Aside from the right casting, many people consider the most important aspect of a comic book film adaptation to be the story the film is based on. Sure, more comics that are being translated to live action movies have decades of source material to work off of, but many of these films draw some pretty direct inspiration from key story-lines. In Disney and Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’, the story was loosely based on a combination of the original ‘Avengers’ comic and the first volume of ‘The Ultimates’. Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy pulls plenty of material directly from well known Batman stories such as Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween, Knightfall, and The Killing Joke. With Warner Bros. ’Justice League’ quickly approaching, fans have been going head over heels trying to determine who will be cast in the film, who the villain might be, and ultimately which story-lines from the comics that the film will pull inspiration from?
Over the course of the last fifty years, the ‘Justice League’ comics have had an infinite amount of stories that could be used as inspiration for the film. Some fans are more vocal than others, hoping to see the likes of Starro the Conqueror, the White Martians or perhaps even the Legion of Doom, regardless of how far-fetched those possibilities all sound. With the recent speculation that Darkseid is set to be the big villain for this massive superhero team-up film, the fans have begun to look even harder to figure out just which Darkseid story would work best.
While most people have been jumping to the immediate conclusion that DC plans on utilizing the premiere story from their recently relaunched “Justice League’ comics, the folks over at Latino Review believe otherwise. They’re reporting that inside sources have revealed that the storyline set to be the main inspiration for the ‘Justice League’ film isn’t quite what fans were expecting! Supposedly, screenwriter Will Beale has said that the film will be based off of 1980’s ‘Justice League of America’ #183-185. To sum up the plot of these issues, the story features Darkseid attempting to destroy the Earth with a massive laser in order to replace the planet with his own hell-like world, Apokolips. This story also saw an even larger superhero team up take place, as the Justice League of America actually teamed up with the Justice Society as well! While that particular team up seems unlikely on film, it is certainly an interesting prospect to drag some lesser known characters into the mix.
With Darkseid being pegged as the villain, this story would make quite a bit of sense to introduce fans to the idea of a massive team up. In order for big name characters like Superman, Wonderwoman, Batman, Flash and The Green Lantern to actually need to work together, the threat would have to be pretty major, so Darkseid trying to blow up the planet ought to do the trick. Why else would Superman or Green Lantern really need the help of other heroes? Even without all of the films giving these characters a back story, Justice League should be cast with enough heavy-hitters to give ‘The Avengers’ a run for their money!
If you were interested in checking out ‘Justice League of America’ 183-185, which were scripted by Gerry Conway and comic legend George Perez, you can easily find these three key issues in the ‘Crisis on Multiple Earths Volume 5’ trade paperback.
So what do you think of this potential storyline decision? Is this the right fit for the ‘Justice League’ film? Or should DC and Warner Bros. aim for something a little more recent to coincide with their ongoing universe-relaunch? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
‘Justice League’ is set to hit theaters in the Summer of 2015.
