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I see the usual squad have found this thread so I'm going to get in my JLA All-Human notes before it feels like an exclusive clubhouse. (With dolls!)
Batman: Born in 1957 and starting to both feel his age, physically, and stubbornly fight against it ~ a little like DKR Batman without the ten years off work. He's training harder, pushing himself more, but feeling the strain and his limits. Batman is a brilliant strategist, organiser and planner. He knows his allies' and enemies' weak spots, and also their strengths. In this team he is a manager, a leader and commander. All he really lacks in that respect are the people skills: and during the series his personal arc is partly about learning negotiation, diplomacy, how to bring out someone's best side.
Nightwing: If Batman and Nightwing were actors in this JLA movie my direction would be to play it as if they were ex-boyfriends, as if they'd had a loving, intimate relationship maybe ten years before. As if. This isn't The Authority where the characters are actually and explicitly gay ~ I would just want that vibe from those two, that they shared a great deal, became very close and then became distant. So Batman and Nightwing have little moments of connection that nobody else gets ~ secret jokes, an exchanged look, a shared memory ~ but when they argue it's more loaded, more vicious, because of the history.
Black Canary: has to be built from scratch I think because I've never seen her done as an interesting character.
Green Arrow: Same age as Batman, and within this continuity they were both on the streets first in about 1977, as 19-20 year old novices. We could even have some flashback panels drawn in Adams style. They too have a shared history that goes back even longer than Batman's with Dick Grayson (because 1977 was Year One, here) and they've seen the world change dramatically while they've been active crimefighters. Because he's not the leader, Oliver Queen has the luxury here of coming over as an uncompromising idealist, and can accuse Batman of selling out the values he used to hold whenever Batman has to broker some unpleasant but necessary deal (like in GM's JLA, buying the Mirror Master from Luther's team).
The Question: Again, plays off against Batman as a similar but quite distinct persona. Question is, like Ollie, far more of a "street" character than Batman's become. Bruce has been hanging out with cosmic heroes and villains, while Question had never seen a teleporter, never been anywhere near the Moon. He resents being pulled from his patch to these sterile Watchtower corridors. Out of his depth even more than Batman (his gadgets and martial arts skills are a couple of levels below the Dark Knight), all he can do to keep his own dignity is be the best detective on the team ~ a better detective than Batman.
Huntress: Here the challenge would be to have a Christian character whose faith was neither a gimmick (always going on about it, praying fussily before every battle), overly-pious or laughable, but an integral part of who she is and something she'd made consistent with her crime-fighting. It would be interesting to have a team member who was pro-family, "traditional" and conservative in her morals(distrusts liberal Ollie, uncomfortable with any potential gay vibe she picks up from Nightwing and Batman) but who remains sympathetic or at least comprehensible. It would be her uncompromising, old-fashioned values that lead to an affinity and bond with The Question.
The Spirit: I don't know how they're bringing the Spirit back, but my idea here would be that he looks pretty much like the Question, but is far more relaxed, fluid, light, jokey. He's a street character too, one who gets his information through banter, not Rorschachian menace (as Batman also would). He knows all the shoe-shiners, the bartenders, the hotel owners in his patch of New York, and he's considered one of them. His most obvious buddy here would be Ollie, and he can't dig why the Question's so uptight. He's Jewish, which again would be worked into who he is, without seeming gimmicky. |
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