Worlds lived, worlds died

Up until recently, "fan speculation" about what would occur in movie adaptations of scifi/comic/anime/whatever properties innevitably had to be projected through the prism of what would be most palatable to mainstream audiences who didn't come up marinating in the stuff. It's only logical, after all... except maybe it's not anymore. In a world where Marvel Studios seems poised to "justify" the asymetrical realities of their "Avengers" project by trotting out esoteric macguffins like The Cosmic Cube or Infinity Gauntlet, who can say what's "too strange" now?

With that in mind, take with maybe LESS than a bucketful of salt this purported "exclusive" from comicbookmovie.com, claiming the appearance of a certain disproportionately-important DC Universe character in the Green Lantern movie: KRONA.

Probably nothing but a fanservice-y minor beat. Probably. But if not, things could get really interesting really fast... (more after the break)

Short version: The Green Lanterns are space-cops whose main "big" job is preventing rogue individuals from causing cosmic-level threats. The inspiration for this mandate were the crimes of Krona, an ancient ancestor of the alien Gaurdians (the GLs' bosses.) A mad scientist, Krona built a machine that would let him witness the origins of the universe - a giant hand reaching out of nothingness and unleashing "everything." (Exactly whose hand that was is kind of a "big deal.") However, in piercing the fabric of time to get his peek, Krona wound up setting off a cosmic chain reaction that split the one Universe into a MULTIverse - an infinite number of similar-yet-not alternate realities primarily differentiated by possessing gender, race or age "flipped" Justice League memberships and/or collections of "forgotten" heroes purchased from defunct rival publishers. Up until about 1985, The Multiverse was the defining "big idea" of DC Comics; allowing writers an excuse to make radical changes to established characters without rocking the "main" lines and the all-important plugging of continuity holes - "oh, that actually happened on Earth 2" is the DC version of "a wizard did it."

So... yeah, probably just a fan-friendly nod to the arcana, since that's some REALLY dense fan-wankery to expect in a production from the "superheroes? Do we have those?" Warner Bros. lot at this point. But given that Geoff Johns was at Comic-Con making cryptic teases about GL kicking off an Avengers-style shared-continuity run for DC movies... what if it's not? After all, also turning up in the GL movie is Angela Bassett as perennial DC "linking character" Amanda Waller - who'd be REALLY easy to plug into the Nick Fury role, yes?

So, then, crazy radical thought for the day: How do you build a shared DC movie-continuity when you're two biggest "players" (Batman and Superman) are going to be stranded for the forseeable future in the Nolan Bros. stand-alone, no-one-else-lives-here worlds? Sure, you COULD just have two other actors play Batman and Superman in a "Justice League" movie and keep it seperate, but fans would be furious...

...unless, of course, "that actually happened on Earth 2."

Could that be Warners/DC's gambit? "Shared universe? Yeah, that's cool I guess. Have you seen our MULTIVERSE?"

Think about it: One passing line of dialogue from Krona (or whoever, really) about "different heroes on different worlds," some quick glimpse of Christian Bale's wheezing robo-suit Batman (and maybe Adam Wests too, while they're at it) on a monitor/crystal-ball/whatever and PRESTO! Suddenly the sloppy non-continuity geeks hate becomes the  preposterously-dense, graph-requiring continuity that geeks LOVE.

Likely? Hell no. But if Krona really is in the movie, don't expect me to be the last one to bring this up.