A ‘Static Shock’ Movie Would Rectify A Major Problem Plaguing DC And Marvel Superhero Movies

Modern pop-culture is dominated by adaptations of superheroes comics which were created 60-80 years ago. ‘Static Shock’ was created in 1993.

We’re (hopefully) getting a Static Shock movie courtesy of DC Films, Warner Bros. and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. That’s the news from The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, as Jordan will be a main producer along with currently attached Reginald Hudlin (who is about to relaunch Milestone Comics) in a move that makes it more likely that Virgil Hawkins will get his own movie. Assuming Static Shock becomes a live-action theatrical feature, it’ll make Static Shock, created in June of 1993 by (deep breath, Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, John Paul Leon, Robert L. Washington III and Michael Davis, the newest DC or Marvel superhero to get their own live-action superhero movie.

The only possible exception would be Harley Quinn. Dr. Quinzel debuted on Batman: The Animated Series in September of 1992 and made her first comics appearance in August of 1993 in Batman Adventures #12. She would be inducted into the mainstream DC continuity during the year-long “No Man’s Land” event (during which Gotham was cut off from the rest of the country following a massive earthquake) in 1999. And yes, Miles Morales, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, debuted in August of 2011 and got his own animated movie (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) in December of 2018.

Even Steel debuted concurrently with Static Shock, with John Henry Irons popping up in the “Death of Superman” mega-event one month before Milestone Comics (a company specializing in new comics from Black writers and artists which distributed through DC) arrived on the scene. And you can certainly argue how faithful-to-the-source Shaquille O’Neal’s Steel was back when it bombed ($1.7 million) in August of 1997. Otherwise, the various DC/Marvel superheroes who got their own live-action movies are either decades-old superheroes (Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc.) or characters who popped up in the 1970’s (Wolverine), 1980’s (Venom) and very early 1990’s (Deadpool, Steel).

This has been one of the issues in terms of having today’s of-the-moment pop culture revolving around mostly white dudes who were birthed just before World War II or just before the Vietnam war. No, I don’t think the lionization of the MCU is by itself a lionization of superhero power fantasies in the abstract. If it were just superhero fiction as a mere sub-genre, Hellboy wouldn’t have bombed last year and Disney wouldn’t have gotten grief for turning Mulan into a superhero. Audiences flock to the MCU and, relatively speaking, DC Films because they like the cinematic incarnations of those specific characters.

They like Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. Nonetheless, the marketplace is still dominated by revamped and updated adaptations of characters from half-a-century ago. It’s not unlike the whole “We gotta make James Bond and Tarzan woke” schtick, which is apparently easier for Hollywood than adapting newer characters which don’t have previous generations’ problematic contexts and historical legacies. Except these updated adaptations of characters created in the 1940’s, 1970’s and 1980’s are actually scoring blockbuster movies which now dominate pop culture and entertainment media, which you can’t say for Hercules, Peter Pan, King Arthur or Robin Hood.  

The Marvel and DC films have made/will make certain demographic updates, like casting Pacific Islander Jason Momoa as Aquaman, making Anthony Mackie the post-Steve Rogers Captain America and centering the next Thor movie around Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster/Mighty Thor. This is still taking established white guy heroes and making them more diverse either by unconventional casting or using updated comic arcs which offers up more enlightened narratives. That’s obviously a net positive, but it’s not that different from “Hey, we want a lady Indiana Jones!” and it’s not the same as wholly new characters who happen to be “not a white guy.”

As far as “of the moment” screen heroes, we got a bit of that in the 1990’s after Tim Burton’s Batman. While mainstream Hollywood mostly offered up period-piece pulp adaptations that didn’t commercially click (Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, The Phantom), New Line Cinema scored big with present-tense, of-the-moment comic book fantasies based on currently popular and new comics like The Mask ($350 million in 1994), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ($200 million in 1990), and Spawn ($88 million in 1997). New Line’s 1998 adaptation of Blade (created in 1973… so just a, uh, 25 year gap) opened the door for X-Men and Spider-Man.

Meanwhile, Brandon Lee’s The Crow began at Paramount
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but went out under Miramax, while, yes, WB’s Steel arrived in theaters just a few years after the character debuted as one of four replacement Supermen in DC’s “The Reign of Superman” arc. But once X-Men and Spider-Man showed Hollywood that A) technology had advanced to the point of successfully approximating comic book fantasy adventures and B) audiences would show up for these big-budget movies based on well-known comic book characters, we got a slew of movies (Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Batman Begins, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, etc.) based on decades-old (but still well-known) comic book superheroes.

Once the Marvel Cinematic Universe arrived with Iron Man in 2008, and then Man of Steel announced the unofficial arrival of DC Films in 2013, the priority was on building successful superhero universes/franchises. As such, especially for Marvel which to be fair went first, a premium was placed on safe, conventionally mainstream characters which meant a bunch of white guys saving the world and getting the girl. Genre appropriation would follow, but we should never forget the irony of DC comparatively stumbling out of the gate with Batman and Superman only to soar with Wonder Woman, Aquaman and an R-rated, action-lite, Joker drama.

Now, as Walt Disney
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and Marvel prep a Disney+ series for the created-in-2013 Ms. Marvel (played by Iman Vellani), we may get a Static Shock movie. Nobody deserves a medal for making a movie based on a 30 year old character which will open just over/under 25 years after the KidsWB animated series and 15 years after the character joined the mainstream DC Comics continuity. The next evolution/phase of the comic book superhero movie has to be not just multi-verses or multi-platform connectivity but superheroes and supervillains that represent underserved demographics that mostly sat on the sidelines while Marvel and DC took over Hollywood.

Heck, if this all works, and this is a big “if,” we may see DC Films divided up into subsections, like the Shazam/Black Adam/Justice Society franchise, the straight-up DC Films continuity, the Milestone/Dakotaverse universe featuring Rocket, Icon and Starlight, the one-shots (Joker, The Batman, DC Superpets) and whatever becomes of Zack Snyder’s first three movies after the SnyderCut of Justice League debuts next year on HBO Max. But that’s pretentious speculation. For now, Michael B. Jordan is probably giving us a Static Shock movie, and it’ll make Virgil the newest (and, yes, youngest) Marvel or DC superhero to get their own live-action movie.