Ever since the show stopping Comic Con announcement and all the way through the casting of Ben Affleck, geek circles on the net have been abuzz with the sequel to Man of Steel (known only at this point as Batman vs. Superman or vice versa). Everything from who will be the villain(s) to will we see Gotham to will other DC favorites cameo in the film. Some love the decision to finally bring these two titans of the comic book world together on screen while other loathe it as yet another money grab on behalf of DC/Warner Bros. while they attempt to compete in earnest with the runaway freight train of success that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I, for one, love the idea of a Batman/Superman movie, as it will only help in strengthening a Justice League film. Why is that? Quite simply because Batman and Superman are arguably the two most popular superheroes ever and to simply toss them in the mix for the first time on Justice League movie would have been folly. One of the great things about The Avengers was that (with the slight exception of Hawkeye) all of our protagonists got an equal chance to shine. That being said, The Avengers is a team populated with lower first and upper second-string characters of Marvel’s universe. Therefore, individual movies that exposed them to the general public and created sufficient character arc to make The Avengers possible were an absolute necessity. Batman does not require this. One of the main complaints when The Amazing Spider Man and Man of Steel were announced was why the origin story was being re-told and in many ways they are right. Batman’s origin – along with that of Superman, Spider Man, and Hulk – is well known to a vast segment of non-comic book readers and with the recent success of the Dark Knight Trilogy, is something that is still fresh in the publics mind. This makes the idea of booting Batman into the new continuity by means of a Superman film a genius idea. Sure, most people want to see Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern share the screen with Batman and Superman, but had a Justice League film been done without this prior collaboration it can pretty much be guaranteed that it would have been no more than Batman vs. Superman featuring these other metahumans that you may or may not care about. Simply because the filmmakers and the studio are going to err on the side of caution and give the bulk of the screen time to the team-up/showdown that people really came to see. It is so much better give them a whole movie to themselves so that people can get over that initial jolt of seeing them on-screen together. So by the time JL rolls around, the script and film can work to the service of all the heroes, not just the two major players.
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