Black Mask set as Villain for Gotham Sirens

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One of the more interesting films coming out of the quagmire that is the DCEU is Gotham Sirens, a spin-off to 2016’s Suicide Squad.  I never actually reviewed Suicide Squad so I’ll just say very quickly that it was a garbage movie and I didn’t like it.  I know some people enjoyed it, but honestly, I thought Batman v. Superman was the better film.  I know those are fighting words on a lot of the Internet so I’ll temper that critique by saying I, along with the rest of geek culture, really liked Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. 

Harley Quinn’s always been a complicated character to get right, mainly because she walks along that thin problematic line between manic pixie villain and domestic abuse victim, but in more recent years she’s backed off from that point.  A lot of that has come from her newly out and proud romance with Poison Ivy, which will be the core focus of the Harley-centric spin-off Gotham Sirens.  Catwoman will also be on hand because we needed a third lead but now we’ve finally gotten an idea of who our villain is- Black Mask. 

Film Land - The Future of the DCEU

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Let’s talk about the DC Entertainment Universe or DCEU as it’s known for short.  The last time I ventured into these uncharted waters I emerged with a general sense of optimism that the people being entrusted with DC projects were all good choices who could lead to a good future.  However, in the time since then, 2016 has thoroughly drained away any and all optimism I might’ve had so if you’re expecting a kind summation of how the DCEU might correct itself in days to come you’ve arrived at the wrong article. 

No, we’re going to be looking at the DCEU as it is and was it’s been promised, and that means accepting that forward is not where we’re going, and the future most certainly isn’t bright.  In fact, I’d dare hazard the guess that barring some kind of surprise mega-hit, like Avengers/Dark Knight level hit, I don’t think the DCEU will be following us all into the 2020s- here’s why. 

10 Characters Who Should Be In Gotham Sirens

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In their latest effort to stave off obsolescence and ride the meager coat tails of their decidedly meager successes, DC has chosen to produce a Gotham Sirens film, starring and produced by Margot Robbie and directed by David Ayer.  This decision most likely comes in response to the high DVD sales for Suicide Squad, which itself strikes me as an odd occurrence given the film was pretty universally disliked and also isn’t very good.  

However, I will concede that there was enough right in Suicide Squad to justify some kind of a fan base, most, in particular, being Margot Robbie and Will Smith giving their all in a film that didn’t really deserve it, hence why Deadshot is also being considered for a spin-off movie.  

While bringing Ayer in to direct a movie with women leads is exactly the kind of stupid you’d expect from studio execs that long ago stopped caring, the premise at least opens up the question of what other women villains should appear in the final film.   In that spirit, I’ve got 10 women that either should be or probably will be in the Gotham Sirens movie. 

5 DC Films That Might Join Justice League 2 in 2019

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Edited by Robert Beach

On Tuesday, I talked about movies DC had already announced we might see in their open slot in October 2018. Today, I set my sights even further forward to the fall of 2019 where DC has another unclaimed movie slot for November 1^st.  Given how far out that movie is, it’s a lot less likely to be tied up with the various pre-announced films or tied to the recent crop of DC movies. 

Even though WB isn’t working to Marvel’s “phase” scheduling system, they are subconsciously structuring their films in groups of set-up with every movie from now to the end of 2018 spinning out of Man of Steel. 2019 looks to be the start of something new for WB with movies like Shazam and Green Lantern Corp on the horizon. As such, whatever film we’re getting in 2019 will probably be a new feature, something removed from the current crop of DC features. 

What's Next for the Suicide Squad?

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So, Suicide Squad is now a bona fide hit.  Granted a lot of that was the result of an exceptionally weak summer season and a middling box office response for most of the blockbuster flicks of the year but money is money, as WB’s new motto goes, and this movie made enough money that they’re counting it as the first real success of the DC Entertainment Universe.  While that success and the adoption of the “it made cash, that’s a win” philosophy mean a lot of things for WB, like the revival of Man of Steel 2 on the release slate, I’m looking now at what this could mean for the individual Squad members.  

After all, the whole point of a shared universe is that you can have characters from one movie appear somewhere else, that was the whole point of Batman and the Flash being in this movie so it stands to reason the assembled villain of Suicide Squad would appear in other people’s movies as well.  So, here’s where we might next see the members of the Suicide Squad.

5 O'Clock Shuffle - August 1st

Welcome to the first installment of the site's new broadcast the 5 O'Clock Shuffle, coming to you every Monday with the news you may have missed over the weekend and a look at what's to come, all in just under 10 minutes.

This week I take a look at The Great Wall controversy, some Disney reboots, Sharknado 4 and of course, the weekend box office report and New Comic Book Day round-up.

Cover Story - Top 15 Harley Quinn Covers

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We’re currently a week out from Suicide Squad, DC’s latest attempt to salvage the flaming wreckage of their cinematic universe.  I could go on and on about how bizarre it is that the people with the biggest stable of superheroes imaginable keep consistatly getting one-upped by the likes of Ant-Man and Thor (seriously, 9 years ago who outside the comics fandom even knew those guys existed?) but that’s not the point of this particular column.  No, we gather together today because there’s nothing topical happening this week related to comics but I have a compulsive need to make this show link to something.  

As such, we’re getting a head start on Suicide Squad by looking at the career of its most prominent member in the advertisements: Harley Quinn.  Originating in the Batman animated series of 1992 before immigrating to the comics and taking up residence there for 20 years as her character evolved from tragedy to comedy to something close to DC’s Deadpool.  So, let us celebrate this glorious harlequin of comics and dive into the shallow end to get the cover story on the top 15 Harley Quinn comic covers.

Justice League Action Character Roster Revealed

Edited by Robert Beach 

By now, you might’ve heard there’s a new Justice League animated series in the works called Justice League Action. Even though there hasn’t been an official Justice League show since the end of Justice League Unlimited, the team has been represented in subsequent media like The Batman, Batman: Brave and the Bold, and Young Justice.  

This new show will, apparently, be taking the team in a new direction, looking to bridge the gap between Justice League Unlimited and Batman: Brave and the Bold’s emphasis on obscure characters and the more cartoony and wacky animation styles of current superhero hit Teen Titans Go. Not much is known about the show, but we seem to have a tentative character line-up in the form of a character sheet leaked from the folks working on the series.

Suicide Squad Trailer 3

Edited By Robert Beach

As I write this, it’s been a little over three weeks since Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice came out, and the overall response has been different than what was expected. This was intended to be the NEW start to the DC movie universe, much like Man of Steel before it and Green Lantern before that. Obviously, that doesn’t seem to be happening.  Critics spent a week or so savaging the film while general audiences reacted with a resounding “meh?” What’s more, the movie struggled to make a major box office impact and failed to open as large as it should’ve in China. 

Finally, upon being knocked out of the #1 spot by Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy The Boss, the writing is more or less on the wall for Batman v. Superman. Obviously, this doesn’t mean the end of the entire DCEU as more films are already in various stages of production now, but it does mean DC is in damage control and course correction mode as all eyes turn to Suicide Squad, just in time for a brand new trailer.

Panel Vision - Suicide Squad Guide

So, Suicide Squad is on the way and we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of what to expect.  After the unmitigated disaster that was Batman v. Superman following up a 2 year silence in the wake of Man of Steel’s soft landing with audiences, DC/WB really need a big hit with Suicide Squad if they’re to remain a solvent business going into the tail end of this decade.  

As such, Suicide Squad seems to be trying to pull off an incredibly tricky double act of existing within/expanding the established DC cinematic universe of Man of Steel/Batman v. Superman while also trying to add serious amounts of personality and levity to one of the grimmest worlds in cinema today. 

We’ll see if it actually pulls that ambitious goal off in the end but for now I figured I’d give you a guide to the various members of this cinematic Suicide Squad, owing to how little we’ve learned about them from the trailers.  The only folks I won’t be covering are Harley Quinn and the Joker as I suspect they’ve been around long enough and visible enough for everyone to already know what their deal is. 

Suicide Squad Trailer 2

This is going to be an odd year for superhero films.  Previous years have been defined by major throwdowns like Dark Knight Rises against Avengers or attempts from smaller studios to reassert dominance like X-Men: Days of Future Past or Amazing Spider-Man 2.  This year, we’ve still got some of that, in particular this is the year Batman v. Superman will go toe-to-toe with Captain America: Civil War, but there’s way more weirdness and offbeat entries this year.  In February we’ll be seeing Fox take a chance on Internet love with Deadpool, a movie that only got made thanks to the positive response to a leaked trailer.  Then in November Marvel will throw its hat into the fantasy arena with Dr. Strange. 

And in August DC makes its first attempt to implement this whole “movie universe” approach with Suicide Squad, about a team of super villains conscripted by the government for high risk missions.  Even amongst all the other weirdness Suicide Squad has been the odd man out, mainly thanks to a very bizarre marketing campaign that followed up the first, and pretty interesting, trailer with a ton of images that made the movie look both gritty and ridiculous.  Now we’ve got a second trailer and the film looks…well it still looks gritty and ridiculous but now in the best way possible.

Suicide Squad Gets Empire Magazine Covers

In case you didn’t know, DC Comics is looking to start up their own shared universe of films and characters to rival that of Marvel studios.  So far this shared universe experiment has been pretty abysmal as the sole entry so far is the terrible Man of Steel and the pretty bad looking upcoming film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  However, DC has one other flick waiting in the wings to make a splash in the DC shared universe pool and that flick is Suicide Squad.  Scheduled for release late next summer with David Ayer directing Suicide Squad is an adaptation of the DC universe team of the same name, a government developed squad of villains designed to be sent out on high risks missions with the thinking being that because all the squad members are villains they’re powerful but also expendable. 

The trailer for that film leaked earlier this summer to a lot of praise though none of it was from me because I actually don’t think Suicide Squad looks very good but we’ll get more into that later.  Anyway, DC seems decidedly desperate to remind everyone this shared universe experiment is going to happen so they’ve started actively promoting Suicide Squad with a series of snazzy Empire Magazine covers featuring tactical team leader Deadshot, played by Will Smith, team wildcard the Joker, played by Jared Leto, Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie, and, for some reason, Enchantress, played by Cara Delevingne. 

Week of Review - Birds of Prey

Edited by Robert Beach

Yesterday, I talked about one of DC/WB’s more successful endeavors to preserve their television presence into the 21^st century; today, I’m focusing on a less successful example. Before we discuss Birds of Prey and what I think of it, we’ve got to go back and talk about a little show from 1997 known as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer took the world by storm in 1997 with its winning combination of genre tropes and aesthetics and girl power. Buffy was the last of the popular genre trinity that had started with Star Trek: The Next Generation in ’89 and been cemented by The X-Files in ’93. 

There had been plenty of genre shows before like the original Star Trek in the ‘60s, 6 Million Dollar Man in the ‘70s, and V in the ‘80s, but these three shows demonstrated there was a chance for widespread, mainstream appeal within previously geek genre markets. When DC decided to re-enter the realm of TV after the conclusion of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1997, they decided to stick with the Buffy aesthetic, which is how we got Smallville. With Smallville’s success, WB wanted to create a sister show that was more female centric as they’d had a lot of success from that mold with Charmed. In 2002, they created The Birds of Prey, one of my all time favorite superhero shows. 

Panel Vision - Killing Joke 30 Years Later

A couple weeks ago DC and Warner Brothers announced the latest in a long line of fairly good animated film projects would be an adaptation of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke.  Since then actor Mark Hamill has voiced a lot of interest in the part of the Joker.  Hamill played the Joker in the insanely popular Batman animated series from the ‘90s as well as its subsequent Justice League, Batman Beyond, and Mask of the Phantasm follow-ups.  He was also the voice of the character for the monster hit video game series Batman Arkham, which enjoyed a very successful 4^th installment earlier this summer with Arkham Knight.  Now DC/WB have officially cast Hamill in the part, most likely in direct response to the net fan response Hamill’s comments garnered over coupled with how similar his work in Arkham Knight is to a lot of aspects of The Killing Joke.  The thing is a lot of people don’t see this as a positive, coming down hard on the decision though their issue seems more to be with the very fact that DC is making a Killing Joke movie at all.