I can't imagine Justice League without Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. My emotions are attached with this:
But, I am getting this:
Why did producers choose to not include Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern (they were also part of original seven members of Justice League in comics) in the movie?
GL's non-presence was discussed with the studio's bigwigs (Greg Silverman, president of creative development Warner Bros and DC producer Charles Roven) in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. They claim that it's down to three reasons;
“[Green Lantern] is an incredible character. He’s actually multiple incredible characters,” Silverman says. “There’s real opportunity there. We didn’t do a great job on that first Green Lantern movie. This is a character who deserves to be treated in the same way that Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman are being treated now, which is with great reverence. I guess I can say to the Green Lantern fans: if they can be patient with us, I think they’ll be really happy.”
But how patient? Roven says we may not see Hal Jordan, John Stewart, or any incarnation of Green Lantern until Justice League – Part Two. Maybe. “Every beat of the movie is not yet worked out. So there’s the possibility that he may or may not be in Justice League 2,” the producer says. “For now, we felt that we were introducing enough characters that the best possible place we could put Green Lantern is some introduction in Justice League 2, or barring that, a movie after.”
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice links the DC Comics movie universe
Senior DC scriptwriter David Goyer spoke about Martian Manhunter not being in the film in a Scriptnotes podcast. He broke it down into four main reasons. It's probably fair to say that if he's speaking openly, that these are prevalent beliefs within the upper echelons of DC's movie team.
Martian Manhunter, AKA J'onn J'onzz, is of course the last survivor of an ancient Martian civilization, notable for being one of the cofounders of the Justice League of America. He has not been announced to appear in the upcoming Justice League film however, and based on what Goyer said when asked about the character, it's looking like he likely won't. After first dismissing Martian Manhunter as too obscure to matter, Goyer explained how he can't see making use of the character without removing nearly everything associated with the character. I'll just let his words speak for themselves:
"He can't be fucking called the Martian Manhunter because that's goofy. He can be called Manhunter... The whole deal with Martian Manhunter is he's an alien living amongst us... So he comes down to Earth and decides, unlike Superman who already exists in the world now, that he's just going to be a homicide detective... So instead of using super-powers and mind-reading and like, oh, I could figure out if the President's lying or whatever, he just decides to disguise himself as a human homicide detective. Dare to dream!"
"I would set it up like The Day After Tomorrow. We discover one of those Earth-like planets... So maybe like... we get the DNA code from that planet and then grow him in a petri dish here... He's like in Area 51 or something and we're just basically... doing biopsies on him."
Goyer's Martian Manhunter Comments Are Why DC Can't Have Nice Things
Their powers are CGI heavy and would be very costly to animate correctly.
Martian Manhunter is a shapeshifter. Take away his shapeshifting and you basically have a green guy with super strenght with mind reading powers. And he has back story of Superman (as noted by Edlothiad). So,slightly stronger Aquaman.
Green Lantern is shapeshifting on steroids. A green guy that projects magical light that moves and cuts and punches things? Heavy CGI. But the guy that occasionally fires his hand cannon and is half robot? Much more limited and easier to animate and fix with costumer. Thus, Cyborg.
As for Hawkgirl? She is Wonder Woman with mace and wings. Winged flight is hard to animate correctly, because everyone has seen birds flying before and knows how it looks like. Otherwise, you get this:
In terms of story and what they bring on the table in terms of action and cost to actually bring it on screen, they are too expensive and they're not unique enough. I always felt it was that way during shows run as well. Hawkgirl, what does she do? She is a girl that flies around and punches things. Wonder Woman? Ditto. In fact, most of the original JLA powers are "flies around and punches things". Superman has eyebeams and x-ray vision in addition, but he rarely uses them. GL used his ring to mostly fly around and punch things and occasional protective barrier. MM used his powers to shift through walls, fly around and punch things.
There's a couple of reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
The green lantern movie tanked, it sank without trace. My wifes reaction to it was "So his power is he can manifest anything he can imagine as long as he concentrates? How can anyone stand against him when he could just imagine velociraptors with machine-guns?".
I doubt you'll see the green lantern on screen for another decade, at least.
Apparently a Green Lanatern movie is in the works! o_O
Also, this is an ensemble movie, we have three known entities (WW, BM & SM) who need to get along & interact etc. They're adding two new characters, who - within the run time of the movie - need to be introduced, we've to get to know them & their powers, and we've to find how they fit into the existing & still evolving dynamic between BM, SM & WW. I honestly don't think there's room in the movie to introduce more new - and massively powered - characters.
If you compare this to Avengers Assemble, Marvel hardly introduced a new character in that movie, all the avengers & the main villain had appeared on screen before, Clint Barton had the least screen time having had only a small cameo in Thor.
All the super heroes had hours of screen time before being teamed up.
Here we have three fully fleshed characters, with movie time under their belts, but we've to do the narrative work to introduce two more while still telling a coherent story.
