Altogether now... A recent incarnation of the Justice League of America.
After a neverending series of twists and turns it seems that the next big comic book movie adaptation will be the one that could be the biggest and most extravagant of them all: Justice League America.
Justice League was a long-running series that united DC Comics' most popular characters under one, super-crimefighting banner: Superman, Batman, Wonder Women, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter formed the core lineup, but over the years it featured literally tens more.
Now, the ultimate superhero series is set to hit the big screen, and although Brandon Routh and Christian Bale both had options for a joint movie written into their contracts for the recent Superman and Batman movies, it looks like both will now work on the respective sequels rather than JLA.
Is the film a good idea anyway? In a comic book, the already established superheroes simply arrive on page as a collective and everyone the sitution. In our touchy feely modern movie age, heroes need flaws and motivations and even the most outlandish superpowers need to be explained in icily rational terms.
In other words, the origin stories will need to be told. And if Routh and Bale aren't to appear, Justice League will need to go over Kal El being born on Krypton, rocketing to Earth and growing up in Kansas as Clark Kent (again), as well as the orphaning of Bruce Wayne and his adoption of vigilante justice (again).
Then there's all the business of the goddess Aphrodite giving Amazonian noblewoman Diana the magic lasso to transform her into Wonder Woman; how New York Cop Barry Allen got drenched in chemicals and became Flash; how Hal Jordan used an alien power ring to become Green Lantern, the human Aquaman's underwater training and all that business about the Martian Manhunter's teleportation to Earth.
That's a doozy of a backstory to get over before we've even started (part of the reason the first Fantastic Four movie sucked). Not to mention the fact that the scriptwriters will need to dream up a legitimate threat so big that the seven superheroes combined can't see it off before breakfast.
Yet perhaps the biggest obstacle for a multi-hero movie is that for it to mean something to anyone outside the shouty minority of comic book freaks, the guy with the powers needs a raft of normal human characters to measure their strengths and weaknesses against. Where would all these people fit into the story? It's going to make a credible movie a massively difficult thing to pull off.
But then, wouldn't it be a hoot to see our seven superheroes having to live and work together in a domestic situation on their moonbase, bickering and fractious but basically united. Supes and Batman engaged in power struggles and pissing contests? Wonder Woman needling the brutish males for their unreconstructed ways like some sort of supercharged Diane from Cheers? The other four's deep-seated self-loathing, engendered by the nagging suspicion that nobody has a clue who they are? Institutionalised racism in the workplace between human and alien species? Grudge matches over who finished all the milk, or used all the spandex? Played for laughs, Justice League America could be the greatest superhero movie of them all.
After all, there's probably one very good reason why a lurching, complicated story about a disparate group of superhuman crimefighters working together to save the world has been given the green light at this stage... And that reason is Heroes. Which of course begs the question - do we need Justice League America at all?
