“Justice League” could have turned out very differently: In a 2011 draft of the film obtained by The Wrap, Batman and Wonder Woman have a son, Aquaman is nowhere in sight, Darkseid enslaves Superman, and Hawkman and Green Lantern team up in space.
The script, by “Gangster Squad” screenwriter Will Beall, nails the art of fan service. After a quick introduction on Darkseid’s hellish planet, Apokolips, we’re plunged into a stunning set piece between Batman, Superman, KGBeast, Killer Croc and Lex Luthor that includes a shark tank shattering on the upper floors of Lexcorp Tower in Metropolis. And it just gets more packed with heroes and villains from there.
Here are a two highlights from the script obtained by The Wrap:
Though Steppenwolf is the lead villain in this year’s “Justice League,” Beall’s draft would have made his boss, Darkseid, the master of evil. That opening shark-tank battle ends with Desaad, one of Darkseid’s minions, killing Killer Croc and stealing Kryptonite that Luthor has just tried to buy from KGBeast, aka Anatoli Knyazev. At one point, Croc bites a shark.
Superman goes through a Boom Tube and travels eleven years into the future to find that Darkseid has wiped out 80 percent of the Earth’s population. Diana leads the last of the human resistance with an aged and grey-haired Bruce Wayne as her second-in-command. They have a son named Clark Wayne, and one surprising member of the resistance is Lex Luthor.
In 2013, Bad Ass Digest cited sources who called the script “terrible,” an assessment with which we disagree. Nevertheless, Warner Bros. preferred Zack and Deborah Snyder’s version of the DC Universe, which led to the Justice League we have today.
Thank you indeed for your reading time.
