DC Universe Discussion/@comment-3974095-20130611233337/@comment-1895174-20130723022633

As for Aquaman, I am in complete agreement. To me, Flash doesn't stand out as a character that could support an independent movie, let alone an independent series of films. But Aquaman? Not only is he an interesting character, but he has a whole civilization standing (or sinking, I guess) behind him. I'd love to see seemingly human Arthur Curry discover his Atlantean heritage, travel to the lost city, and really get into the political intrigue that has made Game of Thrones so enticing and successful. I love Aquaman, too, but the potential for an Aquaman movie is so laughable it was a recurring joke on the show Entourage. Point taken, however, in The Amazing Spider-Man we had to sit through forty-five minutes of origin story we'd already scene before. Sure, it was tweaked, but it followed the same recipe/to-do list. With this Superman/Batman approach, audiences can be introduced to a new Batman without the forty-five minutes of origin which everyone knows. You can just say "here's Batman, he's not Christian Bale, he's been cured of throat cancer, get on with the movie". It would take less than ten minutes to really set up both Batman and Bruce Wayne's personalities. That TASM retread so much of the same water the 2002 film did is part of why the film underperformed, but the cynicism over rebooting a franchise that didn't need one and so soon hurt it more. Besides, the time Sony waited to reboot Spider-Man seems generous compared to this. There's more time between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises than there is between TDKR and the reboot. I think that in light of all the female-lead flops, Warner Bros. should really see this as not a deterrent, but as an opportunity for something new; an excellent film with a female lead. Warner Bros. are not in the business of taking huge risks. A Vietnam War-era Wonder Woman would be interesting, as would a story based closer to Themyscira. And though largely unpopular, I think a lot of Wonder Woman's villains could be tweaked to fit that slightly realistic tone audiences are dying over. In thinking about a Wonder Woman movie, I agree a period piece would be best. But not Vietnam. Rather, put the first film in WWII and the sequels in the Cold War. Take inspiration from the Indiana Jones series, Captain America: The First Avenger, and X-Men: First Class.

Villain? Don't go all in with Ares on the first outing. Make him an arc villain, feeding off these wars on a global scale. Make Felix Faust the conduit between Ares and the mortal world. Do Paula von Gunther as the Toht/Red Skull character, trying to obtain a powerful weapon from Ancient Greece (that she learned about through Faust) for the Nazi army. That weapon being the villain Genocide. And maybe Tomek Morah is her Arnim Zola (he is Polish, after all).

Sequels? Throw in less marketable DC heroes with shades of the Cold War. Aquaman's origin in Greek Myth makes him a natural fit, and potential war between the Atlanteans and Surface-Dwellers screams of MAD and the Cuban Missile Crisis. For another, red robots disguised as everyday Americans is one of the central tenets of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Just NO JUSTICE LEAGUE.

...Sorry for nerding out there, but this is something I've been sitting on for a while.