Comic book movies that need to be made

With ecstatic geek reviews flooding in ahead of its launch, the Thor movie proves that any classy director can deliver a cracking comic book film. In the Norse god of thunder’s case, it’s Ken Branagh.
That set me wondering: of the current crop of brilliant directors, who should direct which comic book?

Clint Eastwood
He would need a story with an elegiac quality, a quest for redemption by an all-American hero that could be told at a stately pace, so it has to be Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman, in which the big blue boyscout faces his final mission. It would make a fine companion piece to Gran Torino and Million Dollar Baby. Jon Ham would have to take the lead role, and Christina Hendricks would be the hottest Lois ever. Could Clint persuade Gene Hackman back to play Lex?

The Coens
It would need to be offbeat and violent, therefore it’s Bendis’s run on Daredevil – kooky characters, the hero at the centre of the violence, seeking redemption, and knowing he can never attain it; throw in the Catholic imagery, and you’ve got an Oscar winner.
However, if they’re in their screwball phase, it’s Warren Ellis’s Nextwave: perhaps the most useless superhero team ever put together in the Marvel universe, they’re barely competent and certainly wouldn’t know teamwork if it knocked them into the sun; funny, yet achingly sad.

Darren Aronofsky
Dark, sensual, twisted and epic – that’s what the Black Swan director needs, and there’s no question that Warren Ellis’s mind-bending Planetary, complete with its astonishing visuals, is right up Aaronofsky’s street. Such a pity he walked away from Wolverine.

Ridley Scott
Big, bold, scary, etc and British-skewed, that’s what the Alien director needs, and something that allows him to dabble in production design. There is no greater fit than Warren Ellis’s and Mark Millar’s runs on The Authority, the superheroes who decide they’re going to make the world behave no matter what. There are only two British actresses I can think of with the guts and the balls to play the comic’s heroine Jenny Sparks and they are Katie Jarvis (from Fish Tank) or Carey Mulligan.

David Fincher
Fincher has been growing up of late, but he needs to direct a bad, mad hero, fighting in darkened alleys, dealing with the gritty and the grim: step forward Marvel’s answer to Batman, Moon Knight. Insane, violent, searching for peace of mind, trapped within his own profession, Moonie is the man for Fincher. While he’s played the Punisher, Thomas Jane gets my vote to play Khonshu’s avatar on earth.

PT Anderson
I’m thinking Anderson needs to plug into the headspace he was in with There Will Be Blood, so let there be blood, absolutely lashings of it: he should adapt Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan, the story of a retired Wolverine coerced into snikting those claws one last time in an effort to save his family and redeem his soul. Casting? Harrison Ford perhaps?