DIVINE INTERVENTION
Four reasons why director Ava Duvernay’s New Gods may answer our DC Extended Universe prayers
1 BECAUSE IT RAGNAROKS
New Gods was the out-there cosmic brainchild of former Marvel Comics lynchpin Jack Kirby, who in 1970 defected to rival DC on the promise of complete creative freedom. Ignoring all the existing DC heroes, Kirby conjured up an entire neo-mythology of his own, located in ‘The Fourth World’, where Ragnarok has wiped out all the deities of old, leaving a pair of perpetually warring planets — the heavenly New Genesis and the hellish Apokolips — populated by super-powerful, hi-tech beings. It’s wild, odd and psychedelically vibrant, and given Thor: Ragnarok’s Sakaar segment was steeped in Kirby-inspired art, we already have a thoroughly encouraging idea of how a movie version might look.
2 BECAUSE IT’S A FRESH START
Thus far, the DC movies have been locked into the gloomy, desaturated style set by Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel — a style audiences seem to have outgrown. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman brightened things a little, to great success, but New Gods offers the chance for a complete visual and narrative overhaul. While some elements will remain familiar — Justice League’s Mother Boxes are a New Gods invention, Steppenwolf is from Apokolips and his boss Darkseid is the series’ main villain — it’s likely New Gods’ storyline will follow Wonder Woman’s lead and maintain a healthy distance from what’s gone before.
3 BECAUSE THERE’S COOL CHARACTER POTENTIAL
For all the celestially epic drama, New Gods’ strongest plots are intimate and romantic. A fan favourite concerns the star-crossed relationship between Mister Miracle (from the planet New Genesis) and warrior woman Big Barda, (from the planet Apokolips) who marry and try to lead a normal, domestic life on Earth. Which would be a smart — and potentially amusing — way to ease us into Kirby’s Crazyverse.
4 BECAUSE AVA DUVERNAY
With A Wrinkle In Time, Duvernay (below) has proved she can handle large-scale science-fiction, and is able to balance weirdly exotic visual flourishes with more grounded human drama. Also, it appears she’s a fan herself; when asked on Twitter last December who her favourite superhero was, she said Big Barda. With her enthusiasm and vision combined, this promises to be more a director-tailored passion project than a compromised, made-by-committee Justice Leagueish let-down.