AUGUST 30, 2017 6:37pm PT by Aaron Couch
Abandoned 'Justice League' Movie to Have Featured Brutal Wonder Woman/Superman Fight

Director George Miller's Justice League Mortal is one of the great lost films of our times, and it would included a brutal fight between two of DC's greatest heroes (no, not Batman and Superman), according to one of its stars.

Jay Baruchel was set to play the villain Maxwell Lord in the film, and he shared new details about the project in an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, hosted by MTV's Josh Horowitz.

"They had all the costume design. They had all of the pre-vis. They had all of the sort of production design figured out, and so they would take us and walk us through this command center where they had everything," the actor said of checking things out down in Australia. "The aesthetic choices that they were making and the story and character choices they were making are so ballsy, and we won't ever see it."

Justice League Mortal had a cast in place and was deep into preproduction, with stars including Armie Hammer (as Batman), DJ Cotrona (as Superman), Megan Gale (as Wonder Woman) and Adam Brody (as The Flash). Warner Bros. had announced the movie in 2007 for a 2009 release date, but the project was pulled due to a number of factors, including the 2007-08 writers' strike.

Asked to describe what it would have felt like, Baruchel offered this: "Imagine Miller doing [Zack] Snyder ... it was very tableau ... they were paintings. And what the characters were doing had such teeth to it."

As an example, he described in detail a scene in which his character Maxwell Lord brainwashed Clark Kent.

"All of a sudden this guy's got Superman as a weapon," said the actor.

In the script, Lord would get a nosebleed whenever he took over someone's mind, but Baruchel pitched to Miller that taking over Superman's powerful Kryptonian brain would cause Lord to bleed out of every orifice in his head.

"I turn him into full red eye Superman, and then there's this big ass fight between him and Wonder Woman, where he breaks her fucking wrists and shit," he continued. "The first time you see Wonder Woman, the opening scene on Themyscira, it was just her. It's her on top of a steed ... and she stood about half a kilometer away from a Minotaur. The Minotaur has a battle-ax in his hand and she just rushes him. All the Amazons are there cheering her on, and she just beheads him. Gets off her steed ... holds up the Minotaur thing and doesn't say a goddamned thing. It's like, 'That's the Wonder Woman I want to see!' It would have been special."

In 2014, stuntman Greg Van Borssum posted a photo with Miller and most of the cast together in 2007:




A year later, a group of filmmakers announced they were making a documentary on the project, though there have been no recent updates on its progress. A decade after the pic was abandoned, Snyder's Justice League is set to hit theaters Nov. 17.

Danny Elfman is bringing John Williams’ classic Superman theme to ‘Justice League’

You’ve just been in London recording the score for Justice League. It’s been 28 years since you scored Batman. What was it like going back into the DC universe?

It was great. It was like I never left because I’m using the same thematic material that I used back then. It never actually went away [Laughs.] It just was great fun.

There are a few little fan moments. I instated a moment of the Wonder Woman theme that Hans Zimmer did for Batman Vs. Superman, but I also had two minutes where I had the pleasure of saying, “Let’s do John Williams’ Superman.” and that for me was heaven, because now I have a melody to twist, and I’m using it in an actually very dark way, in a dark moment. It’s the kind of thing that some fans will notice. Some won’t. It’s a moment where we’re really not sure whose side he’s on.

The people at DC are starting to understand we’ve got these iconic bits from our past and that’s part of us, that’s part of our heritage — we shouldn’t run away from that. Contemporary thinking is, every time they reboot something, you have to start completely from scratch — which, of course, audiences will tell us again and again, is bullshit. Because the single-most surviving and loved theme in the world is Star Wars, which they had the good sense to not dump for the reboots. And every time it comes back, the audience goes crazy.

Did you write new themes for such characters as Flash and Aquaman?

I created very simple motifs. There are so many themes, you can’t just do a big theme for everything. So i created a motif for Flash, for Aquaman and Cyborg — but they’re very simple things, and [DC] understood. I said, “These things may never be used again, but I’m giving you all the components, should you wish to have things to build on.” So they either will or they won’t, but that’s how I approach a project like this. You have to take the attitude that this is the beginning of a mythology and it all matters, it all comes to fruition, and with any luck they will.

I loved the people I worked with, they were wonderful. The DC guys were great. I kept talking about the DNA of John Williams in this other theme — using the DNA of Batman in these other variations, which were not the Batman theme — but it all derives from that… Musical themes are like genes, you carry the DNA along and it creates these subtle connections which are perceived on an unconscious level. It’s funny because I’m terrible at puzzles, but I love musical puzzles. It’s a different part of my brain.

Elfman also spoke about working with Justice League director Joss Whedon, who he worked with previously on Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Why do you love working with [Joss Whedon]?

It was the same as when I worked with him on Ultron. He appreciates melodies and pieces. He’s like, “Oh, you’ve given it identity here!” There was a moment where the Batmobile shoots out of a thing and he goes, “Go batshit crazy here! Batman the shit out of it!” When I’m using the Batman theme, I’m using the melodic sense of it, I’m wasn’t doing full-on Batman, and there’s a moment when he says, “No, right here, Full on!”

Danny Elfman is bringing John Williams’ classic Superman theme to ‘Justice League’