Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 5

Click here to review part 4.

So far: 

In the second Firestorm movie, titled The Fury of Firestorm, Professor Martin Stein helps his former colleague, Crystal Frost, develop a thermafrost research chamber.  But when the experiment goes wrong, Crystal is transformed into Killer Frost.  Firestorm is unable to stop her during their first confrontation.  After the battle, Professor Stein is killed.

Immediately following the death of Professor Stein (David Strathairn), we get one of those now-classic sequences where the music kicks up and all the in-scene sound is muted.  The tempo slows down as Ronnie (Reid Ewing) wakes up and rushes to his mentor's side.  He cradles the body, crying, screaming in rage, all in slow motion while the score reaches crescendo.

After Stein is dead and buried, the rest of the second act sees Ronnie (or Jason) having to deal with the death of his friend.  There is a lot of unresolved emotional baggage, because they were fighting before Stein died, and Ronnie feels like he never committed as much to being a good, responsible hero like he should have.

At this point we'll also see an agony and vengeful Ronnie attempting to harness the Firestorm matrix without merging with Stein.  The result is something similar to the Elemental Firestorm-era of the comics.  He tries to attack Killer Frost (Mena Suvari) in this form, but cannot control the powers and endangering even more lives than her.

Ronnie knows that Firestorm is the only being powerful enough to stop Killer Frost, but he cannot control Firestorm alone.  He needs to fuse with another person to fully capture the Firestorm matrix.  He needs help.  He needs a new partner.

Firestorm 2.0

This next part is contingent on who our main character has been for the first movie-and-a-half.  If the protagonist is Ronnie Raymond, then he partners with Professor Stein's last protege, a young scientific genius named Jason Rusch.

Firestorm/Jason Rusch (Luke Youngblood)

Wait, wait, waitaminute! you say.  Didn't you already cast Donald Glover as Jason Rusch?

Indeed, I did, but that was for a different role; that was for a Jason that would carry the franchise on his shoulders.  I think Donald Glover is capable of--and overdue for--driving a superhero adventure series on his own.  So if Jason Rusch was our hero from the onset of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, I would definitely cast Glover.

If he wasn't, though, if Jason Rusch doesn't appear until the second movie, and then as a replacement for Stein, functioning more as a supporting character than lead, well, then Glover's talent and star power would best be served with a different character (and yes, I'll name that character at another time).  In that case, I'm going with my second choice, Luke Youngblood.

Youngblood is chameleonic in his ability to capture different characters on screen--and no character is more different than Magnitude on Community.  He's also a Brit, and I think letting him keep the accent would be cool way to further differentiate him from the All-American athlete Ronnie.


On the other hand, if our main character always was Jason (played by Donald Glover, remember) but written more like Ronnie, then his new partner in the Firestorm matrix would be his girlfriend.

Gehenna (Liu Yifei)

Okay, cards on the table, I don't know who this young woman is.  There are lots of other, perhaps more recognizable Chinese actresses, but most of them I'd already cast in other roles.  But Liu Yifei's imdb credits testify to her talent, and a google images search testifies to her sweet, wholesome beauty.

Now we have two options for Firestorm, each dynamic and interesting in its own way.  By the third act, a new Firestorm is born.

In the third act, Firestorm confronts Killer Frost again.  This time, with Jason (or Gehenna) providing some clutch insight into thermodynamics, Firestorm realizes that using fire and heat against Killer Frost only empowers her.  That cold is actually her enemy.  Firestorm uses his powers to lower the temperature somehow/somewhere and Killer Frost is shut down.

Ronnie, of course, wants to kill her to avenge Professor Stein, but Jason talks him out of it.  Killer Frost is immobilized and taken into government custody.  Ronnie and Jason (or Jason and Gehenna) mourn Stein's passing, but move on as a newer, stronger version of the hero, Firestorm.

That's the second movie, in a nutshell.  The dignified, iconic Martin Stein dies to be replaced by a younger, more ethnic character, because that's what comics do.  Ronnie goes through an emotional crisis and emerges stronger, more mature, more grounded, and a better all-around hero.

But there are still Firestorm stories to be told…

Beyond the Sequel

I won't get into additional movie synopses, but here are the casting choices for some more villains and supporting players.

Black Bison/John Ravenhair (Adam Beach)

Probably the biggest actor of Native American descent in Hollywood at this time is Adam Beach.  I've seen him play a soldier a couple times, and he's always kind of a good, noble guy.  I would like to see him stretch that range, playing a good, noble guy that succumbs to his darkest urges for vengeance as Black Bison.  And Wes Studi could play his great-grandfather, Bison-Black-As-Midnight-Sky.

Plastique/Bette Sans Souci (Clemence Poesy)

Clemence Poesy was the French girl from the fourth Harry Potter movie that competed for the Goblet of Fire.  She's the one who wasn't Robert Pattinson.  Beyond that, she's beautiful and she's French.  What more could you ask for in the sexy, explosive terrorist known as Plastique?

Hyena/Summer Day (Hilary Duff)

A bit of stunt casting, and a bit of my own weird sense of humor--casting an attractive, highly visible star to play a monstrous inhuman character.  (You'll see more of these from me in future DC fan-casting posts, trust me!)  My first thought, when picking Hilary Duff to play Summer Day, the cursed were-hyena, was the darkly comic juxtaposition between her beauty and a snarling, hairy beast.  My second thought was, she could easily play the sister of Dianna Agron, already cast as Doreen Day.

Slipknot/Christopher Weiss (Marlon Brando)

After the Joker and Catwoman, Slipknot is probably DC's most recognized villain.  To really do justice to this character, you need a serious Hollywood star.  Marlon Brando's breakout performances in On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire prove he has the acting chops to make this character every bit as formidable on the screen as he appears on the comics page.

Firehawk/Lorraine Reilly (Caroline Dhavernas)

Firehawk could make for a cool sidekick or professional rival in a third or fourth Firestorm movie.  I knew I wanted to use Caroline Dhavernas in my DC Universe fan-casting after watching her in the TV series Hannibal.  I wasn't sure what character she worked for until I remembered Firehawk.  Dhavernas still has youth and beauty, but she can also play stately and more mature, two valuable characteristics for someone like Lorraine Reilly.

There you have my fan-casted outline for two Firestorm movies.  I hope you enjoyed them almost as much as I hope Warner Bros. makes them.  My fan-casted Justice League trilogy will pickup again in a week or so.  See you then!

Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 4

Click here to review part 3.

In the previous post, I outlined my vision for Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, the first movie in a film franchise based on the DC Comics superhero, Firestorm.  Inspired by the first couple Firestorm comics by Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom, and borrowing heavily from the origin tropes utilized in Spider-Man and Iron Man, the movie finds college football star Ronnie Raymond fused with the mind of the brilliant physicist Martin Stein and gifted with amazing powers to transmute matter.

Additional powers include: flight, fire hair, puffy sleeves.

So, you ask, what are you going to do for an encore?

Relax, I shout, I'm getting to it!

Who's Who?

As I detailed last post, there are two options for the protagonist.  The star could be Ronnie Raymond, played by Reid Ewing.

If so, his father is Edward Raymond, played by Tony Goldwyn…

…and his girlfriend is Doreen Day, played by Dianna Agron.

Or the star could be Jason Rusch played by Donald Glover.

If so, his father is Alvin Rusch played by LeVar Burton…

…and his girlfriend is Gehenna played by Yifei Liu.

Either way, the hero of the first movie is written like Ronnie, and for most of this post I will refer to the lead character as Ronnie.

The Sequel

The second movie in the Firestorm movie franchise is called The Fury of Firestorm.  In typical sequel fashion, we witness an escalation in Firestorm's profile as well as the danger level.  The main villain strikes at the heart of the hero, leading to a profound and momentous character death.  The fallout of this death leads Firestorm down a path of anger and aggression.  When Firestorm at last confronts the murderous villain again, he must avenge his fallen friend without succumbing to darkness and losing himself in vengeance.

In the beginning of the movie, we find that some time has passed--a couple months to a year.  Ronnie is still in college, preparing for another football season.  Professor Martin Stein (David Strathairn) hasn't fared so well.  The nuclear meltdown that created Firestorm and Multiplex in the first film has tainted his credibility.  He lost his teaching job at Hudson University.  His relationships are pretty strained.  Maybe he's started drinking.

The one thing Professor Stein has committed to is halting the proliferation of nuclear reactor devices based on his own notes and inventions.  When we first see Stein in the sequel, he has chartered (or stolen) a helicopter and taken it to an offshore oil refinery or ship called The Neptune Explorer.  There, a scientist is creating a nuclear powered bathysphere for deep sea observation/exploration.  Stein tries to stop the experiment, and in the process, a research technician named David Drake is caught in the bathysphere when it sorta/kinda explodes and is transformed into Typhoon.

Typhoon/David Drake (Clifton Collins, Jr.)

Clifton Collins, Jr. plays a great thuggish bad guy, and that's what I was looking for in Typhoon.  Once given his incredible powers to control winds and rain and effectively become a giant storm, the actor's performance would be a lot of motion capture for CGI.  I also thought his ethnicity would bring a new, different intensity to the character.

So Typhoon emerges, literally mad with power and ready to destroy the oil rig/ship and everyone onboard.  Stein summons Ronnie (somehow), which comes at an inopportune time for the young man.  Maybe he's about to score in practice, or maybe he's about to score with Doreen.  Either way, he is transferred to the site the bathysphere meltdown and merges with Stein to become Firestorm!

Firestorm fights Typhoon over the water and has to stop the raging storm from devastating a coastal city.  Of course, thanks to Stein's brilliance, they come up with the saving formula to stop Typhoon.

This is all in the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the movie.  Typhoon is not our main villain; this intro is just an excuse to showcase another super villain with a power he haven't really seen before.  After that, we see more of the state of Ronnie and Stein's relationship.  Ronnie actually feels smothered by the older man, who wants to use the powers to fix his own mistakes, while Ronnie wants to enjoy his normal life.

Things between Ronnie and Stein begin to sour and they get into a fight.  At the same time, an old friend walks back into Stein's life.  Doctor Crystal Frost * was a student and research assistant of Stein's, and they were lovers at one time, before she went to Antarctica to study cold energy.  Crystal wants Stein's help in creating a lab at Hudson University where she can experiment on thermafrost.  Stein, at first, wants nothing to do with it, but she convinces him.  She wants to resume their former romance, but he rebukes her advances.

He helps her build the thermafrost lab, but something in the experiment goes wrong and the cold energy affects Crystal on a subatomic level, transforming her into the nightmarish Killer Frost.

Killer Frost/Crystal Frost (Mena Suvari)

For the part of Killer Frost, I wanted an actress who is beautiful, sexy, and young-but-not-too-young.  She shouldn't look like a college student, but she should be desirable to both Stein and Ronnie.  Mena Suvari has a history of enticing an older man in American Beauty, and I think there's a psycho chick in her waiting to get out.

Frost survives the accident and is put in a containment chamber where her new physiology can be studied.  Ronnie and Stein fight over the professor's culpability in the accident and say some harsh words to each other.  While Ronnie and Stein are basically breaking up with each other, Frost awakens and busts out of her containment field.

To live, she must now drawn heat into her body, which causes everything around her to freeze.  She kills the other doctors, kills the security guards that come after her.  Ronnie and Stein temporarily table their fight and become Firestorm so they can stop Killer Frost.

Their first fight with her goes horribly, tragically wrong.  They throw every energy blast and matter trick they can think of but they cannot stop her.  Killer Frost uses her power back at them, reducing the temperature so much that Ronnie begins to lose consciousness.  Killer Frost forces them to separate, and Ronnie and Stein fall to the floor as individuals.  Ronnie is out cold (pun!) and Stein staggers in a kind of daze.

Frost captures Stein in ice.  She's a little nuts, a little jilted ex-lover, and she blames him for her present condition, even though she begged him to make the thermafrost lab in the first place.  Killer Frost kisses Martin Stein, drawing all of his body heat into her, killing him.

Yeah.  Killer Frost kills Professor Stein.

To Be Continued…

* Crystal Frost is a ridiculous name that could only exist in comics.  The second Killer Frost was named Louise Lincoln, and maybe this one needs a name like that so it's not so distracting.

Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 3

Click here to review part 2.

Last time, I posted my choices for the characters who combine to make the hero Firestorm.  Casting the protagonist comes down to one question: black or white.

No undertones were harmed in this picture.

I've cast Reid Ewing as Ronnie Raymond for the classic Firestorm, or Donald Glover as Jason Rusch for the newer Firestorm.  Whichever direction we go, the hero for the first movie will be treated like the stud athlete Ronnie.

What other superhero has the awesome power
of Hula Hoops?

The Origin Movie

The first movie is called Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, and it would follow a pretty standard superhero origin structure as near-perfected by Marvel Studios with their movies.  Obviously, it would also borrow heavily from Firestorm's first comic appearances (pictured: right), which deftly introduced all the principal characters who would appear in this first movie.

Firestorm's origin was conceived as an homage to Spider-Man, so much of the character and thematic beats of the movie would mirror Spider-Man's.  But in order to give the movie a little distance from the Wall-Crawler's origin, which has been told twice in the last decade, I would make a few minor adjustments.

First, I would age the protagonist (Ronnie or Jason: I'll call him Ronnie) a couple years.  Instead of captaining his high school football team, Ronnie is a college football star at Hudson University.  That way, we have a more natural explanation for how Ronnie meets Professor Stein (David Strathairn) and gets caught in a nuclear blast.  We want to avoid repeating the Peter Parker destiny of getting irradiated during the worst supervised school field trip ever.

So in the beginning of the story, Ronnie is a cocky football star, maybe a Heisman Trophy candidate.  He's big man on campus, and he's got a terrific girlfriend.

Doreen Day (Dianna Agron)

Dianna Agron has the look, the age, and she can act the part.  I didn't think long about this one; I didn't have to.  Doreen isn't a big or complicated part, but she can be a source of conflict for Ronnie.  Unlike her depiction in the comics, which was kind of a nag, Doreen in this movie is supportive to a point.  Maybe she's Ronnie's physics tutor, too, so he can stay eligible for the team.

Did I say physics tutor?  Oh, that's right, because Ronnie is enrolled in the course taught by Professor Martin Stein, who is teaching for a year while he works with the university to create a fancy sci-fi fusion/fission reactor thingamajig.

At some point early on, Ronnie gets in trouble and faces disciplinary action by the university.  Ronnie gets lured into a fight with Cliff Carmichael, a young genius and pompous teacher's pet.

Cliff Carmichael (Charlie McDermott)

Again, this casting decision was based on age and appearance more than anything.  I haven't seen any of Charlie McDermott's movies because I don't see a lot of movies anymore, especially those with younger casts.  But hey, I'm sure he could do it, and the point of Carmichael at all is to lay seeds for his future as a villain far down the line.

Anyway, we see that Cliff Carmichael clearly instigates the fight, calling Ronnie a dumb jock and such, maybe even antagonizing Doreen.  Ronnie is simply defending himself and his girlfriend, but with the media scrutiny on him, any trouble is big trouble.  Ronnie's stern father, Edward Raymond, meets with the University to resolve the issue without getting his son kicked out of school or off the football team.

Edward Raymond (Tony Goldwyn)

Really, where's Tony Goldwyn been for a decade?  This guy was all over the place in the '80s and '90s, and he always played kind of a douche.  I guess he ran out of those roles because he's been directing TV for a while now.  I think he could easily play an unforgiving father who is thoroughly unimpressed by his son's superstar status, but goes to bat for him with the university to protect his own image more than anything.

Though his Heisman Trophy contention takes a hit, Ronnie's college career is saved with the condition that he performs some kind of work study or community service activity, and that puts him in Professor Stein's lab.  (It would make sense that Carmichael was working/interning for Stein; maybe Ronnie has to replace Carmichael.)

Now Ronnie has a working relationship with Stein and we witness a bond being formed despite their contradictory natures.  Or… they could hate each other.  More conflict makes for better story, so either way works.  Through Ronnie or Stein, we meet the professor's lab assistant, the unscrupulous Danton Black.

Multiplex/Danton Black (Simon Woods)

I really enjoyed Simon Woods' time on HBO's Rome.  He played a conniving, sleazy little bastard very well, and I think he could inject that same kind of energy into the film's villain, Danton Black.

Fast-forwarding a bit, eventually we discover Danton Black's treachery.  He's been stealing the secrets of Professor Stein's reactor to sell them.  Stein discovers this one fateful night and the two men fight in the lab and the reactor is damaged.  It goes critical.  Ronnie happens to be there, maybe working, or maybe coming back to apologize to Stein for doing something stupid.  There could be other people around, people who need to be evacuated, but Ronnie does the one selfless thing and rushes back to get Stein (or Black) out of the blast zone.

Of course, he fails, or this would be a very different kind of movie.

The fusion effect bonds Ronnie and Professor Stein, merging their bodies into one nuclear powered being, driven by Ronnie with Stein riding shotgun.  The powers of Firestorm include the ability to transmute matter to different states and forms.  Getting diamonds out of coal is as simple as recalling the chemical compositions of the desired element.  An iron cage can become jello with the snap of his fingers.  This power is limited, however, to inorganic matter.  He cannot point to a bank robber, for instance, and instantly change the man into solid stone.  Nor can he turn his fists into titanium when punching a bad guy.

His other powers include flight, a somewhat enhanced degree of strength and invulnerability, and the power to unleash bolts of fiery energy.  Plus: fire hair!

The merging of of Ronnie and Professor Stein is not permanent.  With great mental effort, they separate so as to return to their individual lives.  But when some kind of danger arises, Ronnie or Stein can reignite the Firestorm matrix by will, telepathically siphoning the other into their combined form.  (The rules for this back-and-forth transformation will have to be clearly defined for the audience.  Questions about their proximity to each other and who controls what are bound to arise.  Some changes from the original source material will probably have to be changed here.)

The second act of the movie is the Learning Curve.  We watch Ronnie and Stein learn to grapple with this thing they inadvertently created.  Playing with their powers.  Getting creative.  Lots of opportunity for humor, and naturally some kind of montage set to popular music.  Along the way, we'll raise and answer questions about our characters.  How does Ronnie feel about being part of Firestorm?  Would he enjoy the power?  Would he want to be a high-flying superhero that protects people?  Or would he feel shackled by the responsibility?  Would he chafe under Professor Stein's constant judgement?  How would this affect his romance with Doreen and how would it affect his status on the football team?

How does Martin Stein feel about this?  Guilty?  Proud?  Terrified?  Would he feel compelled to use this power for the benefit of all mankind when it actually involves risk to his own life?  Can he trust Ronnie to follow his advice and do what's right?  Or is this power too dangerous to ever be used by even a learned man such as himself, let alone an irresponsible college kid?

Meanwhile, as our hero(es) take their appropriate steps forward and back, we witness the rise of Firestorm's first true villain.  Danton Black was also caught in the nuclear blast.  While Ronnie and the professor were fused together, Danton was stricken by the machine's fission effect.  His body was split into a bazillion identical atoms, with his consciousness spread out among them all.  He pulls himself back together, rebuilding his physical structure, but as he does so, he discovers that he now has the ability to replicate himself and control each cloned body.  He was already backstabbing intellectual property thief, but the effect of splitting his mind over so many different bodies is enough to drive him crazy.  Thus, he becomes the villain known as Multiplex.

Naturally, in the third act of the film Ronnie and Professor Stein must set aside any problems they have with either each other or the weight of being Firestorm so they can save the day.  Multiplex becomes a serious threat.  Maybe he's trying to reproduce the nuclear accident from Stein's notes, either to undo the effect or to replicate it on everyone in the city.  Whatever his mad scheme actually is, it puts Doreen Day in danger, if not the entire Hudson University campus.

Firestorm can't just blast Multiplex because his powers don't work on people, so he needs to get creative.  Maybe Professor Stein's voice is blocked, or he's somehow incapacitated, necessitating that Ronnie remember something he learned in school and applying it in a real life situation.

Whatever.  It doesn't really matter how it goes down, but Firestorm thwarts the evil scheme of Multiplex.  Danton Black is killed or captured or maybe duplicated into so many different clone bodies that he loses mass and becomes small, or his consciousness diminishes and each duplicate is nothing but a mindless, drooling vegetable.  (I also have this image in my mind of Ronnie or Firestorm coaxing his entire football team to rumble with a horde of Multiplex duplicates.  Seems silly, but I still kind of want to see something like that.  Go figure.)

By the end of the movie, all is relatively well.  Ronnie and Stein understand each other, respect each other, and appreciate each other.  Ronnie loses his Heisman, and maybe he loses his girl.  But he knows what is really important to him.  He'll keep playing football and keep going to school, but when the time arises, he will gladly become Firestorm, and step up to protect humankind from whatever evil threatens to destroy it.

Is this an original story?  No, but that's the point.  It doesn't have to be.  Beyond pilfering specific plot points and scenes from the first two issues of the Firestorm comic, it's a paint by numbers plot line for superhero origins.  It doesn't have to be revolutionary, it just has to be.  And it can be.  This movie can work, because it already has.

Warner Bros. and DC: go make Firestorm: The Nuclear Man a movie like I just did!

To Be Continued…

In the next installment, I'll breakdown the sequel and provide the cast for Firestorm's rogues gallery.

Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 2

Click here to review part 1.

Bear with me here, because unlike my Fan-Casting Justice League posts, this installment is going to be a lot more fluid, with different casting options based on different lead characters.

The Hero

Firestorm is a composite hero, usually comprised of a young man in his teens or early 20s, with the consciousness of a wiser, scientifically minded mentor figure riding shotgun, occasionally backseat driving.  Two different characters have filled the young man position in the comics at different times in Firestorm's history: Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch.

Ronnie Raymond is the quarterback for his high school football team.  He's a good all-American kid, and unlike other jocks depicted in movies and literature in the '70s and '80s, he's not a bully.  More often, in fact, he is the victim of constant harassment by his intellectual superior, high school science nerd, Cliff Carmichael.  But Ronnie is not dumb.  He's not an academic; he's not even a B student most of the time, but he's no luddite, either.  School is a means to an end.  Ronnie wants to play football, and to do that, he knows he needs to stay in school.  If he receives an education in the process, so be it.

Jason Rusch was originally conceived as a poor kid living in Detroit with little hope of ever escaping from his dead-end life.  More recent appearances in comics and television, however, have re-characterized Jason as book-smart, arrogant, emotionally troubled.  In short, the new Jason Rusch is the opposite of Ronnie Raymond.

Also, there's this difference:

Professor Martin Stein is a Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist.  He built a fusion/fission reactor in the Hudson Power Plant that caused the accidental creation of the Firestorm Matrix when it explodes.  Professor Stein's mind is fused with the body of Ronnie (or Jason) and given radical powers to affect inorganic matter, as well as fly and shoot blasts of fiery energy from his hands.

In the comics, Ronnie was killed and replaced by Jason.  But then Ronnie came back and Professor Stein died, leaving Ronnie and Jason to merge together as Firestorm.

So, if Warner Bros. let me make a Firestorm movie, which character--or combination of characters--should I choose?

Stein is a must for the Firestorm Matrix.  He provides the voice--literally--of wisdom and maturity, he's the voice of guidance for our young, struggling hero.  He's the disembodied voice of Ben Kenobi or Yoda to Ronnie or Jason's Luke Skywalker.  Professor Stein also serves the plot by creating the device by which the protagonist receives his powers.

So who is the other half of the equation?  Who is the protagonist: Ronnie or Jason?  Since this is a purely hypothetical situation, I can entertain both options.

Firestorm/Ronnie Raymond (Reid Ewing)

When it comes to superheroes, I'm a traditionalist, or rather, an iconist.  The best versions of heroes are the first or most iconic versions, like the Barry Allen Flash, the Barbara Gordon Batgirl, and the Ted Kord Blue Beetle.  To me, the best Firestorm is Ronnie Raymond combined with Martin Stein.  I think the character of an unintellectual jock mentored by a brilliant scientist to learn how to be a good hero is the perfect recipe for a superhero origin story.

I love Modern Family and Reid Ewing makes every episode better.  He is instantly likable, but doesn't seem like the overtly heroic type, which is the point of the character.  Ewing's role as Dylan, the garage band singer/mother's worst nightmare of a boyfriend, demonstrates that "carefree moron" is well within his wheelhouse.  He's ready for a breakout leading man role, and starring as a young superhero with a learning curve is just what he needs.

Now… having said all that, I have zero, zilch, nada problem with casting a black actor as the star of the movie.  Adding more racial diversity to superhero comics and films cannot be a bad thing, but if I were to make Jason Rusch the star of Firestorm, I would have the character essentially written as Ronnie, but with a different name and race.

Firestorm/Jason Rusch (Donald Glover)

I love Community more than Modern Family, and Donald Glover might be the most effortlessly affable and watchable star on TV.  He sort of/kind of campaigned for the role of Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man, and I think it would have been a bold and exciting choice given how much the first hour of that movie just retreaded stuff from the first Spider-Man flick.  I think Glover would make an awesome Firestorm, a better Jason or Ronnie than any other young actor.

Professor Martin Stein (David Strathairn) *

The role of Professor Stein requires one defining characteristic over all others: a strong voice with resonance and authority.  A good chunk of his screen time would be as a disincorporated voice chiming in Firestorm's head.  There was one actor who jumped instantly to mind: David Strathairn, an actor I love and whose voice I could listen to read the phonebook (if there was literally no other book in the world to read).

Strathairn's perfectly pitched voice sounds fatherly and wise even with a bit of a rural drawl.  He would make a terrific counterbalance for either Reid Ewing's Ronnie or Donald Glover's Jason.

In the next installment of this series, I'll unfold the story for Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, its possible sequels, and the cast of supporting characters and villains.

To Be Continued…


* My sole reservation with Strathairn is his age.  I'd like the option for Stein to be a little bit younger, a little more active, and for that, my second choice pick for Martin Stein is John C. McGinley.

McGinley has a lot of the same great qualities as David Strathairn with a lot more energy.  His Stein could be played more stern, more weary, and more troubled by Ronnie's arrested development.

Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 1

Outlining the next two movies in my Justice League trilogy is taking some time, but it's oh so much fun.  While toiling over this project, I allowed the character-to-actor matching process to carry me away, and now, well, I have more than 150 heroes, villains, or supporting players in the DC Universe cast.

I likely won't start posting my write-up and cast for Justice League: The Brave and the Bold for another couple weeks.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share a few of casting decisions for characters who will not be gracing the main Justice League trilogy, but who could possibly appear in later sequels or their own features.

To kick things off, I present my much simpler vision for a Firestorm movie franchise.

More Howie Long. More Howie Long.

Or wait, maybe I meant this guy:

More fire hair.  More fire hair.

I dedicate this series to the Irredeemable Shag at Firestorm Fan.

Before going further, I want to address my absolute lack of faith that Warner Bros. would ever make a Firestorm movie on their own.  If the studio has a list somewhere of fifty potential films based on DC Comics properties, I'm sure Firestorm doesn't make the cut.  Of course, the first 35 titles on the list are Batman, so it's really a matter of Firestorm not making the other fifteen.  And that's unfortunate, because to me, Firestorm is the easiest hero in DC's stable to bring to the theater.

Warner Bros. and DC have struggled to make movies starring Superman and Green Lantern that appeal to fans, critics, and general audiences, and they're too scared to even try it with Wonder Woman.  To a certain extent, I don't blame them.  DC heroes aren't like Marvel heroes.  DC characters would be superior people even if they didn't have powers.  Marvel characters use their powers for good despite their human flaws.

Marvel is the company of antiheroes, and I don't mean the type who shoot guns, wear trench coats, and kill their enemies.  No, I mean antihero in the classic sense: someone who acts heroically despite physical or character flaws that would make them seem less than ideal.  In other words: damn near all of Marvel's heroes.  Spider-Man is an antihero because Peter Parker is a nerdy science geek who gets picked on in school.  Iron Man is an antihero because Tony Stark is an arrogant, womanizing, alcoholic.  And these two less-than-ideal but all-too-relatable heroes have become the archetypes that Marvel Studios has built its cinematic universe around.

DC heroes, on the other hand, are far less relatable.  If Clark Kent didn't have superpowers, he would still be a crusading journalist for truth and justice.  If Hal Jordan didn't have a power ring, he would still be a death-defying test pilot.  If Barry Allen weren't the fastest man alive, he would still solve crimes for the Central City Police.  If Batman never donned the cape and cowl, he would still be the world's greatest detective, as well as one of the richest men in the world, one of the smartest men in the world, one of the best fighters in the world.

If your skull housed a nuclear furnace, you'd
wear some funky sleeves, too.

But that doesn't hold true for Firestorm, because Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom created him in the Marvel model.  In fact, the character was based on Spider-Man--with a twist.  Instead of the nerdy kid, who gets teased relentlessly by the dumb jock, getting powers in a scientific accident, Firestorm's protagonist is the dumb jock, and the nerd his constant tormenter.

It's a perfect formula for a movie, because it combines the basic plot structure of Spider-Man, with the character arc of Iron Man.  Ronnie Raymond is a cocky, egotistical star athlete at the beginning, but when given superpowers, he must learn humility and responsibility for the good of everyone.

In Part 2 of this series, I'll get into my plans and backup plans for the main character, explain my casting decisions, and provide a very loose outline for the first movie.  If you've been following my Justice League fan-cast, don't expect twenty posts to tell the story.  This is a very modest story outline.  Like, a paragraph probably.  And then in Part 3, I'll do the same for a sequel movie… and beyond.

Come back soon, and be prepared to fan the flame!