Interesting developments in LA-LA Land…Zach Snyder’s latest project, Sucker Punch, has lost half of its cast due to “scheduling conflicts.” The boys over at slashfilm (who I grifted this story from) seem to think that Snyder’s inability to deliver with Watchmen at the box office may be a component as to why half his cast is ebbing away. Evan Rachel Wood, Emma Stone, and Amanda Seyfried have all dropped and have been replaced by less expensive actresses, such as, Emily Browning, Jamie Chung, and Jenna Malone (The only validated one out of the bunch for her work in Donnie Darko). Apart from the news about Jenna Malone (who I think is actually an upgrade) it’s very disheartening to see Snyder’s project falling apart. The Alice in Wonderland-esque story description found in the above link to /film sounds incredamazing. Hopefully, it won’t be daunted by Warner’s downgrading of its budget/cast.
So, in my usual way, I’d like to take this opportunity to explore a barely-related tangent. I am a self-professed nerd. I ADORE comic books, superheroes and the like and have been especially pleased with the revitalization of the cape and cowl at the box office. However, I’m becoming more and more afraid. The only reason that superhero flicks have obtained the adequate funding that they need to be fully relized on the silver screen, is because Hollywood is banking off of the profits established by the Spider-man franchise, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight, to name a few. As soon as profits start slipping and the genre becomes financially undesirable, the age of heroics onscreen will be as quickly abandoned as it was picked up. After Watchmen’s flaccid delivery after a WAY hyped pre-release and with the upcoming Wolverine flick’s ginormous propensity to equally suck, it looks as though we may be headed for some rough cinematic seas in the comic realm.
Of course, all of these noted films are in the present, whereas the future is what we can look to for an indication as to whether or not we comic-lovers are able to breathe easy for the future of our beloved franchise films or if we’re officially screwed. And my verdict is that we are officially, without a shadow of a doubt, screwed. The upcoming crop of hero franchises in pre-producition are as follows: Thor, The Avengers, Iron Man 2, The Green Lantern, Magneto, X-men: First Class, Sin City II, Ant-man, and G.I. Joe among others rumored to be in talks. When you step back and look at this list, you release the absolute breadth of the storys involved. All of these franchises are big, sweeping, epic stories(sans Ant-Man), incaple of being produced for anything short of The Dark Knight’s production value. Thor is a mystical Norse thunder god, The Green Lantern is a space odyssey, X-men simply needs to up its value after seeing some of the screens from Wolverine, and The Avengers is the franchise where all these heroes converge. What I’m trying to say is that there is a HUGE margin for error in the production of theses up-and-comers. As I have stated before, we have barely mastered the approach to comic books steeped mostly in reality (i.e. Spider-man and batman), we are NOT ready to take on mystical outer space warfare and the greatest collection of spandex-covered heroes in history. We simply aren’t ready to produce these kinds of work, from both a production standpoint and from a treatment, or a writer’s standpoint.
Hollywood is a fickle beast, to say the very least (Hey, that rhymed). Once these films start bombing in succession (and believe you, me, they probably will) Hollywood will see the gaping wound it has produced, stop the bleeding, and then routinely move on to some other manner of business (fire up High School Musical 8, boys!). We have to take our time and step away from certain super hero franchises before we prematurely explore them all in the form of sub-par cinema. (See The Hulk and The Punisher for, not two, but FOUR perfect examples of this.)
