Don’t Forget The Little Guy

It was a great week for me. I got verbally chastised by a DC Comics fan for my suggestion of a Justice League movie, I read an article about why Bradley Cooper was rejected as Green Lantern, and I had an in-depth discussion about the state of the union as far as comic book movies are concerned. In short, it was a great week to be a geek.

Today is Star Wars‘ birthday, so geeks everywhere are celebrating. And they should. Geeks used to be made fun of during childhood. Now, we rule not only the business world (reference Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), but we are starting to rule the entertainment world with kick ass movies.

One thing struck me as funny and the other struck me as absurd as I was perusing the blogs, web news, and other sources about comic book movies. The funny was the news that Bradley Cooper didn’t get cast as Green Lantern because he read the script in a Christian Bale-type Batman voice. Not only does this not work as Green Lantern, it shows you what kind of moron Bradley is for using another actor’s work to gain a role for yourself. If I was the casting director it would’ve went down like this:

“Um, that’s really great there, Bradley. Can you now move down stage left? No, just a little farther. Yes, out that door and into the alley please. Thanks.”

The only mystery about this is why Cooper made the short list of actors in the first place. The man’s a douche and has done one good movie. And he wasn’t even the best actor in that movie. I can’t wait until the Bradley Cooper experiment is over.

The item of interest I found absurd was an interview I read with producer Joel Silver. He was one of the brilliant masterminds behind The Losers, which was God awful at best, and is also trying to resurrect Swamp Thing. The one quote I loved is when he defended The Losers. He actually called it good and said he thought it followed the comic book. Well, Joel, stop thinking. You spent more money blowing things up then you did concentrating on the story. I mean, seriously, the movie made $26 million WORLDWIDE!! It didn’t just bomb in the U.S., but people in Kyrgyzstan didn’t think much of it either.

Despite these two hiccups of comic book idiocy, I still think comic book movies are entering, or have entered a Golden Age. DC Comics used to pave the way for such movies with their early successful Batman movies back in the day. But, to their credit, Marvel has done a great job of raising the bar and they are embarking on the first-ever team comic book movie with The Avengers.

My only concern is how this might affect the lesser known comics. Men in Black comes to mind when discussing this issue. It was a little known national comic. However, somebody saw something brilliant in it and turned it into a successful franchise. Will this still stand in the future? Or will every movie exec go all-in and just stick to the mainstream? Well, in my opinion, if people keep letting Bradley Cooper into auditions and keep listening to Joel Silver, the comic book movie Golden Age could be short-lived. But I hope somebody, somewhere tries to make room for the lesser known titles and still give us our favorites. There is room for both.