Jay Oliva has had an extensive career in animation, directing several of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies such as Justice League: War, both parts of the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns adaptation and, most recently, Justice League Dark. He also has a lot of experience as a storyboard artist for both the animated and features films for both DC and Marvel, being credited as a storyboard artist for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman and Thor: Ragnarok.
Oliva was recently a guest on the podcast Shanlian on Batman and spoke about some of the sequences he storyboarded for Batman v Superman, namely the nightmare sequence which saw a future Batman fighting Superman’s soldiers before getting taken out by Darkseid’s parademons.
“I did the nightmare sequence with future Batman, although it was great because I just watched it again the other day and that last shot where it’s just one long, continuous take where Batman is fighting and eventually gets taken down, that was something I had talked to Zack about. Like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we did a Children of Men-style one shot?’ What’s funny is that [the parademons] were a late addition, Zack added that after I had done it because originally it was supposed to be the Superman bad guys and then Batman just gets taken over.”
“I was as surprised as you guys that the parademons were in it,” Oliva continued, “but I knew where they were going to lead to. Like they’re all leading to the events that would eventually be like Justice League: War, my animated film, so I thought that’s kind of cool they’re bringing it this early into the story. For me, it was a nice addition. Even the shot where you saw the Omega symbol, that was something I didn’t know. That was added after I had finished my stint on it so I didn’t know we were going to do references to Apokolips and stuff in the film so I’m pretty jazzed that they put it in there.”
The topic of Zack Snyder’s Justice League also came up in the conversation where Oliva told the group he got the chance to work briefly on the superhero team-up film.”I didn’t get to work on Justice League during pre-production, but then while they were actually shooting they gave me a call and said ‘We have this new sequence, can you come help me out?’ I was like ‘Of course!’ They flew me to London. I was there for a couple weeks just kind of crafting one of the new sequences that they had come up with and I was telling Zack ‘I’m so glad I got to work on this movie!’ I was hoping I got to work on Justice League so this was cool.”
Oliva also revealed that he worked on this summer’s upcoming Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, and thinks the film is going to be ‘great and fun’ for fans to see. “I worked with Patty extensively on the film so I think its going to be great. I think its going to be fun. I’m totally jazzed to see it on the big screen. I did a couple sequences so I’m curious to see how they turned out. I’m just happy there is a Wonder Woman film out!”
Oliva added that he hopes Jenkins’ film will see a resurgence in Wonder Woman’s popularity and get another animated film made. “Here’s what I hope: I hope that the Wonder Woman film will do well enough that they will want to do an animated Wonder Woman movie because the movie Laura Montgomery had done for us at Warner Bros. I worked on it with her and its one of my favourite movies that we had done. Its a shame it didn’t sell well mostly because it was pirated and because of that that’s why we don’t get any Wonder Woman solo films because the one time we tried it didn’t sell well so of course the higher-ups thought there wasn’t a market for Wonder Woman.”
You can check out the rest of the Shanlian on Batman podcast for Oliva’s thoughts on Justice League Dark, Batman: Assault on Arkham and the anticipated third season of Young Justice here.
Originally published February 14, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
