WI Warner Brothers does Man of Steel sequel instead of Dark Knight Rises

This was inspired by reading the alternate Batman films discussion, which is still ongoing.

The idea is a little different. Warner Brothers/ DC comics does not produce a third Batman movie, which IOTL was "The Dark Knight Rises". However, they still produce "Man of Steel", and then a second Superman movie that does not feature Batman.

"Dawn of Justice" is still made after the second Superman movie, but some of the material that IOTL was in that movie goes into the second Superman movie. Lex Luthor would be introduced in that movie but he would not be the main villain. Finding a villain to fight Superman that is not Lex Luthor or Zod is admittedly a problem, but maybe Intergang could be used.

Warner Brothers then does two Batman movies and two Superman movies to build up the characters before bringing in Batman vs. Superman.

I actually liked "Dawn of Justice" quite a bit, but I thought it had too much crammed into the movie. Putting some of the material into a second Superman movie would have improved it. The Nolan trilogy was very good but had the opposite problem in that it sometimes drags. It might have worked better as two movies, or you just drop the weakest of the three altogether.

This would have improved the poor critical reception for "Dawn of Justice" since I suspect the main problem is that critics just found the whole thing too much to absorb.
 
My only question: what is the point of divergence?

WB's management is famously supportive of their directors. There's no way after The Dark Knight goes boom at the box office that they'd tell Nolan "lol, no third film for you" and then fast-track Man of Steel (who's directing? who's writing?) for 2010-2012.
 
Last edited:
My only question: what is the point of divergence?

WB's management is famously supportive of their directors. There's no way after The Dark Knight goes boom at the box office that they'd tell Nolan "lol, no third film for you" and then fast-track Man of Steel (who's directing? who's writing?) for 2010-2012.
Well, Nolan didn't really want to come back to the franchise after Ledger died. That's why it took four years to complete the film because he didn't want to do it and also didn't have a plot idea. He originally wanted the third film to revolve around the Joker trials and have Two Face appear at that point.

It's said Two-Face was moved up to TDK so there was "a complete emotional arc" but I would not be surprised if a little bit of it had to do with Ledger's death.

Anyways, the point is that a little hand waving could have Nolan just give up on the series - but then IIRC he was heavily involved in Man of Steel.
 
Well, Nolan didn't really want to come back to the franchise after Ledger died. That's why it took four years to complete the film because he didn't want to do it and also didn't have a plot idea. He originally wanted the third film to revolve around the Joker trials and have Two Face appear at that point.

It's said Two-Face was moved up to TDK so there was "a complete emotional arc" but I would not be surprised if a little bit of it had to do with Ledger's death.

Anyways, the point is that a little hand waving could have Nolan just give up on the series - but then IIRC he was heavily involved in Man of Steel.

I doubt that Ledger's death altered the Dark Knight's plot since principle photography was already finished by the time he died. It's not as if there were additional Joker scenes to film. Heath Ledger was working on another film when he died. The finale seems so organic to the film that there would have had to have been massive re-shoots if that were the case-and I don't remember that happening. The Joker trial idea was a very early draft idea that the Nolan brothers abandoned.

Nolan's departure will frighten Warner Brothers. They'd still want a third film in the series-Christian Bale is still under contract. But they've lost their creative team. There's even a question of whether Bale would accept the non-appearance penalty and back out of the contract.

A lot would depend on when Nolan walks out of the project. Man of Steel is in a real sense the product of the Nolans writers block on the sequel to the Dark Knight. David Goyer brought up his idea while the three of them were struggling to write what became the Dark Knight Rises. All of which means if Nolan decides in the summer of 2008 he's done-said discussion doesn't happen.

We'd have a Superman movie around the same time-because Warner Brothers more or less has to make a Superman film during that time period-contracts and film rights being what they are.

But who knows what that film would be if neither David Goyer nor Christopher Nolan are involved.

As I've said before I'm curious as to what Warner Brothers would have done without Nolan after The Dark Knight. I think they would have panicked a bit. The Dark Knight was a massive success and Nolan received tremendous praise and credit for that. Usually when a Batman director leaves after his second film-he's somehow failed in the eyes of the studio. Nolan not returning would be a bit like Tim Burton not making Batman Returns.

I suspect that given the massive success of the Dark Knight-and the fact that Christian Bale is still technically under contract for one more movie-Warner Brothers wouldn't want to reboot the franchise.

There'd still be a third film in the franchise-but there'd be a different director and creative team trying to recreate what Nolan did. The villain would be different. Since this is the studio in the driving seat I think we'd see the Riddler in some form. There's a question of who Warner Brothers would turn to if Nolan is gone. I have no idea.

Which means there's going to be a lot of criticism that the new film was unable to live up to the high standards Nolan set.

I know this is about the Man of Steel instead of the Dark Knight Rises rather than Nolan simply walking away-but I think under almost any circumstance after 2008 Warner Brothers will make some sort of sequel to the Dark Knight-with or without Nolan.
 
Glass Onion and Lone Ranger, thanks.

I did know that Nolan was reluctant to do the third movie. So I thought the obvious POD would be that he doesn't, but Warner Brothers just opts to put the next Batman movie on hold (in the hopes of waiting for Nolan to come back or to strike gold with another creative team), and does a Superman movie instead. This is successful enough that they just do a second Superman movie, and then bring in Batman vs. Superman.

One way this could work is that if Nolan doesn't back away completely, but stalls on the third Batman movie. He starts writing what would become "Man of Steel", and is successful at convincing Warner Brothers that they should just move ahead on the Superman project. He is out of ideas with Batman.

One butterfly to all this is that with Bale under contract, he winds up playing Batman in what would become Batman vs. Superman instead of Affleck.
 
Top