Justice League On Film

GREEN LANTERN: DIRECTOR MARTIN CAMPBELL DISCUSSES F/X

In an interview with The Coventry Telegraph, director Martin Campbell discusses the challenges he'll be facing in terms of the visual effects for Green Lantern. "It's daunting," he said. "Just the process, something like 1,300 visual effects shows, it's mind-blowing, quite hoenstly. A lof of the special effects shots work will concentrate on the Green Lantern power ring. It's energized by a batter on the planet Oa, which taps into the willpower of everyone in the universe. From that ring you can form constructs. So if you got into a fight, you could form a giant fist or a fighter plane."
   In the same article he discussed the appeal of shooting the film in New Orleans, with production beginning in April. He also sang the virtues of GL being different from other superhero characters: "He's the only superhero to my knowledge who regularly goes to another planet. Superman and Batman were essentially locked into a particular city. The Lantern isn't so Earthbound."

THE MAKING OF "SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES"

 

Based on the storyline from the Superman/Batman comic book, the film poses that a large chunk of the planet Krypton is on a direct-heading for earth, which seems to be all of the ammunition that Luthor needs to bring the Man of Steel down once and for all.

 

“To a large degree, this is Luthor’s story,” offers writer Stan Berkowitz, who adapted the comic. “When you first meet him, it seems that he’s been reformed and is making a real difference in America. It’s just this meteor that screws everything up, and Luthor’s hubris to not want to work with Superman. That’s his fatal flaw in this story. He’s the science nerd who won’t accept the help of the star athlete and he just goes crazy.”

 

Jeph Loeb, who had been writing the Superman comic before launching Superman/Batman, explains that his goal with “Public Enemies” was to deal with the fact that he had made Luthor president. “It was time for Luthor to go,” he says matter of factly. “So that was the big story. At the time, the whole idea was to act as a metaphor for a country insisting there were weapons of mass destruction in another country and then invading that country. Which we all know would be fiction. This was another fictional account of what would happen if the President of the United States decided that something was an imminent threat and would then make sure that people, who were actually innocent, would be hunted down and put into some kind of prison situation. It was a great way to kick off the series, which was to have Luthor offer a billion dollar ransom for the capture of Superman, which meant every villain in the world would come out after him and that anyone who helped him would be convicted as well, which put Batman on the outside — which is where he wanted to be anyway.”

 

The challenge of adaptation, says Berkowitz, was to make it believable that the public would turn against Superman. This was accomplished when it seems that Superman has killed one of his enemies, Metallo, and Luthor makes the claim that the closer this Kryptonite meteor gets to earth, the more impact its radiation will have on Superman, causing him to act irrationally. The general public then becomes paranoid about Superman, making it all the more believable.”

 Initially President Luthor offers a bounty for Superman’s capture, resulting in numerous villains going out after him. Then he turns to America’s superheroes and, issuing an executive order, has them (including Hawkman and Captain Marvel) try to bring Superman and Batman in, resulting in an incredible super powered smack down that spans a decent part of the film’s running time.

SMALLVILLE: EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS BRIAN PETERSON & KELLY SOUDERS

Justice League On Film editor Edward Gross was among reporters who had the opportunity to speak to Smallville executive producers Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders at this year's Comic-Con. What follows is an audio version of that conversation, in which they discuss season nine of the series.

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WONDER WOMAN'S (ALMOST) RETURN TO TELEVISION

Back at the beginning of the decade, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman creator Deborah Joy Levine developed a new TV version of Wonder Woman, and got as far as writing the script for the pilot and beginning the casting process before the project fell apart. At the time, though, we caught up with Levine who, between casting sessions, took a few minutes to discuss her approach to the Amazon Princess. This interview was originally posted at our sister site at www.scifitvzone.com.

SCIFI TV ZONE: So, what is it with you and super heroes?

DEBORAH JOY LEVINE: I guess I’m back. I didn’t mean to come back, but I came back to Warner Bros. after working for some time at Columbia Sony Tri-Star. And just as I arrived at Warner Bros., they purchased the rights to do Wonder Woman from DC Comics. I was here, they looked at me and they looked at DC Comics and the rest is history. It was the same kind of deal that I had with Lois & Clark: “Come up with a new take on Wonder woman.” I think I’ve managed to do that. At least I hope it’s a new take, because I never saw the old [Lynda Carter] series and I decided I didn’t want to read a lot of comic books so that I wouldn’t be influenced.

SCIFI TV ZONE: So how would you describe your new take on Wonder Woman?

DEBORAH JOY LEVINE: I guess my new take is that she is a Greek history professor, a young and very bright woman having a hard time juggling her personal life with her work. In this case, of course, her real work is being an Amazon warrior. It’s, like, “I’ll save the world, come home, pop a Lean Cuisine in the oven and watch the soap I taped this afternoon.” In many ways, she’s like a real woman, a real person. There’s a lot less holier than thou, out to fight for truth and justice, and more or less the fact that she’s here, she did come from Paradise Island, she was sent by her mother who the gods spoke to and said you have to send an emissary. So she came here and that’s sort of what she’s supposed to do as Wonder Woman, but she’s trying to live a normal life as Diana Prince, Greek history professor, as well.

SCIFI TV ZONE: On Lois & Clark, the super heroics, at least in the beginning, were very much a backdrop to the relationship . Where does that stand in Wonder Woman?

DEBORAH JOY LEVINE: I think about the same. There’s more concentration on her personal life, her love life. I think that she tries to live a normal life, but she will kick ass when she has to. That will probably happen in episodes a couple of times because she does, of course, get herself into situations that she shouldn’t. I think this is not a show that’s totally about her fighting the bad guys, and certainly not , as it was in the comic books, where she has to fight monsters. No monsters here.

SCIFI TV ZONE: Were there any lessons from Lois & Clark that you think you’re bringing to this show? DEBORAH JOY LEVINE: I think what worked on Lois & Clark is that it was really 50/50 or 60/40 relationship and stuff going on between them versus the bad guys they had to deal with. The problem with Lois & Clark in the later years is that there was less emphasis when I left the show on relationship, or very sort of hurried relationship to try and serve the plotline of the bad guys. I sort of think people want both. I guess if you were to compare this to something, it would have to be Ally McBeal meets Xena. She can be like Xena and beat a group of people if she has to, but the drama of her life as a single woman living in Los Angeles is probably the priority here. -- Edward Gross

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