As The Avengers proved, if you are going to build a film around a superhero team. you’d better have them face off against a great villain. Well, it appears that when the Justice League film arrives in 2015, the team will be facing off against one of the all-time great bad guys.
Latino Review is telling us that according to their sources, we can “bank on” Darkseid being the main villain of the film.
However, this is Latino Review correspondent El Mayimbe who is telling us this. This was the same guy whose sources told him that Black Panther was definitely going to be Marvel’s other 2014 offering, which, unless he’s going to be in Guardians of the Galaxy, was completely and utterly wrong. Since we were burned by El Mayimbe on this, we advise you to take any news from his sources with a grain of salt.
However, if this is true, this might be an example of a deliberate symmetry between DC’s comic book and film universes. In the recently revamped line of DC comic books, the origin of the Justice League was changed in such a way that they first came together to fight Darkseid. I don’t know if any other similarities will carry over, but for those comic fans hoping to see long time Justice League member Martian Manhunter make his debut on the big screen, you might be disappointed to find Cyborg in his place.
Created by the legendary Jack Kirby in 1970, Darkseid is the ruler of a planet called Apokolips. He is a power-hungry despot who has an unhealthy attraction to a mystical force called “the Anti-Life Equation.” He tries to conquer the known universe in order to find this equation, which would allow him to kill a great number of people with just a thought.
If that description sound similar to my description of Thanos from back in May, well, there’s a reason for that. Thanos, who appeared in Marvel Comics three years after Darkseid, was deliberately designed to mimic the DC bad guy (see Thanos’ first appearance at the left). This fact might be lost when both Justice League and The Avengers 2 arrive in 2015, as there are bound to be comments from not-in-the-know film journalists on how DC is ripping of Marvel’s villain for their own franchise.
In one way, it makes the choice of Darkseid as the bad guy kind of a dubious choice for DC/Warners to make. There are already whispers that DC/Warners, who are already playing catch up to Marvel, are trying to mimic Marvel’s way of doing comic book movie business. Do you really think its wise introducing a villain that will draw obvious comparisons to the already establish villain your competition is using?
On the other hand, Darkseid is one of the best villains in all of comics, and he has appeared in other media before, in everything from the Super Friends cartoons to the final season of Smallville. And he would be the one villain powerful enough to give Superman, Wonder Woman, and whoever else will be on the team a hard time.
Again, considering the source and his sources, we’ll have to wait and see if Darkseid is the villain at all. More to come in the next three years.
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