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seriousficOkay, admittedly this is never going to happen because WB doesn't make movies about women anymore or something, but they should.
Right now, the Batverse is red-hot, but Christopher Nolan is busy not making Batman 3 and the WB is miraculously too smart to go ahead without him. I know, right? So why not make a Birds of Prey movie? You could fit in the characters that are too outre for the actually-very-limited Nolanverse, you could get all that spin-off and merchandising going, and you could correct the glaring deficiency in female roles in the Batman movieverse.
After all, we all know TDK is a "Year One" and we know eventually, Batman's gonna have Robin and Batgirl running around. Just dye Gary Oldman's hair white and you don't have to include anyone else (well, given Nolan a producer's credit).
So we start off with Barbara having a flashback to her recent shooting (and all you need for this is a body double and a voiceover of Ledger!Joker laughing). Then, via montage, show her becoming Oracle, gathering her team together, and introduce her personal problems and her strained relationship with Dick Grayson (who would serve as a link to Batman).
Ali Larter as Dinah Lance
(sorry about the BC pic, it was all I could find)
This was a tough one, because I have a hard time really engaging with Dinah. She just seems to become a completely different character from writer to writer. At first I thought you'd want to cast someone with natural charisma to give her some personality, like Katee Sackhoff. But then I thought better of it. The hard part about Dinah is that while she has to be the team badass/field leader, the one who Gets It Done, she also has a very specific body type. The Blonde Bombshell thing ties into her characterization, so you can't throw a wig on Uma Thurman and tell her to go in. Luckily, I think Ali Larter is the right mix of badassness, fishnet-filling-out, and fun-loving BFFness.
Any objections if we leave out Longbow Hunters? So Dinah has just broken up with Ollie over his Epic Fail at fidelity, she's trying to honor her heritage while at the same time trying to get out from under her mother's shadow (her mother the famous WW2 pin-up/maybe superhero), kinda like Barbara's feelings toward Batman. Then she finds herself as Barbara's first agent and their epicfriendship love friendship begins.
And I'm willing to compromise on the high heels, but not the fishnets.
Alexa Davalos as Helena Bertinelli
Another case of hard casting. I was thinking of just throwing in the towel and giving the current flavor of the month the crossbow (paging Megan Fox), but then I IMed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prozacpark and we thought "hey, what about Gwen Raiden?"
Yes, Alexa Davalos has pretty much made a career of playing badass warrior chicas with ambiguous sanity. She's a little young for the current Huntress, but say this is at the start of her career, before she meets Question, when she's just going after mobsters with a crossbow and hasn't even heard of the JLA... After we leave Barbara to her montage, we see the BOP from the perspective of Helena's recruitment and cover the big Hero Hunters fight with Barbara over trust and manipulation.
Famke Janssen as Barbara Gordon
Yes, Dina Meyer was awesome and yes, Famke Janssen was already Jean Grey, but X3 totally wasted her, so it's legal. Plus, who but Famke Janssen can make you believe she's going to ruin your life and then go sex up Dick/Dinah/the world like it ain't no thang?Plus, Barbara Gordon wears glasses and Jean Grey does not. But keep Dina Meyer's phone number on speed-dial, just in case.
She'd be the lead character of this ensemble cast, even being called into escrima-stick duty at some point, and have the most dramatic heavy lifting. She's the one who has to learn to trust again, she's the one who gets to cry prettily, she has the make-out scenes with Dick... you get the idea.
Alan Tudyk as Ted Kord
Yes, even in the realm of dream-casting we must admit that there's no way Birds Of Prey could get made without some men-folk, and besides, every super-spy team needs a whacky gadget guy. If he's a whacky gadget guy that can have UST with one of the Birds, so much the better. And c'mon, how cool would it be to have Ted fixing up the Aerie in BOP, then show up in a Blue Beetle movie to give Jaime some advice?
Like I said, Dinah should have a foot in the past, and Ted could be kind of a stepping stone between her and her mother. He was just starting out while Dinah Laurel Lance was winding down, and he's a contemporary of Batgirl. Plus, someone needs to be comic relief and ask whose idea it was to hijack the nuclear train.
Katee Sackhoff as Zinda Blake
Remember when I said there was a reason Katee Sackhoff couldn't be Dinah Lance? This is a reason more compelling than other, trifling reasons like "the character is a different race" or "the actress is dead." Why? Because Katee Sackhoff is basically ZINDA BLAKE IRL.
Yes, I know that's what the RPFers are talking about whenever they say anything about public personas, but add a Southern accent and a black miniskirt to that and you've GOT Zinda Blake. Plus, it'd be only the most awesome riff on Kara Thrace ever and it'd be funny as HELL. Smaller part than the main girls, but c'mon! Boozy, low-maintenance pilotwho maybe has a thing with AlanTudyk!Ted? YES. She'll also be funny enough to state the movie's message in the "ladies' night" sequence.
Michelle Forbes as Katarina Armstrong
She probably wouldn't have much to do in the first film, might not even show up until she was the Big Bad in the sequel (doing the old 24 ploy of killing a bunch of people for Teh Greater Good), but can you honestly tell me this isn't the role Michelle Forbes was born to play? She's here to do two things, be a hardass bitch and have angry sexual tension with Babs, and she's all out of sexual tension. I know the hair is the wrong color, but faced with the utter perfection of Forbes!Katarina, even Gail Simone would travel back in time and slap herself for thinking Katarina's hair is blonde.
I know that's a little light on POC (hopefully we could work, say, Renee Montoya in as Barbara's contact in the police or the detective investigating the BOP or something), but I'd like to have a scene where Helena gets introduced to "the gang," a bunch of off-duty superheroines and "reservist members" of the BOP like Vixen (Zoe Saldena!) and Big Barda (Gina Carano! No, ACTING WOULD ONLY SLOW HER DOWN) and they're developing character and having a big chick flick musical number and stuff, then in the final act, when everything's going to hell, Barbara calls in the cavalry and everyone at the ladies' night (plus Nightwing) shows up in-costume to bust heads.
Yes, you want to see GinaCarano!Barda showing up in full armor, swinging a Mega-Rod and shouting "APOKOLIPS, MOTHERFUCKER!"
As for the villains, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, two characters who would never work in "Nolanverse Prime" without becoming totally unrecognizable. Harley can be sympathetic and funny (and ripe for a spin-off) while Ivy can be the Machiavellian one who occasionally OMG feeds people to her plants. Plus, Good Versus Evil as shown via Ambiguously Lesbian Teams! Love it!
With Ivy, you can use some of the kookier (male) Batverse villains with the excuse that she's mind-whammying them, so Mr. Freeze or Bane or Firefly or even Savant and Creole could show up and have an action scene in the middle of the movie to further Ivy's plans.
Harley and Ivy are planning a break-out in Arkham to rescue Mistah J, only that's cover for the manipulative Ivy's real goal of getting to the Fluoronic Man, the supervillain who turned her into Poison Ivy, to use him as the catalyst for her Bad Things HappenMachine Plant. And there could be all sorts of fun parallels and subtext about the effect of the Joker and Batman and Fluoronic Man on Our Girls and such. Like, they don't have to be defined by the men in their life, and the Birds Learn This but Ivy Doesn't and it leads to her downfall? You know, Feminism 101 stuff. But more than that, between Dinah's Mom, Batman, the Joker, the Fluoronic Man, and the death of Helena's parents, you can make a movie about not letting the past or trauma or the patriarchy society define you and have it be relevant to everyone. It'd be a movie about a bunch of broken heroes who get together and say "fuck you, who says we're broken?" How fucking awesome would that be?
Plus, Arkham Asylum riot! Plant zombies! Vine tentacles! CRAZY!
Then at the end, after the credits roll, we see a shadowy BATGIRL rescue someone. Is it Cassandra Cain? Misfit? A cured Barbara? You have to wait for the sequel to find out.
And maybe Tilda Swinton as Poison Ivy, since we could really use a name actress in there. Kristen Bell as Harley. Yes, I know there's an age difference, but it'd fit the characters, don't you think?
Would it ever happen? Not in a million years. Fun to think about? Definitely. And I have THOUGHTS on who should play Nightwing. And the great thing about a BOP franchise is that aside from Barbara, you can have anyone leave the team and then shine the spotlight on another character. So if Alexa Davalos gets pregnant, that's cool, just bring in Onyx or whoever and you're good to go.
Right now, the Batverse is red-hot, but Christopher Nolan is busy not making Batman 3 and the WB is miraculously too smart to go ahead without him. I know, right? So why not make a Birds of Prey movie? You could fit in the characters that are too outre for the actually-very-limited Nolanverse, you could get all that spin-off and merchandising going, and you could correct the glaring deficiency in female roles in the Batman movieverse.
After all, we all know TDK is a "Year One" and we know eventually, Batman's gonna have Robin and Batgirl running around. Just dye Gary Oldman's hair white and you don't have to include anyone else (well, given Nolan a producer's credit).
So we start off with Barbara having a flashback to her recent shooting (and all you need for this is a body double and a voiceover of Ledger!Joker laughing). Then, via montage, show her becoming Oracle, gathering her team together, and introduce her personal problems and her strained relationship with Dick Grayson (who would serve as a link to Batman).
Ali Larter as Dinah Lance
(sorry about the BC pic, it was all I could find)
This was a tough one, because I have a hard time really engaging with Dinah. She just seems to become a completely different character from writer to writer. At first I thought you'd want to cast someone with natural charisma to give her some personality, like Katee Sackhoff. But then I thought better of it. The hard part about Dinah is that while she has to be the team badass/field leader, the one who Gets It Done, she also has a very specific body type. The Blonde Bombshell thing ties into her characterization, so you can't throw a wig on Uma Thurman and tell her to go in. Luckily, I think Ali Larter is the right mix of badassness, fishnet-filling-out, and fun-loving BFFness.
Any objections if we leave out Longbow Hunters? So Dinah has just broken up with Ollie over his Epic Fail at fidelity, she's trying to honor her heritage while at the same time trying to get out from under her mother's shadow (her mother the famous WW2 pin-up/maybe superhero), kinda like Barbara's feelings toward Batman. Then she finds herself as Barbara's first agent and their epic
Alexa Davalos as Helena Bertinelli
Another case of hard casting. I was thinking of just throwing in the towel and giving the current flavor of the month the crossbow (paging Megan Fox), but then I IMed
prozacpark and we thought "hey, what about Gwen Raiden?"Yes, Alexa Davalos has pretty much made a career of playing badass warrior chicas with ambiguous sanity. She's a little young for the current Huntress, but say this is at the start of her career, before she meets Question, when she's just going after mobsters with a crossbow and hasn't even heard of the JLA... After we leave Barbara to her montage, we see the BOP from the perspective of Helena's recruitment and cover the big Hero Hunters fight with Barbara over trust and manipulation.
Famke Janssen as Barbara Gordon
Yes, Dina Meyer was awesome and yes, Famke Janssen was already Jean Grey, but X3 totally wasted her, so it's legal. Plus, who but Famke Janssen can make you believe she's going to ruin your life and then go sex up Dick/Dinah/the world like it ain't no thang?
She'd be the lead character of this ensemble cast, even being called into escrima-stick duty at some point, and have the most dramatic heavy lifting. She's the one who has to learn to trust again, she's the one who gets to cry prettily, she has the make-out scenes with Dick... you get the idea.
Alan Tudyk as Ted Kord
Yes, even in the realm of dream-casting we must admit that there's no way Birds Of Prey could get made without some men-folk, and besides, every super-spy team needs a whacky gadget guy. If he's a whacky gadget guy that can have UST with one of the Birds, so much the better. And c'mon, how cool would it be to have Ted fixing up the Aerie in BOP, then show up in a Blue Beetle movie to give Jaime some advice?
Like I said, Dinah should have a foot in the past, and Ted could be kind of a stepping stone between her and her mother. He was just starting out while Dinah Laurel Lance was winding down, and he's a contemporary of Batgirl. Plus, someone needs to be comic relief and ask whose idea it was to hijack the nuclear train.
Katee Sackhoff as Zinda Blake
Remember when I said there was a reason Katee Sackhoff couldn't be Dinah Lance? This is a reason more compelling than other, trifling reasons like "the character is a different race" or "the actress is dead." Why? Because Katee Sackhoff is basically ZINDA BLAKE IRL.
Yes, I know that's what the RPFers are talking about whenever they say anything about public personas, but add a Southern accent and a black miniskirt to that and you've GOT Zinda Blake. Plus, it'd be only the most awesome riff on Kara Thrace ever and it'd be funny as HELL. Smaller part than the main girls, but c'mon! Boozy, low-maintenance pilot
Michelle Forbes as Katarina Armstrong
She probably wouldn't have much to do in the first film, might not even show up until she was the Big Bad in the sequel (doing the old 24 ploy of killing a bunch of people for Teh Greater Good), but can you honestly tell me this isn't the role Michelle Forbes was born to play? She's here to do two things, be a hardass bitch and have angry sexual tension with Babs, and she's all out of sexual tension. I know the hair is the wrong color, but faced with the utter perfection of Forbes!Katarina, even Gail Simone would travel back in time and slap herself for thinking Katarina's hair is blonde.
I know that's a little light on POC (hopefully we could work, say, Renee Montoya in as Barbara's contact in the police or the detective investigating the BOP or something), but I'd like to have a scene where Helena gets introduced to "the gang," a bunch of off-duty superheroines and "reservist members" of the BOP like Vixen (Zoe Saldena!) and Big Barda (Gina Carano! No, ACTING WOULD ONLY SLOW HER DOWN) and they're developing character and having a big chick flick musical number and stuff, then in the final act, when everything's going to hell, Barbara calls in the cavalry and everyone at the ladies' night (plus Nightwing) shows up in-costume to bust heads.
Yes, you want to see GinaCarano!Barda showing up in full armor, swinging a Mega-Rod and shouting "APOKOLIPS, MOTHERFUCKER!"
As for the villains, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, two characters who would never work in "Nolanverse Prime" without becoming totally unrecognizable. Harley can be sympathetic and funny (and ripe for a spin-off) while Ivy can be the Machiavellian one who occasionally OMG feeds people to her plants. Plus, Good Versus Evil as shown via Ambiguously Lesbian Teams! Love it!
With Ivy, you can use some of the kookier (male) Batverse villains with the excuse that she's mind-whammying them, so Mr. Freeze or Bane or Firefly or even Savant and Creole could show up and have an action scene in the middle of the movie to further Ivy's plans.
Harley and Ivy are planning a break-out in Arkham to rescue Mistah J, only that's cover for the manipulative Ivy's real goal of getting to the Fluoronic Man, the supervillain who turned her into Poison Ivy, to use him as the catalyst for her Bad Things Happen
Plus, Arkham Asylum riot! Plant zombies! Vine tentacles! CRAZY!
Then at the end, after the credits roll, we see a shadowy BATGIRL rescue someone. Is it Cassandra Cain? Misfit? A cured Barbara? You have to wait for the sequel to find out.
And maybe Tilda Swinton as Poison Ivy, since we could really use a name actress in there. Kristen Bell as Harley. Yes, I know there's an age difference, but it'd fit the characters, don't you think?
Would it ever happen? Not in a million years. Fun to think about? Definitely. And I have THOUGHTS on who should play Nightwing. And the great thing about a BOP franchise is that aside from Barbara, you can have anyone leave the team and then shine the spotlight on another character. So if Alexa Davalos gets pregnant, that's cool, just bring in Onyx or whoever and you're good to go.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 12:33 am (UTC)Especially if it can eventually set up a next-gen spin-off with Cass, Steph, and Charlie.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 12:47 am (UTC)kick a puppymanipulate her and totally set back her therapy, then Cass could refuse to kill her and it'd be A Thing. THIS IS THE ONLY THING THAT COULD BE GREATER THAN TEAM GOOD-GAY VERSUS TEAM EVIL-GAY!!!no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-09 04:16 am (UTC)Dina is like the PERFECT Babs! No changing!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-09 04:26 am (UTC)