Our Official Verdict: It's Time to Flush Justice League

Once again, the troubled Justice League of America movie has hit a bump in the road. Discussing the film with the Sydney Morning Herald, director George Miller revealed his frustration with the Australian government over a denied tax break that will likely mean the movie will change locations and in any instance, will create more setbacks.

"If that’s going to be the final decision, they’re throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that the rest of the world is competing for and, much more significantly, highly skilled creative jobs," fumed Miller.

\film cites a report at Action-Figure.com in which it is purported that studio heads may want to movie the cursed production to Canada and that Miller and the cast may all be replaced.

First: Australia screwed up. This is very myopic thinking on the part of their government. They are correct that it's not really an "Australian" film but they are/were dealing with Warner Bros., one of the biggest entertainment distributors in the world. Of course, and this is nothing but speculation, Fox is owned by an Australian, so maybe they're waiting for a big American project to come their way from that studio before they hand out rebates.

Losing this movie is bigger to Australia than just this one instance. Producers will be at the very least gunshy to truck an entire film crew down under for a while, and Australia could be sacrficing billions in free money.

Turning our attention to Justice League now: Sorry, fanboys, but the general public has already been inundated with dozens of superhero movies and putting Adam Brody in a Flash costume and somebody named Armie Hammer, Jr. in the famous Batsuit is not going to automatically mean big business.

And let's not kid ourselves: These movies are not being made so that the definitive version of The Incredible Hulk or X-Men or Superman can finally be told. They're big budget events designed to exploit a built-in audience and make a studio about 20% of their annual net profits. If they can work in a pretty good summation of the origin story, everyone's relatively happy.

Because they're all about making money, the last thing DC Comics should be worried about is filling a movie with Aqua Man or Green Lantern or Hawk Man or Flash. Focus on Batman and try (if you absolutely must) to reconfigure Superman. Marvel is clearly, unquestionably, the industry leader and DC is not likely to make up ground throwing characters that are, in the minds of 30 - 40 million moviegoers, not that recognizable (paging Hawkeye and Black Canary...).

Add to that the relative anonymity of the actors in place to play the Justice League roles now (to say nothing of who might be cast if the current production is overhauled) and the fact that it will absolutely not reflect enough of the comic to satisfy purists due to time constraints and character arcs, and you get a movie that just simply should not be made.

Continuing to go down this bumpy road with the existing incarnation of the Justice League of America, given the circumstances, would be throwing good money after bad.