A long long time ago, in a flooded basement not so far far away our comic critic at eatsleepgeek.com Cool Terry told me a story about a proposed film abomination he had caught wind of somewhere. Now this was in the days before we had decided to start the site so that was pretty much the extent of it. But this movie that he hated so much had the gall to take Green Arrow, his most beloved B-List (C-List anybody?) superhero and throw him into SuperMax Prison for a crime he did not commit. So basically it would be The Fugitive with Ollie Queen playing the role of Dr. Richard Kimball. To me it sounded interesting and I always wondered what ever happened to the movie.
Well it turns out that the flick, much to Cool Terry’s dismay isn’t so dead after all. It was just on vacation but it’s back now and it has a new writer and some pretty sweet sounding details. Two years ago David Goyer, who you might remember for writing the small art house films Batman Begins and The Dark Knight had this to say about the flick before all things relating to SuperMax went silent
It’s like ‘Alcatraz,’ and he has to team up with, in some cases, some of the very same villains he is responsible for incarcerating in order to get out and clear his name. Of course, tons of people try to kill him while he’s in there. We’ve populated the prison with all sorts of B and C villains from the DC Universe. For the fans, there will be all sorts of characters the hardcore comic book junkies will know, but they’re all going to be there under their human names and no one is wearing a costume, but there will be a lot of characters with powers and things like that
Recently Goyer told MTV that Justin Marks would be the movies new writer and that we can expect cameos from The Riddler, The Joker, and Lex Luthor (Lex Luger might be there too). In fact it sounds like a comic nerd Easter egg hunt unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Which of his enemies will Queen need to team up with? What super villain powers will be lurking in the shadows under the real names of their owners, and will Queens bff Hal Jordan come visit him in the clink? I don’t know but according to Goyer the movie is proceeding and we should be hearing more shortly.
This is a pretty dramatic departure from the superhero movies we’ve seen for the last several years, and I think it will work. In some ways I think it might be what’s needed to take a B-list hero (C-list anybody?) and make his debut on the big screen a success. I can’t help but wonder how Marks is going to crowbar a bow and arrow into the highest security prison on the planet. If he can put a bow and arrow into Ollie’s hands without making me roll my eyes, he’ll have won my respect.
