Oh, and you thought just because Mark Millar is a creative consultant on Fox's X-men movie universe that he's suddenly tone down his brash rhetoric? If anything, it appears to have riled him up more, and he's aiming his venom at Warner Bros.' Justice League film, which he ha some serious beef with.
The studio has been taking a measured approach to developing Justice League, which is the smart move in my opinion. Millar doesn't seem to think any of it will matter, and while talking to Sci-Fi Now unleashed a hurricane of weird arguments as to why it will never work. The gist of his point seems to be that characters like Superman, Aquaman, and The Flash suck and look stupid. Um....have you seen Jubilee's costume? Get real.
Millar: "The characters were created 75 years ago, even the newest major character was created 68 years ago, so they’re in a really weird time."
Yeah, wha? The X-men are 50 years old, by the way, so they're pretty stinking old, too. I guess he feels because he's been a part of updating them as a comics writer that they are somehow hipper than DC's characters. I would agree that they are, but it's not because of Millar. And let's not forget that DC has made it a point to refresh their heroes to make them more modern. They do it a lot, actually.
From there he just gets nit-picky and starts poking fun at Green Lantern's powers, Flash's costume, and Aquaman's underwater abilities. It's the Aquaman critcism that leads me to believe Millar hasn't read an Aquaman book lately, and is working off old information. In regards to Green Lantern...
Millar: "His power is that he manifests green plasma from his imagination and uses them as weapons against someone? Even that in itself if you just imagine then watching a fight scene with a guy who’s like a hundred feet away making plasma manifestations fight someone – it’s not exactly raucous, getting up close and personal."
Ok, he may be right about that one, but really it's all in the presentation. There can be no dispute that WB f**ked that part up royally. And what about the Flash?
Millar: "The Flash has door handles on the side of his mask and if he doesn’t wear that mask, I’ll be pissed off, you know what I mean? They’re in a weird, weird situation – if you’ve got a guy who moves at the speed of light up against the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold or whatever, then your movie’s over in two seconds."
It should be noted that the X-men have a speedster, a weather-controller, and an Iceman on their roster. Just sayin'.
And then the often-ridiculed Aquaman takes another punch to the gut....
Millar: "Aquaman can’t even talk under water. If you think about it in comics it’s fine, you just have a speech balloon, but how do you have Atlantis and people talking under water? Are they gonna talking telepathically? Is it going to be body forms?"
I think if Millar bothered to think about these things for even a moment he'd figure out a way around all of these problems. He's a smart enough guy, even if he thinks the creative folks at WB aren't. In all, he doesn't think Justice League stands a chance of success...
Millar: "The actual logistics of each member of the Justice League is disastrous, and you put them all together and I think you get an excellent way of losing $200 million."
A lot of people said the same thing about The Avengers, until Marvel and Joss Whedon proved them wrong. That's not to say Justice League is in the exact same boat, but with enough time and attention any problems can be ironed out. Of course, this could all be moot if Man of Steel flops in a few months. As for Millar, this is just him showing off and drawing attention away from the similar issues Fox is facing.
