by Gerry Conway
Years late, I just read the screenplay for the abandoned George Miller “Justice League: Mortal” film (available online if you Google for it).
It’s based roughly on the Brother Eye/OMAC Justice League storyline, and while it’s infinitely better than the Justice League film that saw light last year, it has the same problems that film did– attempting to introduce a massive number of characters, backstories, and motivations in roughly two hours.
What’s ironic is you can understand why the studio balked at making “Justice League: Mortal”– the story is both too ambitious and too thin, trying to do too much and not enough– and yet, when they had a chance to address those problems in “Justice League,” they ended up doubling down on everything that was wrong and removing everything that was right. (There’s much that’s right in the “Mortal” script.)
You have to wonder what the execs at Warners were doing/thinking in the years between “Mortal” and “Justice League.” One thing reading this script proves is that starting a “cinematic universe” with a group film first would have been a huge conceptual mistake.
“Man of Steel,” “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice,” and “Justice League” didn’t fix that mistake, though. They simply spread the mistake over three films instead of one.
Gerry Conway is one of the Kings of TV and film and comic book writing and also one of our Beloved Leader Larry Brody’s longest-lasting and closest friends. Everybody who comes to TVWriter™ should be reading his insightful blog, where this article first appeared. Learn more about Gerry HERE.
