With my Man of Steel trilogy now established, it's time I take a crack at the other heroes of the DC Universe. Following "Last Son of Krypton," I want to re-establish Batman in a reboot called "The Batman." It will be based on "The Killing Joke," "Under the Red Hood," and "Night of the Owls." The basic storyline begins with Joker and Harley Quinn hired by a mysterious organization to kill the second Robin, Jason Todd. Not content with just doing that, they proceed to cripple Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, as well. About a year later, Batman is still in mourning. Barbara has remade herself as the hacker Oracle, while the first Robin, Dick Grayson/Nightwing, occasionally comes from Bludhaven to check up on Bruce. Bruce learns that the organization that hired Joker was the Court of Owls, a secret society that has run Gotham City for decades.
He learns that both Grayson and Todd were meant to be assassins for the Court, who use a special chemical agent to reanimate the dead. The Court plans to induct a new member, Tim Drake, into their plans. Batman saves Drake and takes him in, and when the teen shows promise, Bats reluctantly takes him on as his third Robin. All the while, the Court reanimates Jason as the Red Hood, who seemingly does the Court's bidding and leads a squad of assassins to kill Bruce, Tim, Barbara and Dick. Eventually Jason betrays the Court and helps the Bat family end them, before revealing that he has been using everyone as pawns to get to the Joker so he can finally have his revenge. Bruce talks Jason out of it, who leaves to become his own person, having been given a second chance at life.
Following this will be a "World's Finest" movie, that will depict the first meeting between Superman and Batman. With Luthor in jail following "Last Son of Krypton," LexCorp is run by his proxy Mercy Graves. As a result of the Brainiac/Doomsday event plus various super humans popping up across the country, the government commissions LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises to create an advanced, satellite guided missile system to deal with meta human threats. Both Bruce and Clark are obviously suspicious of the missiles, and meet in Gotham in their alter egos when trying to uncover Lex's true agenda.
They initially distrust each other, due to being polar opposites, but eventually learn to work together when they notice that several Batman rogues, notably Penguin, Riddler, Poison Ivy, and Mr. Freeze, all begin carrying kryptonite and attack the missile site. The two heroes learn Luthor, through Mercy, has hired the villains to publicly hijack the missiles, so in private Luthor can launch the missiles at the country of Biyalya, starting a war that could only be won if he uses the recently discovered mutagenic effects of kryptonite to begin a meta human arms race. The two heroes stop the villains and destroy the majority of the missiles, and gain a newfound appreciation for each other and a rocky trust.
This will be followed by a "Wonder Woman" movie, which will show how Ares, the God of War, once attacked the Amazon nation of Themyscira with an army of Spartans, causing Hera, Zeus's wife, to grant the Amazons custody of Ares and giving them an island magically separated from Man's World. In modern day, Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, is raising her daughter Diana, who has god-like strength and a lust for battle but is naive about the Amazonian ideals of peace. When pilot Steve Trevor crashes on the island, Diana swaps guard duty on Ares with her friend Circe to enter a contest to determine who will bring Trevor back to Man's World. Diana wins, and while she takes Steve back, Circe releases Ares.
They travel to Man's World and turn Steve's friend Barbara Minerva into the Cheetah to distract Diana, now Wonder Woman, while they attempt to use nuclear warheads to kickstart World War III. This will give Ares enough power to attack Themyscira, kill the Queen, and from there assault Mt. Olympus and overthrow the gods. Diana stops Cheetah and Ares' plan, but the tension caused by the almost launch of the warheads empowers Ares enough to attack Themyscira, aided by Circe and an army of undead warriors released from Tartarus. WW learns that Ares is her father, the result of him raping her mother, which is why Diana has such a hunger for battle. Diana defeats the dark god, who is sent to the underworld, and embraces the Amazonian way of peace, becoming an ambassador to mankind.
A sequel to "World's Finest" and "Wonder Woman" comes after, called "Trinity." It will show Ares escaping from Tartarus and breaking Luthor out of jail. Together they steal the last missile from "World's Finest" and fire it at Biyalya, creating an international incident. Diana travels to Biyalya to negotiate peace talks, while Luthor and Ares follow to sabotage it. Ares still wants to start WWIII, and Luthor sees how he can re-start his arms race. Batman and Superman travel to Biyalya, suspecting Luthor's involvement, and meet Diana for the first time. The three are forced together when assassins sent by Luthor and Ares try to kill them. They form an effective team, with Supes and Bats gaining more appreciation for each other while Diana respects both of them and acts as the negotiator between the two. They become the Big 3 of the DC Cinematic Universe and defeat Ares, while Luthor uses the incident to convince the public that he was being controlled the whole time and gets bailed from prison.
From here, we get a series of solo films focusing on Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman. The Flash film focuses on grad student Wally West, who discovers his uncle Barry Allen used to be the Flash. An accident with a lightning bolt and a particle accelerator grants Wally access to the Speed Force, and Barry trains him to be his successor. Meanwhile, the son of Barry's old enemy Captain Cold, endowed with ice powers, takes up his father's mantle to battle the new Flash. Barry's partner Hunter Zolomon, seeking the Speed Force for himself, hires the new Cold to distract Wally while he replicates the accident, siphoning Barry's dormant speed energy to empower himself and killing Barry in the process. Now the Reverse-Flash, Wally must prove he's worthy of being the Flash by defeating Zolomon.
The Green Lantern film, "Emerald Knight," focuses on a rookie Hal Jordan and his mentor Sinestro as they liberate an alien planet from the tyrant Kanjar Ro, who has entered an alliance with the Weaponers of Qward to fashion a power ring out of the Yellow Light of Fear, the only color that can overcome a Lantern's green ring. Secretly, Sinestro and a conspiracy of followers within the Corps are tired of the Guardians of the Universe and their methods of patrolling space. They confiscate the Yellow Ring and ask the Weaponers to mass produce it. Soon, the Sinestro Corps secedes from the GL Corps, leading to the Sinestro Corps War. To defeat them, Jordan deputizes his friend from Earth, John Stewart, into a new Green Lantern, and leads the Corps in battle against Sinestro.
"Aquaman" focuses on Arthur Curry, aka Orin, the King of Atlantis. The film begins with Arthur already king, married to Mera and keeping his brother Orm as his political advisor. Black Manta, former captain of the Atlantean Royal Guard, has led a rebellion against Arthur, saying his life on the surface makes him unfit to rule. To escape the rebellion, Orm convinces his brother to spend some time on the surface. Arthur and Mera travel to the lighthouse where Arthur grew up, sparking memories of how he learned he was part-Atlantean, set out to find Atlantis, and learned he was of royal blood. All the while he deals with his reputation among the surface dwellers, who don't appreciate him, making Arthur an outcast on land and sea. When Orm and Black Manta lead Atlantis in an invasion of the surface world, Arthur must embrace his role as Aquaman to save the surface and reclaim his kingdom.
The last lead-in film is "The Brave and the Bold," which tells of how intergalactic serial killer and Lantern hater Atrocitus arrives on Earth to kill Hal Jordan. Finding Jordan is off-planet, Atrocitus setttles for John Stewart. To defeat him, he gives alien tech to several criminals, including Heatwave, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, and Weather Wizard. They form the Rouges to take out GL. These Rouges hail from Central City, and the Flash has been on their trail for weeks. GL and Flash meet for the first time and team up to take out the Rouges, during which time Atrocitus finds a way to siphon green energy from a power ring and corrode it into a rage-fueled red light. Becoming the first Red Lantern, Atrocitus proves a dangerous threat. Wally and John form a fast, buddy-cop like friendship to defeat Atrocitus, while reconciling their feelings of whether they can live up to their mentors.
This will lead into "Justice League," which finds the six aforementioned heroes dealing with strange beings attacking their respective cities and homelands. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern John Stewart (Jordan is still off-world) and Aquaman are all still met with suspicion by the government. Superman and WW have support, while Flash is a media darling, but Stewart is having a hard time gaining supporters while Batman is still a feared vigilante. Batman is also on edge, since his recent Robin Tim Drake has left to pursue a career as Red Robin in Bludhaven with Nightwing, leaving the Caped Crusader all alone and not willing to trust anyone. Their cities and homelands are attacked by Thanagarians, winged aliens bearing armor and weapons made of Nth Metal, which can even deal massive blows to beings like Superman. They are led by Katar and Shayera Hol, who seem to answer to a higher power.
When the Thanagarians decimate Atlantis and Themyscira, Aquaman and WW decide to alert the other heroes. The six heroes meet in the Batcave, where Batman reluctantly agrees to an alliance despite his current feelings towards metahumans, even the ones he's worked with like Supes and WW. The heroes receive a psychic distress signal from a government base. They intercept it and discover J'onn J'onnz, the last Martian. He reveals that the Thanagarians are serving as ground troops for Darkseid, the ruler of Apokalips who seeks to have all alien cultures bow to his will. Thousands of years ago, Darkseid tried to force the once mighty Martian race to submit, but when they wouldn't, he slaughtered all of them. J'onn alone escaped, going into stasis until recently, when he sensed Darkseid was coming and came to Earth to warn humanity.
The seven heroes retreat to the Fortress of Solitude to come up with an attack plan, but are greeted by Katar and Shayera. Shayera is shown a vision of what will become of Earth and Thanagar by J'onn, and pleads with Katar to spare the heroes. Katar refuses, and thus Shayera battles her husband before turning against her race to join the others. The heroes end up defeating the Thanagarians just as Darkseid arrives. Using their combined power, the heroes end up killing the tyrant. While the threat is ended, Shayera is exiled to Earth by her people. The eight heroes are praised by everyone, and decide to form the Justice League, with Batman creating the Watchtower satellite base for them to monitor the Earth.
The second film, "Justice League: Doomsday," has Batman secretly draw up contingency plans to incapacitate the League while Luthor uses the Darkseid crisis as a launching pad for his campaign as President. He is eventually sworn in, and with Amanda Waller comes up with Cadmus, a section of the government designed to deal with and interact with meta humans. When the League refuses to fold into Cadmus, Luthor initiates the creation of a "Legion of Doom," consisting of several supervillains from each heroes' rouges gallery, to defeat the League. Luthor hacks into the Watchtower and steals Batman's contingency plans, which he uses to develop a counterstrike with the Legion.
When most of the League is incapacitated, Batman gathers a group of candidates, including the couple Green Arrow and Black Canary and the newly created Cyborg (born in Star Labs during the Darkseid crisis) to help bring back the League and defeat the Legion. As it turns out, this was also a part of Luthor's plan-he was using the heroes and villains as pawns to justify activating an army of repurposed Brainiac drones, now called OMACs, to dispose of all meta humans and give Luthor complete control of Earth. Eventually the Legion and OMACs are defeated, Luthor is exposed and impeached, and Cyborg, Green Arrow and Black Canary are made permanent team members.
From here, we get two more Green Lantern films, "Emerald Twilight" and "Blackest Night," that deal with Hal Jordan going insane when he realizes he wasn't there to defend Coast City when it was destroyed by Luthor's OMACs. He gets possessed by Parallax, the living embodiment of fear, and wages a one-man war against the GL Corps. Sinestro is freed from his prison in the Central Power Battery to lead his Corps against Parallax, while Hal's love Carrol Ferris is chosen to join the love-fueled Star Sapphires. Atrocitus forms the Red Lanterns, while former GL Saint Walker forms the Blue Lanterns. These various colored corps team up to stop Parallax, but in the end it's John and Carol who convince Hal to break Parallax's hold on him.
Hal sacrifices himself to destroy Parallax, leading to the third film. Here, the different corps, now joined by Agent Orange and the Indigo Tribe, fight in the War of Light to determine who will rule the universe. Hal's body is used by Nekron, the Lord of Death, to reanimate the casualties of this war as Black Lanterns, Hal among them. John Stewart, Carol Ferris, Indigo-1, Sinestro, Agent Orange/Larfleeze, Atrocitus, and Saint Walker team up to discover the White Light that will end the Blackest Night, and in the end the different colored corps are removed except the GLs and Hal finally finds peace in death, with John now Sector 2814's sole protector.
Three more films remain in my cinematic DCU. The first is "Shazaam!", which tells of teenager Billy Batson moving into a new foster family and granted magic powers by the wizard Shazaam. He uses them to combat Black Adam, the original host of Shazaam's powers, and thereby brings magic back into the world. This leads into "Heaven Sent," where mystic John Constantine gathers Zatanna, Swamp Thing, Deadman, Etrigan the Demon, The Question, and Dr. Fate to deal with a coming supernatural crisis. The Phantom Stranger, The Spectre, and the Endless, particularly Morpheus, all have supporting roles. This will lead into the grand finale of my cinematic DCU, "Justice League: Kingdom Come." It will be a loose adaptation of the Kingdom Come graphic novel, set 20 years in the future.
As with the original story, we learn that the Joker killed Lois Lane, sparking the JL's newest member Magog to kill him and thus forcing Superman into retirement. When a new generation of violent anti heroes begin fighting each other, threatening the human race, Supes comes out of retirement, along with the majority of the JL, to prevent more bloodshed. Batman and Lex Luthor will form their own groups, with Luthor's including a brainwashed Shazaam. Norman McCay and the Spectre will play a role, like in the original story.
It will end in a similar fashion, with Shazaam sacrificing himself at the cost of a meta human genocide. Superman decides to help humanity through leading by example instead of direct force, and marries Wonder Woman. The two have a child godfathered by Batman, who reconciles with Dick, Jason and Tim. John and Shayera are also shown to have a child in this future, Warhawk. As an epilogue, the Legion of Superheroes is shown in the far future, creating a golden utopia for humanity inspired by the actions and ideals of the Justice League and Superman. That's my plan for a cinematic DCU. Like my Marvel plans it's a pipe dream, but it would be great to see any of this become a reality.
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