Long-Time DC Animated Universe Creator Butch Lukic Shares The Advice He Would Give To James Gunn For The DC Universe: “Don’t Screw With” The Characters
John F. Trent
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Butch Lukic, who has worked on the DC Animated Universe in a number of roles from a storyboard artist on Batman: The Animated Series to the producer for the upcoming Justice League: Warworld film, shared the advice he would give to James Gunn for his upcoming DC Universe.
Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman in Justice League: Warworld (2023), Warner Bros. Entertainment
Speaking with ScreenRant’s Joe Deckelmeier at San Diego Comic-Con, Lukic was asked, “Speaking of the James Gunn universe, you guys have such a great dynamic and you guys tell stories in animation beautifully, what can James Gunn’s DC Universe kind of learn from what you guys have done in the animation side?”
Lukic responded, “Well, for us, it’s always been, because we grew up fans, we also wanted to be comic book artists and writers. In our heads we know the characters and what’s always stuck there is doing the real version of what you grew up with and stick with that. Don’t vary from that ever. There’s no point. There’s no reason.”
He continued, “You want to vary characters or anything else, create a new character. Do that. But for the majority of the DC characters that have been staples of the company for years stick with what they always were. Don’t f**k with them. … Don’t screw with them.”
Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in Justice League: Warworld (2023), Warner Bros. Entertainment
Jim Kreig, one of the producers on Justice League: Warworld who also wrote the Justice League vs. The Fatal Five animated adaptation also answered, “What we try to do with these adaptations is give you the thing that you remember.”
He continued, “And it isn’t always beat for beat because these stories are often told over a long period of time, and there are threads that never get tied up, and things you don’t remember, and maybe it wasn’t as clear, but we try to take them and say, ‘What did we remember when you think of this arc?’ And we try and put that together in a way that tries to tell a story that you think you remember.”
Wonder Woman in Justice League: Warworld (2023), Warner Bros. Entertainment
RELATED: Prolific Batman Writer Chuck Dixon Explains Why “The Superhero Cycle Had A Good Run But It’s Over”
Interestingly, Lukic’s advice is very similar to comments shared by long-time DC Comics writer Chuck Dixon. Speaking with Bounding Into Comics, Dixon explained why he believes the time of superheroes being dominant at the box office is at an end.
He said, “A number of factors have contributed to drop in interest for comic book based content: Oversaturation, inconsistent quality, and Hollywood’s restricted access to the Chinese market.”
“Both Disney and Warners are to blame as well. Marvel fans had to put up with a steady assault of woke content, an overbearing amount of comedy included in material, a general decline in the quality of effects and, most damaging, a deliberate departure from the source material at every opportunity,” he declared.
Batman interrogates Joker in The Joker: Devil’s Advocate (1996), DC Comics
He went on to specifically call out DC, “DC screwed the pooch by constantly re-booting their franchises with new auteurs and casts. In addition, they diluted their brand with multiple different and conflicting continuities spread across TV and features. Which Batman is ‘real?’ Who is the authorized Superman?”
“And they damned themselves with this latest Flash flick by leaning into all the multiverse nonsense in order to cram as many cameos into this failed project as possible,” he opined.
Batman in Detective Comics #684 (1995), DC Comics
Dixon and Lukic are not the only ones advising producers such as James Gunn to stick to the source material. Director Quentin Tarantino recently said Eon Productions should actually adapt Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels instead of trying to put their own spin on the story.
He told Deadline, “I mean, they always start from scratch when it comes to somebody new, because that’s saying somebody couldn’t have been going through the stuff that happened in Thunderball, all right?”
Quentin Tarantino speaking at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con International, for “The Hateful Eight”, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“I’ll tell you, I actually have a thought process about this. What I think they should do, and I’ve been thinking they should do this for a long time, is so many of the books have these really classic names and really classic adventures. And for the most part, a lot of them, they never did the book. They never did the stories,” Tarantino relayed.
He then shared, “They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way. Tom Mankiewicz just goes his own way. He did the writing for a lot of them. I think they should not remake the movies but actually just do the books, but do them the way they were written. And those would all be brand new.”
Casino Royale (1955), Pan Macmillan
What do you make of Lukic’s advice on keeping the characters consistent to how they had been portrayed and depicted as staples for the company for years? Do you think Gunn plans to do this his Superman: Legacy movie?
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