A couple months ago, I Am Legend had a nice sentiment in its opening minutes, a giant teaser poster hanging in Time Square for a Batman/Superman World’s Finest movie. Just seeing the legendary S and bat symbols overlapping each other on the screen gave me goosebumps, I gotta admit. But it probably will never happen. Chris Nolan has gone on record to say he isn’t interested in doing a World’s Finest movie, and I’m not sure another director would want to tackle it. The World’s Finest movie, in fact, isn’t on my following list of great comic films that we’ll probably never get to see, because don’t want it to happen, at least not for a long while. The Batman from the Begins continuity is a reboot, something entirely different from the previous film versions, and much closer to the way he’s portrayed in current comic continuity. On the other hand, we’ve never seen a version of Superman that resembles the comic book version. The last Superman film continued (in my opinion, mistakingly) the original Christopher Reeve continuity that began in 1978. The studio would want it to be the current Batman and the current Superman. Brandon Routh’s Superman and Christian Bale’s Batman are in two entirely different veins, and to mix them would be like combining the Bruce Timm animated universe with Superfriends. Okay, it wouldn’t be that bad, but pretty awkward.

Popular well-made fan trailer– this would be the Batman/Superman film I’d want to see.

The following are 5 movies I’m sure will never get made, but represent some of the more complex stories and ambitious project possibilities, were any of these to become pitches a studio would consider.

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN

Yeah, this will never happen. It was the highest grossing graphic novel of all time, it was the most complex story ever told in the Superman mythos, it introduced a lot of interesting characters that made the Superman universe a lot more fun to be in… and, oh yeah, they already tried to make this movie in the late 90s. Several times, in fact. Tim Burton was supposed to direct it, at one point. Nicholas Cage was slated to play Superman and finally bowed out after several scripts were rejected and a lot of money was spent with nothing ever going into production. Apparently it never happened because Kevin Smith and Tim Burton went to war over script issues. As I mentioned, now that the old movie continuity has been brought back to life and a sequel to Returns already planned (Superman Man of Steel) I’m afraid we may never see a Superman more like the comic version, much less the Death of/Reign of the Supermen film. Sure, the movies use some characters from the comics, but there are a lot of great villains they’ll probably never use. One script for the abandoned “Superman Lives” project I read once included Brainiac, and it looked pretty good. To never do powerhouses like Darkseid or Doomsday, villains that are more of a match than Lex Luthor ever has been in a film, is a shame. The cinematic possibilities for the Death of Superman film can’t be over-estimated; the fight with Doomsday, the mysterious appearance of the four impostors (especially Cyborg) and Superman’s resurrection. The Bruce Timm animated version is pretty good but I still ache when I think we’ll never see a live-action version.

One of the early sketches for Superman Lives.

NO MAN’S LAND

If you don’t know the background on this late 90s major Batman arc, Gotham suffered an earthquake in another arc called Cataclysm. It crippled the city and afterward, the government decided to evacuate the city, destroy the bridges, and let all the inmates at Arkham out. Gordon and a lot of the Gotham police stayed behind, knowing a lot of homeless and some stubborn people wouldn’t leave, regardless of there being no way to leave the island, no electricity and dangerous criminals running around. Gangs, many led by major villains, warred for territory, as did the GCPD, Batman and a few other caped crime fighters. It was dark, brutal, and very gripping. I recommend not only the graphic novels but the novelization, skillfully re-told by Greg Rucka.

I’d say out of everything on this list, this one could, someday, be in the realm of movie possibilities, assuming the Batman film franchise stays on the track it’s going and continues past three movies. The problem with doing NML in the Begins continuity is that you’d have to establish too many characters before hand. What made NML great, much like the Death of Superman, was a complicated plot with some great new characters (namely the new Batgirl) mixed in with a lot of great old ones. It would be like Batman meets disaster film meets organized crime film. If it ever happened, it would have to be completely re-thought unless it was another reboot, with Oracle, Huntress, Nightwing, and a whole bunch of villains, many of which have never appeared on the big screen.

SAM AND TWITCH

I know what you’re thinking. There already was a Spawn picture, in 1997. I know. And I’m still trying to forget about it. The problem was that it was approached like many other comic book films. It had a simple, cookie-cutter plot, two-dimensional characters (especially Martin Sheen’s Jason Wynn) a lot of cheesy one-liners and some abysmal set design. I won’t deny that, for the day, Hell looked pretty neat, as did Violator and the way Spawn’s cape and chains were animated. But it was a film made to look like a comic book, when it should have been a film that looked like a film but took it’s story cues from a comic book.

A few years back, I read that Todd McFarlaine would have liked to have made a movie more from the point of view of human characters, namely Sam and Twitch (who only appeared as cameos in the Spawn movie). Spawn and the battle of Heaven and Hell would mostly be in the background, with Sam and Twitch in the middle of it, investigating all of the supernatural things happening and getting in over their heads. Spawn wouldn’t even have a lot of dialog. But that’s a slower, more artsy movie than a studio would want to make, so it didn’t and will probably never happen. To make it right, it would need to look more like a horror movie and less like a comic book, so an R rating would be necessary to do it right. It wouldn’t be a non-stop action film. And it would certainly be more real to the viewer because Spawn isn’t exactly a character people can relate to. He’s dead, he’s a hell-spawn, he’s technically not even human anymore, and even though he has ties to Earth and human desires, he doesn’t really have human problems. Sam and Twitch are cops with opposite personalities– one’s a genius, sharp shooter, soft spoken, has a pretty wife and a family, and the other is a stereotypical fat cop who eats donuts and has no manners but is good at detective work and has a lot of heart. That’s a dynamic that would play out well on screen and would give it the slight, light comedy it would need.

MARVEL ZOMBIES

Marve’s doing a really good job with movies. There have been some duds. And three apparently isn’t Marvel’s number… but at least most of the firsts have been really good (Spider-Man, X-Men, Ghost Rider, etc). So it’s hard to say any Marvel movie will never get made because they just keep whipping them out. Even Avengers is supposed to happen once Iron Man and Captain America have both come to screen, so who knows? Might there be a Secret Wars film? Something resembling Maximum Carnage (but please, dear God, find a way to resurrect Venom)? I’d say the door is wide open.

But then, there’s Marvel Zombies, the mini-series that surprised everyone in its immense popularity. The premise is simple: every superpowered person on Earth gets turned into a zombie and they all need to eat human (or alien) flesh to survive. The plot is a little thicker than that, but not by much. Now there’s a second mini-series and even a crossover with Army of Darkness. How cool would a superhero zombie picture be? Imagine getting back every actor you could, good guys and bad guys, from previous Marvel films, and everyone who signed up, those would be the characters you’d use. Then you use the original characters’ back stories to inform the zombie versions, like they did in the mini-series, have a really scary but really funny script and just go to town! It’d be rated R, naturally, but Zombies is a little rough for the younger kids anyway. It’ll never happen, but it should– I think it would actually turn out a lot of viewers.

THE TICK

Patrick Warburton really needs to reprise this role. The live action series had 9 episodes and most people who have seen them and get that kind of humor agree that as far as sitcoms go, it was something special. If it had a moderate budget and Ben Edlund wrote and produced it, it would be fantastic. It deserves this treatment every bit as much as Firefly did (which spun-off big screen Serenity after being canceled at 13 episodes). I don’t think it would do as well at the box office as Serenity did, but if the DVD sales of the series are any indication, it wouldn’t do bad. This has been the decade for superhero movies, so if there was a good time to make The Tick movie, it’d be now. A big budget version would give the live action Tick a chance to fight villains, which happened rarely in the TV show since it was a sitcom on a short budget, possibly the kind you’d need CGI for like Chairface Chippendale. A film about Chairface trying to deface the moon would be keen.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan