Warner Bros. Entertainment has announced that after Dark Knight Rises, the Batman story will rebooted one more time to fit in which their plans for the DC movie universe.
Similar to the way Marvel has rebooted many of their comicbook film properties, including the recently concluded Spider-Man trilogy, to fit in with their new Avengers film universe, DC is rebooting their movie properties to fit their Justice League film plans.
Until recently, it was thought by many that the new Batman films were already part of that process.
It has now been announced that Nolan’s Batman films will not be part of the Justice League continuity, and that Batman will have to be ‘reinvented’ again for The Justice League, where he will work with the new Superman (also a Nolan project) and Wonder Woman, which will not match up with the Wonder Woman television series which is about to begin.
Reboots; frequent reimaginings; and parallel, non-canon storylines are all old hat for comicbook fans, but how will this effect the properties’ new fans coming in from the films. People are perhaps starting to get used to this culture of film reboots, but how much can they really take? How much damage can the continuity of any of these films absorb before the fan-base begins to move away from them in droves.
It seems like both major comicbook publishers are trying to make the move to a real and continuous film canon, but they are having to tear up a lot of stuff along the way to get it done, and we have no garuntee that some new management wont want to do the same thing again in another 5 or 10 years.
They should force Nolan’s current Batman into the Justice League, even if he doesn’t quite blend at the edges. Planning to reboot his story again while the final film of his current trilogy isn’t even in production yet is just silly.
