Thoughts on Marvel's 'The Avengers' Phases, DC's 'Justice League' Movie and More

The Avengers, Marvel and...

Being a comic genre movie fan, one of the bigger film franchises I look forward to is Marvel's movie projects.  For me, The Avengers culminated a wonderful collective of movies that preceded it, including the first two Iron Man movies.

Now that we've been fully entertained by The Avengers, and that newbie Joss Whedon fans got a taste of how he handles character ensembles, we're pretty much waiting for more Avengers, as in The Avengers 2, which is slated for a May 2015 release.

But between now and then, we're due for a few more single title movies.  Because The Avengers 2 is part of Marvel's Phase plans, right after that, Phase 3 will follow with such movies as the over-hyped Ant-Man movie from Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), and more than likely, a Doctor Strange movie.

But we're in Phase 2 of the process of movies from Marvel, and that will include Iron Man 3 (May 3,2013), Thor: The Dark World (Nov 8, 2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Apr, 2014) and the Guardians of the Galaxy (Aug 2014).

If past track records have anything to say about upcoming projects, keep an eye on characters from these Phase Two movies to see what characters may show up in the second Avengers movie.  We did get Loki from Thor in The Avengers.  Rumors say that The Falcon from Captain America 2 will b in The Avengers 2.  And who knows who else might be there. I'm fully expecting the Guardians to be there.

But if anything, we know from the end-cap scene of The Avengers, that despite the obvious set of villains, we know that Thanos was behind that move to attack Earth.  Having the post-credits scene from The Avengers explained, you know that Thanos was overseeing all the action.

Now, with Joss Whedon hired by Disney/Marvel to oversee the Marvel workshop of titles across the board, will he throw Thanos in the mix this time around, or will Whedon be directing something or someone else into The Avengers sequel?

I know we all have a lot of questions about the upcoming Marvel ensemble movie, but in time, it will all become clear, whether it be by some slight of hand marketing, an untrustworthy movie grip or just plain, outright... wait, Whedon's never outright with info in the early stages of any project he's doing.  Strike that third idea.

So we wait.

But I have one teeny, tiny little question in the back of my mind.

Justice League

You see, DC is putting together their Justice League movie.  Because Marvel got the jump on them with a wildly successful process, DC has decided to release their ensemble movie first, then deliver some stand-alone projects after the fact.  (Though there's no word if Man of Steel will feed into the JL project, though many suspect there will be.  Heck, I am suspect that we'll see reference to Superman hauling butt off to Gotham city to save a certain someone from dying while saving his city from an A-bomb!)

Oh, back to the question:  I have to wonder whose getting skull-slapped, "Gibbs style," for not taking Joss Whedon up on his Wonder Woman spec script he offered up a several years back?  I mean, they had first shot at the man and let it slide.

Back then, the only real support Whedon had were his long-time fans from Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dr. Horrible days.  And that was a small demographic.  Too small to put bank on, at least from DC/Warner Bros's perspective.

When he got hired on to helm The Avengers, the nay-sayers were pretty numerous in those early days.  A billion dollars later from the box-office, I haven't heard too much about the nay-sayers, and DC is trying to court Christopher Nolan and other serious-minded, successful director/producers to lead the Justice League into a similar success pattern.

Hey, I bet J.J. Abrams might be... never mind.  He's probably busy with those two other mega-blockbuster movie franchises.

So yea guys, Warner Bros. missed the boat with Whedon and snagging him up, as Marvel did with their overall creative oversight contract.

As it stands, it seems like the JL movie will have Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the Flash characters, and they'll be facing off against Darkseid.  Additional side characters the could make the roll-call involve Aquaman, Martian Manhunter and Hawkman.  (And with Warner Bros. winning the legal battle to retain all the Superman Character Rights, at least things are starting to look up for them.)

SPOILER FOR TDKR:

And hopeful rumors are flitting around that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, after finding the bat cave in The Dark Knight Rises, will be that Batman.  (Seeing as how C. Nolan ended his trilogy, making a WB reboot a bit of a challenge.)

END SPOILER

But the story and Batman notes are pure internet  conjecture/rumor for the moment.

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