With the recent announcement of the Man Of Steel sequel and the revelation that it will be a matchup between Batman and Superman, there was disappointment expressed by some fans. They complained that Superman will not be getting his own sequel movie and instead will have to share precious screen time with the Dark Knight.

There is some validity to these concerns since now, for many, this movie will be seen as the next Batman movie instead of the second Man Of Steel film. Also, the speculation about who will be playing Batman (now known to be Ben Affleck), as well as how Batman will be portrayed will take away much of the needed attention from Superman when it should be instead focused on building Superman’s new universe. It has been a while since Superman has been relevant and Man Of Steel was successful in reestablishing him as a viable action hero. Superman is entitled to his own solo movies and not have to share the spotlight with a character that could upstage him. Now, the momentum has been halted and Superman will have to wait until after this new movie or even after the Justice League movie is eventually released to get another solo movie.

But that won’t be until 2017. By then, the movie-going public could be tired of comic book movies and be ready for something else. At the same time, I can sort of understand why Warner Bros. is doing this: The Avengers.

The movie studio saw The Avengers’ box office returns and how well received it was with the public. They want their own super hero movie mashup and don’t want to wait for another Man Of Steel movie followed by a standalone Batman movie to introduce their other main character. Marvel had time to do this with the Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America movies coming out one year at a time. DC doesn’t really have time to do this with The Avengers: Age Of Ultron coming in 2015. They need something to compete with it, and a movie with Superman alone might not be enough. So we get Superman vs. Batman, which has generated a lot of buzz and excitement.

Hopefully it will help to create a new and exciting DC movie universe that will allow Superman to eventually have his own proper sequel. More importantly that sequel should continue Superman’s interesting character development that Man Of Steel has started.

C.S. Link