DC Superheroes in Film (1943 - 2024) (Page 12 of 19)

I think Warner Bros. has a policy of letting people develop ideas and see where they go, and then they pull the plug when they don't go anywhere. I really don't invest too much thought in the early parts of their process, but I like that they at least keep their minds open to different ideas (and I'm equally thankful that they are willing to delay or cancel projects).

The Joker thing is weird, but with all of the anti-DCEU media coverage, I am just going to ignore the reports of doom until they're more substantial.

It will probably never happen though, so I have no idea how it would work. Marvel has used some characters that 20th Century Fox was using, so it's been done. Yeah, it's weird, but if they can make money with it, I guess they will.

Oh, I agree. I don't like the idea. I'm just at a point where I can't really react to DCEU news anymore.

Yeah, I stopped watching trailers a while ago. Trailers ruin movies these days, because the marketing people have no idea who they're marketing to, or what these franchises are all about.

I don't think the DCEU has had any real failures, so I don't know that they need more wins before they make plans. I just prefer that they don't set some random release date and rush to put out half-baked movies (like Disney does).

Zachary Levi was just cast in the Shazam movie. That should be interesting. I can see him pulling off the whole "superhero body with a kid's mind" thing.

I think we can debate back and forth about how good the movies were, but they've consistently performed well at the box office. The studio has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to the box office numbers.

What I think Warner/DC is doing is developing ideas and seeing what works. There are a lot of movies in Hollywood that have directors attached and get through the scripting stage, but never actually get made. I think it's fine and even good for them to see where some of these ideas can go, but I don't think that we need all of them. Even Batgirl, as it stands now, should probably be scrapped. Incorporate her into a Batman movie, or even a Harley movie, but I don't know if that project sounds appealing on its own, at least to me. I'd rather see Nightwing. Or a Bat family movie.

So Justice League is getting torn to shreds by the press, which is to be expected. The thing that makes it hard for me to take the reviews seriously is the fact that they're holding Wonder Woman up as the high point of the franchise, when that movie has more issues than probably any other DC movie.

The critical want it to be a Marvel movie and then slam it when it's not. They criticize Ben Affleck for being to dour as Batman... But that is Batman's role in the group. And some critics seem to be trying to spare Whedons work by picking out bits that sound like he would have added them, and praising those bits.

I may end up agreeing with the critics. If the studio tried to "correct" the franchise, it might suck. However, the reviews that I've seen are using phrasing that doesn't sit well with me.

I think they've been trying to explore more obscure characters and storylines, keeping in mind that we have been exposed to a lot of these characters, in one form or another, for decades. Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman did the same thing.

The question is, are these just mainstream film reviewers who don't like the plot, or do comic book fans hate it too?

Justice League has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 37%! Things are looking up!

Slider_Quinn21 once remarked that he didn't see Marvel movies as 'real' films as much as Saturday morning cartoons in live action. Temporal Flux had the same view of SMALLVILLE. That's how I saw JUSTICE LEAGUE. It was good-natured, cheerful, speedily-paced fun with a focus on putting favourite characters in the same room and the plot either a framework or an afterthought. (It's the main flaw in my writing, too.)

SPOILERS

The plot is just an excuse to justify Wonder Woman shoving Batman for bringing up her dead boyfriend, Batman hinting at a secret weapon to stop Superman which turns out to be Lois, the Flash frantically confessing to Batman that he's never been in a fight, Batman protesting to Superman that he in no way dislikes Clark, Aquaman confessing all his insecurities because he sat on Wonder Woman's lasso of truth, the Flash saving one truck and feeling emasculated by Superman saving an apartment building, Batman saying his superpower is being rich and, my favourite moment -- when Batman pulls his disappearing act on Commissioner Gordon but the Flash lingers awkwardly.

The complaints about the movie being disjointed are, I feel, the result of viewers being overly aware that Zack Snyder left the film before the reshoots and trying to identify which scenes are Whedon's and which are Snyder's and overly fixating on the computer alterations to Henry Cavill's face (which only looked awkward to me in two shots because I wasn't looking for problems). To me, this movie was made like the Season 6 paintball episode of COMMUNITY: the plot was full of holes and gaps and leaps of logic because the story was about the people, not the events..

I liked JUSTICE LEAGUE more than AVENGERS because where Whedon seemed to linger for far too long on getting the gang together for Marvel (despite four movies of setup), JUSTICE LEAGUE makes it happen rapidly.

I had a lot of fun. It's not a film filled with insight and inspiration; it's got way too many characters to service for that due to Cyborg, Flash and Aquaman lacking a solo debut in their own films, but it does a good job with its task list. It's too bad the movie isn't doing so well financially; I suspect that the audience, aware of the production difficulties and change of directors, is understandably not eager to spend crazy cineplex money on what they assume is a mis-matched wreck of two directors who could not be more different. I think it works. The world disagrees.

I feel like Informant.

I think the DCEU brand is toxic at this point. MAN OF STEEL was a decent start to a Superman series, but the destruction porn rankled the audience and the box office was mediocre for a cultural icon. WB sought to raise the profile by adding Batman into the sequel -- but as BVS developed, WB then wanted to chase after what Marvel had and what the TRANSFORMERS, JAMES BOND, SPIDER-MAN and other franchises were pursuing in Marvel's wake -- a cinematic universe.

As a result, BVS was now saddled with Wonder Woman and cameos from the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg and setting up a JUSTICE LEAGUE film that would face an invasion from Apokolips. Zack Snyder and screenwriters Chris Terrio and David Goyer found a way to tell an operatic, epic tale of an angry man against a human god while meeting the shopping list WB had given them. Understandably, such a movie was going to be about three hours long -- and then WB ordered that an hour be cut from the film.

As a result, BVS was an incoherent mess of confusing plotlines that only the director's cut would finally explain. The vast majority of the world saw the often unfathomable cineplex version and viewed Zack Snyder as a director of incomprehensible, alienating films. SUICIDE SQUAD suffered from the same incoherence due to too many cut scenes. So, with a muted reaction to MAN OF STEEL, a severe distaste for BVS and SUICIDE SQUAD and WONDER WOMAN seen as an outlier because Snyder had nearly nothing to do with it, JUSTICE LEAGUE was (unfairly) expected to be more unwatchable confusion from the BVS director made even more incoherent by a different director coming aboard at the tail-end of the process.

The DCEU brand is synonymous with unpleasant, awkwardly edited, confusing filmmaking. Informant insists until he is blue in the face that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was a massive success, but WB wouldn't have hired Joss Whedon to alter JUSTICE LEAGUE in mid-production if they'd been satisfied with BVS' finances and critical reception. But the turnaround was too late and the overall perception of JUSTICE LEAGUE (a film I actually really enjoyed and want to see again soon) is that it was WB trying to imitate a Marvel movie and not pulling it off despite having *the* Marvel director doing it.

At this point, AQUAMAN is filmed and WONDER WOMAN was too successful to cancel a sequel. But I think what we're looking at is WB trying to salvage the brand by splitting the DCEU back into separate franchises so as to try to sell SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, FLASH, GREEN LANTERN CORPS, CYBORG, HARLEY & JOKER and JOKER as standalone features rather than DCEU features. Part of this was already in the planning stages, but I expect that if the FLASHPOINT film is ever made, it will break up the shared universe so as to allow each property to pursue its own path and public standing rather than seeing the Snyder brand define every single one of them.

JUSTICE LEAGUE cost too much money and has brought in too little for WB try a sequel any time soon and a movie with one or two superheroes is going to be cheaper than a movie with six. I think the DC Expanded Universe is done. Shared universes cost too much and one failure affects every other project.

It's scary how I totally agreed with Informant on all of this except the part where he disagreed with me. I can't wait to see what he makes of JUSTICE LEAGUE.

I'll just say I think Zack Snyder is a great director whose work on BVS should have been released to theatres unbutchered.

That is the question. The solution is to just make good movies and accept that some people (and most critics who don't know comic books at all) will not like them. Trying to make a very specific type of movie appeal to everyone is absurd.

Interesting.

You know what's weird? I can't read an article about the DC movies without getting the same frustration that I get when I read political articles. I would prefer facts without sly little commentary and opinion shaping.

I just don't get why people are so dedicated to that one, incredibly dated, incarnation of the character. I don't get the appeal. I don't get why they just want to recreate it over and over again. It is the worst way to do a remake/reboot/whatever.

As we know with movies, they don’t always follow the source material.  It may be called Flashpoint, but that doesn’t mean the resolution to the story is re-writing history.  Barry could end up shattering reality as a whole which means anything could happen.

Also, the Flashpoint in the comics wasn’t cut and dried alt history.  When Barry got back, everyone was ten years younger even though he did arrive at the right date.  They’re just now exploring how those ten years got shaved off, who did it and why.

I haven't seen Justice League yet, but I have a feeling that they're going to mess this up. No matter what they do, the reviewers will bash them and the audience will be torn. Because all audiences are torn.

There's nothing wrong with the universe they have. It allows them to do all sorts of movies. I hope they don't mess it up, but whatever. Man of Steel will still be the best Superman movie.

What do we think of the Terry McGinnis option? That way Affleck could play a role without having to train heavily or do complicated action stuff. He'd pretty much film on one set the whole time.

I didn't read the spoilers above, but I still want to see the movie. I think it might be too late. I have family in from out of town and my nephews want to see Star Wars, so I probably have a better chance of seeing that than JL.

Argh.

Apparently, the DC Extended Universe is so bereft of hope, so utterly beyond saving that Informant would allow "timing" to prevent him from seeing the JUSTICE LEAGUE film. It's time to face facts. The DCEU is done when a man who has filled page after page with ranting about BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN's successes and financial excellence can't find the time to see JUSTICE LEAGUE and while I applaud Informant putting a brave face on the situation, it's clear that the film franchise died the day Informant watched JUSTICE LEAGUE pass out of theatres with an indifferent wave having never seen a single frame of the movie within one of its cineplex screenings. I take no pleasure in observing this death knell, but we can't live pretending the world is something that it isn't.

**

Steppenwolf is a terrible villain. I don't see that being a problem, however, because as edited and structured, JUSTICE LEAGUE doesn't need him to be a great villain or to have meaningful motivations or philosophies. He just needs to be there so Superman can punch him. He is precisely what the movie needs, but absolutely no more and while it's a flaw, I don't feel it's a problem. It's like Snoke in THE LAST JEDI; the movie's not about the villain, you don't need to know all that much, it doesn't matter.

As for the retconning to claim Superman was more liked than he was -- I see some of it and I also don't. Superman failed to save the Senate and failed to save the village, so the idea that he was holding back the legions of Darkseid seems unlikely to me. However, BVS does enough to show that the average person feels Superman is "all some people have," as Lois said, so I can buy a mourning and a sense of loss and revering children with cell phone footage making Superman seem more meaningful without the darker elements BVS emphasized.

Ben Affleck is significantly heavier in JUSTICE LEAGUE than he was in BATMAN VS SUPERMAN, but it isn't fat. It's muscle. He's gotten even bigger since his debut.

There are a lot of oddities in the film that would have been there regardless of the directorial situation. It's not explained where the Flash got his suit; I assume he used his powers to mine and/or steal anything he needed to build it.

The secret identities were treated with total disregard in this film and I'm not sure what to say about it. I got the sense that Zach Snyder was deeply disinterested in the secret identity aspect of Superman given how Lois is in on the secret pretty quickly in MAN OF STEEL. Personally, seeing Bruce approaching Arthur in the village and Lois yell for Clark in Metropolis added a lot of tension for me: the situation is so desperate that secret identities are no longer worth the time.

I thought the chemistry between all six characters was fantastic, especially the way Henry Cavill haunted the whole film despite his absence. Bruce saying that Superman was the most human of them all because he lived like an ordinary guy was beautiful. Barry's awkward crush on Diana was very sweet, particularly his awestruck first meeting ("Hi, Barry, I'm Diana." "Hi, Barry, I'm Diana, no, that's wrong."). Barry falling face-first into Diana's breasts is a very Joss Whedon sort of moment.

**

My feeling as to why the movie is turning out to be such a bomb critically and financially: first, the release date should have been pushed back once Snyder left the film if only to finish some of the special effects rather than see them released as they were. Second, and this ties into the first point, the effects on Superman's face simply weren't finished. If WB had successfully kept a lid on Cavill's mustache, I don't think the audience would've been looking for it, but because it was in the press, the audience was looking for it and it couldn't withstand scrutiny. Third, from a PR standpoint, Whedon shouldn't have directed the reshoots as a director; he should've just been a producer -- because the whole world knows Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon have fundamentally adversarial styles and is looking for mismatches whether they're there or not. I would have hired Greg Beeman or Adam Kane (HEROES and directors who use lots of speedramping) to execute Whedon's marching orders.

But because WB did what they did, the result is that people are looking for all the seams and joins and staples rather than sitting back and appreciating the movie, and if you look for flaws, you'll find them because all movies have them.

It would fit with my impression of the Warner execs. I really think they are perplexed at why super-heroes sell.  They are fumbling in the dark with this; and they’ve either been getting bad advice or not giving enough faith to the good advice.  But that’s the problem - they can’t tell the difference between the two because they’re out of their depth.

Love him or hate him, Kevin Feige is an actual Marvel Comics fan.  He reads the comics.  A quote from this article sums it up:

https://www.ft.com/content/b2db3a84-5ec … 144feabdc0

Snyder understands this too; he proved it with 300 and Watchmen. But with the DCEU, he’s been stitching together comic scenes like Frankenstein (whether it be the Batman Superman fight lifted from Dark Knight Returns or the finale of Man of Steel lifted from the death-free Action Comics Annual 11 by Geoff Johns).  It just doesn’t work if a movie is formulated on the premise of connecting cool scenes together; and I really think that’s what Snyder has been focused on and what Warner has listened to.