Man of Steel 2 - Justice League Origin Story?

Gal Gadot

With the recent announcement that Gal Godot will be Wonder Woman in Superman's follow up film and rumors that everyone from Dick Grayson to the Flash may also make appearances alongside the confirmed Ben Affleck Batman, I'm calling it... Man of Steel 2 will be a Justice League Origin story.

It has to be doesn't it? If you've got the three key members of the Justice League in your film and you're flat out saying Gal Gadot WILL be Wonder Woman, rather than saying she isn't for a secret reveal plot twist in the film, then, by the end of this movie we have to be seeing the beginnings of the Justice League?

That said, I don't know anything about the script other than Superman's in the movie and an older, more experienced and battle weary Batman will show up at some point. There's a football match. There may be a fight between Bats and Supes and, I'm guessing, Wonder Woman may be the peacemaker... so Batman and Superman can maintain a healthy dislike but mutual respect for each other.

I'm not going into detail with what I think the story will be beyond what I've said. I've had people write whole essays in my comments on what they think the plot to an upcoming film will be only to be totally wrong. I don't want to be like that. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Man of Steel 2 is most likely a Justice League origin story (call it a 'World's Finest' origin if you like).

Having written my thoughts on why Wonder Woman doesn't need an origin movie and my thoughts on Ben's casting as Batman, here are my thoughts on Gal being cast as Wonder Woman...

Meh... and I mean that as positively as I can.

Honestly, I've never seen her act in anything. Her most high profile work seems to be the Fast and the Furious Franchise, none of which I've seen beyond trailers.

She looks the part and her real life background in the Israeli Military will no doubt be an asset to the role. Some people say she's too skinny but it's really not about that. It's all about whether she can project confidence and an attitude that says 'I'm very approachable but don't mess with me.'

From the few clips of Gal in Fast and the Furious trailers I've seen she seems like she'll have the 'don't mess with me' part down. Whether she can do 'classy and approachable' as well will be the challenge.

I have no preference for any of the names put forward for the Wonder Woman role so I'm not disappointed by Gal's casting.

Perhaps the only observation that's keeping me interested in Man of Steel 2 at the moment is that the general mood by fans following the film's development is one of increasing doubt that they're not watching a train wreck happening before their eyes in slow motion.

I'm still optimistic though. Almost everyone had their doubts about Marvel's strategy for building to an Avengers movie. I remember when the idea of a Thor solo movie sounded like the most ridiculous idea ever to a lot of people - even I had my doubts on that one - yet Thor's doing better than both Hulk solo films which you would think would have been box office gold.

Maybe WB, DC and Zack Snyder have a different strategy that will equally pay off in the end?

People have been shouting out for WB to 'just do a Wonder Woman film already!' after so many years of false starts and fumbling around.

Now you've got a movie with a fairly successful Superman, the new Batman and Wonder Woman in it... tell me, if you're a fan of Superhero movies, that you're not at least interested in going to see it.

I'll be seeing it.

Thor: The Dark World - Movie Review

It's good to see that Thor's second solo film has performed not only well but even better than his first film - which I enjoyed quite a bit (more so with subsequent viewings).

Thor: The Dark World takes place after The Avengers movie and sees Thor up against a new villain who is threatening to destroy the nine realms.

I won't bog you down with details of the plot and cast lists etc. if you want all that click the link to the movie above which will take you to the Internet Movie Data Base. Instead I'll give you my impressions of the film without giving too much away in the way of spoilers.

Overall I did enjoy this movie. If you're a fan of the first Thor film then this one has everything you'd hope to see only with more detail.

In particular Asgard is a more fleshed out and believable world, looking a little less shiny and a little more lived in with actual people going about their daily lives.

We didn't see a whole lot of sci-fi tech in the first movie but here you get a firm reminder all the way through that Thor and everyone not residing on Earth all come from space and aren't just magical beings living in some magical fantasy realm. They use actual technology too.

Most importantly, the humor is still there, delivered naturally as the story unfolds, particularly by intern, Darcy played by Kat Dennings, whose own TV show, Two Broke Girls, could learn a thing or two about natural humor over continuous, cheap one liners. I so much like Kat better when she's delivering genuinely funny lines in Thor's movies.

I do think the first movie was more laugh out loud funny than The Dark World but this offering has a lot of very subtle humor that's easy to miss on first viewing.

One thing that I did miss, which isn't really a spoiler, is the lack of any presence of SHIELD in this movie. If memory serves me correctly SHIELD weren't that present in Iron Man 3 either. SHIELD was such a big part of Marvel's phase 1 films that they should continue to be present in phase 2 and beyond. Any business of Superheroes is SHIELD's business - it's what they do.

SHIELD is name dropped in the Dark World and that's about it. Even if the events of this movie takes place in the space of a day I think SHIELD is equipped to make quick responses. They're not a small organization and they have some of the most advanced tech on the planet... oh... and they have the internet too right? Look how fast the average person responds to any breaking news on the internet. SHIELD could do better than that I would've thought?

Since we know Agent Coulson is alive it might have been nice to see him, or even his replacement, looking up at whatever that craft is that attacks Earth in Dark World with some kind of acknowledgement that "It's definitely not something of Starks!".

Hopefully Marvel make up for the lack of SHIELD in Captain America's next outing, The Winter Soldier.

Those are all the things that stood out for me. If I were to go into more detail about what I did or didn't like I'd have to spoil much of the film. It's not all great, there are some questionable moments, but overall, the film is a lot of fun.

Well worth seeing and a film that I will add to my own DVD collection for sure.