ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL: In the
Man of Steel universe there exists an intergalactic military unit, a spacefarring police force dedicated to the protection of all sentient life while promoting order and democracy throughout the cosmos. On the
Planet Oa situated at the center of the universe lives a race of highly intelligent beings, Guardian Elite Oans who had taken it upon themselves to combat evil throughout all regions of space, no matter how desolate, as the self-appointed
Guardians Of The Universe. After the failure to launch their legion of robotic sentinels called
Manhunters, the Guardian Elites decided that their newest force would consist of living beings, ones who had free will and strong moral character. To arm this new legion of Celestial Knights, the Guardians forged the Power Rings, tools of inconceivably-advanced technology that allow their wearers to project hard-light energy constructs which replicate the physical and mechanical characteristics of whatever object the ring bearer imagines. Eons ago, the Oans harnessed the most powerful force in existence,
Emerald Energy and contained it within pieces of jewellry worn around the finger, they divided the universe into 3,600 sectors and sent a power ring to each sector to select a recruit.
CHRISTINA WREN is CAROL FERRIS: The first Green Lantern seeds may have been planted as early as
Man of Steel with the doe-eyed side character
Captain Carrie Farris, described only as an air force officer and assistant to
General Swanwick. Odds are she's
exactly who everyone thinks she is - Carol Ferris, and her family owns the
Farris Aircraft, Inc. one of the leading aviation companies in the world specializing in advanced aerospace concepts - how else does a pretty thing like her ascend to the rank of captain? Nepotism isn't a surprising feature coming from a Zack Snyder joint, and aside from not knowing what 'terraforming' means, her character's lack of personality traits made Carol's true identity difficult to pin down at first. But both Captain Farris and General Swanwick were added to the cast of it's
universe-building sequel Batman v Superman, and with a cast that's
that crowded, the roles they'll play aren't likely to be extraneous or pointless. Last we saw of them, one of their predator drones was knocked out of the sky right in front of Swanwick's car, the General had apparently programmed these
UAV's to track down Superman's whereabouts, and with Swanwick and Farris confirmed to appear in the sequel, chances are that scene is gonna have a more satisfying payoff than "I just think he's kinda hot" and *eyeroll.*
What do you make of this? A stage actor from Detroit joined the cast of
BvS as a '
Drone Pilot' late last year, he uploaded an on-set photo of himself wearing a brown pilot's jacket, his normally blonde hair dyed a whole shade darker, stylishly quiffed into a leading man's supercut - that sounds a lot like Hal Jordan to me. Of course WB won't acknowledge this as a possibility or give it any authenticity so far from a release date - BUT - if he
isn't the new Hal Jordan, then that means WB cast a classically trained actor in a minor role, which required that he dye his hair brown and lift weights every week to get into shape for all of that '
piloting a drone' stuff in one of the biggest movies of 2016, a movie whose subtitle literally translates to "
An Origin of the Justice League." Seems like an odd series of coincidences, donch'a think? The solo Lantern film set the bar so low that any range of actor could replace Reynolds in the mantle, even an American theatre actor, so it makes plenty of sense that Snyder would begin his search for 'Hal Jordan 2.0' in the local talent of Detroit's theatre company - similar to what they'd done by casting a complete unknown as
Cyborg. Dan Amboyer's role as 'Drone Pilot' would likely place his character in the same profession as
Harry Lennix and
Christina Wren's characters anyway, so having them around in the sequel is the best way to introduce one of the seven characters needed for future
Justice-based crossover events.
'SUPERMAN-PROOF' PREDATOR DRONES: Amboyer's character is brought in as a USNC engineer who programs and pilots the newest model of drones, the movie lends a few moments of screentime to establish his on-off relationship with Carrie Farris, later this would-be Emerald Knight plays a key role in tracking the Doomsday's path of destruction across the planet. This scenario would really make it feel like
everyone in the Justice League is doing their part to battle the beast, and given that Doomsday is basically a genetically-mutated Kryptonian, the new drones Hal engineered should handle their own against him. Again, these are all hypotheticals of my own design.
BvS PRE-CREDITS SCENE: You couldn't pay me to venture a guess at how Batman v Superman ends, and even if I did know I'd rather have every surprise left intact, but I feel compelled to offer up one possible explanation as to how far the Dawn of Justice subtitle goes to set up the next crossover event. Right when Batman v Superman is ending, closing out all it's tabs and resolving character arcs, Abin Sur's spacepod crashlands on the outskirts of Coast City, California and the one person there to witness Abin Sur's arrival and subsequent crashlanding on Earth (which could be the direct result of Doomsday) is the drone pilot Hal Jordan. The camera pans over to capture his reaction as he looks upon the wreckage and run towards it, and then the film cuts away to something else, and what's great about setting up Green Lantern with such brevity is that most people are smart enough to figure it out, today's audiences can be trusted to know exactly what this scene signifies.
CHRIS PINE is STEVE TREVOR: Here's what happens when rumors fly in the face of reports, Variety first claimed that the
Z For Zacharia actor was being courted to star as the male lead in
Wonder Woman (the DC movie that's closest to beginning production), a role that had been turned down by Clint Eastwood's son. But despite being the film slated with the furthest away release date, supposed
Green Lantern reboot "plot details" kept resurfacing amidst the build-up to San Diego Comic-Con, claiming Chris Pine's discussions were all a ruse and he's actually our new
Hal Jordan. What these reports amounted to, however, were safe-inside-the-realm-of-possibility conversation starters for the geek masses to feast on, and nothing that ever came to light at any of the DC panels, as
Latino-Review's Da7e Gonzales claimed they would.
Da7e's weekly rumor round-up sourced the Pine/Jordan rumor, and now it appears that it was just that, a collection of emerging theories that discredited Variety's report, and a few SDCC casting announcement predictions that ultimately didn't come true. However, Chris Pine's been a name associated with Lanternship since 2010, (although his Wikipedia page cites two fake sources for where the implacable casting rumor began) and it's not too difficult to imagine the face of
Star Trek stepping just a few inches outside of his '
Captain Kirk' comfort zone to play another space cop. But last spring,
Variety's sources said WB was looking for high-profile actors they could get for
Steve Trevor, and ultimately gave Chris Pine a straight offer. Sure if he was given the choice between a role in the 2017
Justice League film or the 2017
Wonder Woman film, obviously a guy who can summon weapons out of thin air looks to be the more enticing offer, but the way Pine's career is headed he might just summon a bunch of
scheduling conflicts out of thin air, while an underworked thespian like Dan Amboyer has more flexibility, and can work around Zack Snyder's rigorous shoots & reshoots.
CONFIRMED: 13 hours after this was written.
THE 'PART ONE' VILLAINS ARE SUICIDE SQUAD? Last February David Ayer tweeted out a photo of comic books stacked on his desk, and at the top of the deck was an issue titled Justice League vs. Suicide Squad - the slightest suggestion of such an event happening in the cinemas sent shockwaves throughout our collectively blown minds. So what if instead of an alien army or a singular 'Big Bad' threatening the entire world, what if The Joker, Harley, Deadshot and the rest of Suicide Squad returns to the big screen as soon as 2017, except not as a G.I. black ops team, but as the antagonists of Justice League Part 1. When taken at face value, DC's upcoming slate doesn't have any other available slots for a Squad sequel, although there's supposed to be a Batman film somewhere down the line, even that won't swing around until much later on. So this theory hinges on how open-ended Squad's cliffhanger ending ends up being, and if Task Force X ultimately escapes from government custody under command of Joker and Harley, then what are the odds they'll be wreaking havoc on the streets of Gotham City to coincide with the formation of the Justice League? I'd say it's entirely possible, as all other alternatives point towards an invading alien army uniting the heroes as they effortlessly tear through thousands of faceless, emotionless drones. You know, that was still a cutting-edge concept when The Avengers assembled that first time, but the novelty factor wears off quickly when a rival company attempts the same song & dance in an effort to adapt the New-52 JLA origin. So it's obvious that WarnerBros. needs to try something a little different than what Disney/Marvel's done so well so far if they're looking to succeed on the originality front, and a 'battle royale' featuring all of their best characters just seems like the smartest direction to go in because it provokes such an interesting moral debate.
Part One being a cross-pollenation between Ayer's Suicide Squad cast and Snyder's Batman v Superman cast would mean Amanda Waller's metahuman squad - Jared Leto's Joker, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang, Will Smith's Deadshot, Cara Delavigne's Enchantress, etc. - are pitted against Batman's 'Super Seven' - that includes Hank Cavill's Superman, Ray Fishers Cyborg, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa's Aquaman, and presumably Dan Amboyer's Hal Jordan, all of whom will have already been introduced beforehand, which means the only new character they'd need to introduce audiences to is Ezra Miller's version of The Flash. Theoretically, this movie would showcase a 'Year One' Lantern, a Hal who's been to Oa and back and trained under the Oan masters, but like most Power Ring recipients he's been afforded some downtime back on his homerock. Of course, having traveled throughout the galaxy's farthest reaches would put Hal at odds with the rest of the group, Superman would undoubtedly have some unanswered questions about the universe, and about Krypton, and Hal's basically wearing a universal database around his finger. So there could be a scene at the end akin to Tony Stark and Bruce Banner leaving in the same car, where Clark and Hal head off into space, and off-screen they discover something that would coincide with what many believe to be the antagonist of Part Two...
BRAINIAC AS THE 'PART TWO' VILLAIN? One of Superman's gravest threats, the alien genius Brainiac has faced the League on several occasions, on Earth he's feared for his 12th-level intelligence and extreme Machiavellian ethics, but as a citizen of the
Planet Colu he was known as
Vril Dox. Coluans were pioneers of interstellar travel and have exceptionally long lifespans lasting for centuries, due in part to their advancements in genetic manipulation. Its populace hungered for more knowledge as they engineered cures for most diseases and medical afflictions, and the coalescence of organics and technology became commonplace, on our planet this is called
trans-humanism. The Coluan race sought to leave their organic bodies to reside in immortal cybernetic forms, nanotech robotics would replace their planetary security forces, and so a combination of immortality and non-existent crime rates caused an overpopulation crisis - their solution?
Miniaturisation, the ruling class took control of Colu's infrastructure and shrunk down their greatest cities, but this caused a schism between rural folk and urban residents as Colu's global intelligence stagnated over a period of a thousand years. Corresponding with the dawn of Man, a brilliant, but fully biological Coluan scientist named Vril began cloning himself to create a hive-minded, genetically-singular community consisting only of himself so that his supreme intelligence would never die out. He acquired a spaceship and went on a journey throughout deep space, obtaining knowledge and using a nanotechnological cyber-cloud to capture living organisms of various alien species. It was through this solitary campaign that he became known as
the Collector of Worlds, an archivist of destroyed planets, some of which he himself had a personal hand in destroying.
THE DESTRUCTION OF COAST CITY: An event that occured in the early 1990s during the fallout of the Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen! storyarcs, where Hank Henshaw (Cyborg Superman) and Mongul conspired to turn Earth into the new Warworld, so they detonated thousands of bombs above Hal Jordan's homecity killing nearly all of it's seven million+ inhabitants - including most of Jordan's family. This was not a good time for Hal, he'd been off-world at the time and when he found out secondhand what had happened, the insurmountable grief over losing his girlfriend drastically altered who he was as a person. So if Justice League Part Two means to up the stakes with an alien invasion heralded by Brainiac, and deliver on a promise like the one Marvel Studios made with Age of Ultron "bringing the Avengers to their knees," then the most logical demonstration of 'sequel villain badassery' would be to level an entire city. Explosives aren't exactly Brainiac's style per se, so miniaturising 20 square blocks of a downtown area for safekeepaing inside a plexiglass jar on his shelf would just as easily do the trick, as he'd famously done the same to Krypton's bottled city of Kandor. Restoring such a large chunk of land back to it's original size seems virtually irreversible, so if Hal Jordan's loved one are truly gone forever - then a loose adaptation of the Emerald Twilight storyline might follow the 2019 film as part of the DCCU's ongoing storyline...
THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS (2020): Hal Jordan pleads with the Oan High Council to let him rebuild Coast City, but the
Guardians of the Galax--er, I'm I mean
Universe--continually reject Hal's proposal and admonish him for even trying, as doing so might drain the full power of Oa's Central Battery. Enraged at the Guardians' ungrateful and callous behavior, Jordan turns to the dark side and starts
murdering Lanterns left & right, and shatters the Emerald Energy source. Unbeknownst to anyone that he'd been infected by the alien parasite known as
Parallax, Hal Jordan grows immeasurably in strength by collecting the fallen Lantern's Power Rings. Being the super-intelligent pieces of hardware they are, the Oan jewels flee to the nearest quadrant to select the most capable recruits to thwart Parallax, but only four can escape the renegade Lantern's clutches. The remaining rings strategically choose to induct a league of Earthmen:
Simon Baz, an Arab-American street racer from Dearborn,
Kyle Rayner, a freelance graphic artist from Hollywood,
John Stewart, an architect and former U.S. marine from Detroit, and
Guy Gardner, a volatile police officer from Baltimore. Four individual's predicaments play out separately in vignette fashion before their paths can intersect on wartorn Oa, Jordan's former companions,
Kilowog of planet Bolovax VIk,
Tomar-Re of planet Xudar, and
Katma Tui of planet Korugar, team up with the humans to put an end to Parallax's reign.
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