I’ve noticed that a regular comment here when it comes to movies like
The Green Lantern and
The Flash is the desire for a particular version of the character to appear in the movies. Some fans maybe want Hal Jordan while others might want Guy Gardner, or some want Barry Allen and others want Wally West. This is understandable, everyone has their own favorites and these aren't the only characters to which this situation applies. DC has chosen to go with the Silver Age version for
Green Lantern movie as has Marc Guggenheim for his treatment of
The Flash.
But what about their sequels? Will they keep only using these characters in future films? With such a wealth of material and diverse characters to draw from I think it would be rather limiting not to. But then the question is when and how. I think it’s tougher in the movies in a sense than for the comic books and I think the difference is in the audience. The comics have a group of dedicated readers who are willing to get to know the character and understand the overall situation over considerable time, whereas to the casual movie-going public it’s going to seem a little confusing and maybe even forced or unnatural within the 2 hours or whatever of screen time.
Still if it is done, how do you ration the movies between the characters? I think the case of Robin is a good example for this question. Dick Grayson as Robin was introduced in 1940, Jason Todd in 1983 and Tim Drake in 1989. So how do you split these characters across the movies? The key problem is that future of the franchise is unknown. The studio can’t predict how movies they have to work across, so how can they properly plan the appropriate time for each character. If they introduce Dick Grayson as Robin, how many movies do they keep him around for? Say they make a trilogy with Grayson, do they then devote one film to Todd, then another to Drake? And is that really enough time to go from explaining why the previous Robin isn’t around, to introducing his replacement, to getting rid of him? The uncertainty of the franchise can also work in the opposite direction, for instance if after making 3 films with Grayson and 1 with Todd, they end up with another 5 films, are the rest going to be all Drake? With that many films wouldn’t they have wanted to better spread out the use of the characters? I realise there are other versions of the character, but my point is that it’s hard to plan for characters with an unknown franchise future, especially in the somewhat fickle industry of film.
There’s also the problem of trying to return to an earlier version. Say you reach Drake and audiences don’t respond well to him, what can you do? Once you move on through the versions, the flexibility in using the characters dramatically decreases. Now I’ve been using Robin as an example and realise for example that the Green Lanterns co-exist but still, assuming they’re used in solo films, switching between Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart and Kyle Rayner every movie just won’t work with the general audience. Of course, that was assuming you only have one iteration per movie. Certainly, combining them together, as in the Green Lantern Corps idea I’ve seen suggested around here is possible, but then again it’s difficult to go from solo character to group, back to solo again.
Of course, all of this is based on the assumption that these movies are successful enough to warrant sequels. My main point I guess is that, sidekicks aside, the idea of different characters assuming the mantle of a certain superhero hasn’t really been explored yet in the movies and I think DC in particular are going to find it a considerable challenge to effectively incorporate it into film franchises like
The Green Lantern and
The Flash.
What do you guys think? What's the best way to handle the different Flashes, Robins, Green Lanterns, etc.?