Get It In Gear, DC!

So I was looking around YouTube, as I am prone to do, and I stumbled upon the teaser for the animated Wonder Woman movie that Warner Brothers is releasing straight to video next February. And all I have to say is, "huh?" Warner Brothers and DC can do a feature-length Wonder Woman cartoon, but can't get their act together long enough to do that live-action movie that's been rumored for a few years now?

I'm actually disappointed with the output of Warner Brothers and DC's superhero movies. Yeah, they've adapted comics like A History of Violence, Hellblazer, and Road to Perdition (plus the yet-to-be-released movies based on Watchmen and The Spirit). But when it comes to mainstream characters like Batman, Superman, and the like, they're lacking. Since the genre really took off at the beginning of the decade, there's been two Batman movies, Superman Returns, and Catwoman. And that's it! Compare that to the twenty Marvel movies between 1998 and right now, with the twenty-first coming out in December. While DC is taking their sweet time putting their movies out, Marvel's getting a lot of their major (and some of their minor) characters out there for consumption. And that's not to mention the Wolverine movie coming out next summer, the Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man, and Avengers movies that are in development, and the inevitable Iron Man sequel. It's crazy!

Now I'm not saying that Warner Brothers should start cranking these things out all willy nilly or anything like that. But two a year could work. Warner Brothers owns New Line Cinema now too, so they could always pawn off a few of DC's properties over to New Line. I'd also enjoy seeing them start building towards a shared universe akin to Marvel's preparations for the Avengers movie. I know they got really close to doing a Justice League movie before the Writers Guild went on strike, but I don't think they need to do it right away. Why not do solo movies first, instead of taking the X-Men route (group movies first, solo spinoffs later)?

I've heard rumors of a possible reboot of the Superman movie franchise, so maybe they could start the shared universe idea there. Maybe they could have Superman explain his brightly-colored costume and more personable demeanor by saying he wants to be different from Batman? Or at the very least, they could have Christian Bale do a cameo where he gets interviewed by Lois Lane at some charity function. You know, just something a little more than referencing Gotham City in some throwaway line in a throwaway scene, like in Superman Returns. (Or if you'd count it, something bigger than the quickie Metropolis reference in Batman Forever). I'm no big-shot Hollywood writer or anything, so if some bigwig out in Hollywood is reading this, you can have those ideas for free.

I guess it's because I grew up being more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan is what makes me want to see DC's movies become as prevalent as Marvel's. But it really seems like outside of Christopher Nolan's very awesome Batman franchise, Warner Brothers and DC have no clue what they're doing. I mean, even the worst of Marvel's movies end up being better than Catwoman. (Seriously, what idiot approved Catwoman for a theatrical release?) Maybe someone should take a cue from Marvel and create DC Studios, so the dots between the movies could be connected. Or maybe they could just talk Chris Nolan and David Goyer into doing all of DC's superhero movies?

Then again, with The Dark Knight being the number-one movie in America for a month straight and making more money than anybody would know what to do with, maybe they've got the right idea after all.