DC Superheroes in Film (1943 - 2024) (Page 4 of 19)

I find that Informant is half right and half wrong. The part where he's right:

BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is, for some reason, being painted as a failure. It wasn't. It's on track to make about 278 million in profit. MAN OF STEEL made 300 million in profit. And that's really the concern: Warner Bros. has to wonder why they spent such a massive amount of time and money in order to achieve what will be a rather middling return on their investment.

When your movie costs 410 million in production and marketing, 742 million by the third week of box office is weak when the studio only gets from 50 - 55 per cent of that and then has to subtract the money they spent making and selling the film.

And that's the quandary Warner Bros. find themselves in. To hit the 1 billion dollar box office sweet spot, they need a film that the audience is repeatedly returning to the cineplex to see again and again and again and again -- and that's not happening despite the film featuring three cultural icons in lead roles in a hugely promoted feature film.

When a low budget film like DEADPOOL is outgrossing a giant budget film like BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN, Warner Bros. has to consider if they're investing too much in the wrong areas. Currently, their method of investment is a bit like someone buying a private plane to commute two blocks.

Now, where Informant is wrong:

!?!?!?!?!

Google AGE OF ULTRON and "failure" and you'll find enough articles to wallpaper an entire city. The fallout from AGE OF ULTRON resulted in the widely reported schism within Marvel Studios in which Kevin Feige wanted Robert Downey Jr. to play a lead role in CAPTAIN AMERICA III rather than a supporting character, Isaac Perlmutter, responded by firing Downey Jr.

Feige declared that numerous production problems and overruns on AGE OF ULTRON had been due to Perlmutter's interference leading to Marvel earning lots of money but also having spent far too much for the earnings they'd won. Perlmutter was demoted to TV and comics, Downey Jr. was rehired and this was the biggest news for superheroes in Fall 2015. Hell, YOU heard it about it -- from me!

?!?!?!?!!??!

Why would THE FORCE AWAKENS be considered a failure? 2 billion box office for $300 million in production and marketing.

?!?!!?!??!?!!??!?!?!!!?!!?!??!

STAR WARS is routinely mocked for the endless double-dipping. Fans have raised campaigns urging Lucas to stop messing around with the original trilogy and the Library of Congress declared the SPECIAL EDITIONs to be unwelcome in their archives because they'd been messed with so much.

Fans went so far as to form teams to locate and scan 16mm, 35mm and 70mm prints of the original films, which fan editors then used as source material to re-edit the blu-ray releases to create reconstructed versions of the unaltered films. Every re-release of the films with more inane CG alterations has been met with derision and anger. The universal distaste for the SPECIAL EDITIONS is one of the few (probably the only) things that STAR WARS fans actually agree on. And again, if nowhere else -- you would have read about it here on Sliders.tv! I've been posting about the DESPECIALIZED fan reconstruction project.

George Lucas' motives have also been psychoanalyzed to the last neuron: he grew up struggling to earn money, THX 1138 nearly bankrupted him, he sank the bulk of his millions from AMERICAN GRAFFITI into STAR WARS and was terrified when the film was dismissed by FOX and projected to fail. When it was a success, he invested in a sequel only to be horrified by ballooning production costs. Despite the success, Lucas was determined to avoid risky investments, doing RETURN OF THE JEDI as cheaply as possible and building Lucasfilm as a lucrative film production empire -- only to lose half of his fortune when his wife, fed up with his neglect, sued him in the divorce and proceeded to win and cripple his company for years.

As a result, Lucas became obsessed with squeezing as much profit out of his past achievements as possible due to his paranoia over money. This is the reason for the constant re-releases and why he would only make the prequels when the bulk of them could be filmed on soundstages in front of blue screens. Why did he refuse to hire screenwriters or other directors? He feared they would make things cost more than what he wanted to spend. Pathetic, really.

AND YOU READ ABOUT IT HERE!!!!!!!

*ahem*

You're right about the BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN 'failure' being massively overblown, though. It's not a failure. It's a modest success.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I don't believe that The Force Awakens or Star Wars were failures. I am saying that there are a ton of headlines about BvS that present it as a failure and claim that the studio is panicking, only to have the articles themselves present no such facts. There is an active push to create failure here, which you don't see with other movies. Whenever the release of the extended version of BvS is mentioned, it is in the context of trying to salvage something from the failure.

I may have missed the Age of Ultron articles when they came out, but I don't recall this level of active hate toward the movie.

I think that BvS will be a worthwhile investment (has the marketing budget been confirmed?). In addition to the merchandising that they will earn a ton of money from, the movie sets up a lot of other movies. Warner Bros. might be wise to get smarter with their spending, but the overall products that they have put out have been such a huge step up from Marvel's movies that I think Marvel might be wise to spend more. Their movies don't look good at all. If they are trying to save money by hiring cheaper directors or cinematographers, it shows. Obviously, it hasn't kept them from making money. However, it might limit the long-term appeal of the movies.

I don't really have an opinion on that yet, since we don't know how DC's continuity will work out. There are a number of people who are working on the various DC films (Zack and Deborah Snyder, Geoff Johns, Richard Suckle, Charles Roven, Wesley Coller and I'm sure a lot more people that I don't have the energy to look up on IMDB right now).

At this point, it seem that while Justice League will move the story forward, a lot of the other movies will probably take place before BvS. Wonder Woman will probably take place mostly (if not entirely) during WWI. Cyborg, Aquaman and to a lesser degree, The Flash would be strange movies if they didn't tell origin stories. Since we've already seen footage of them in action in BvS, that means that their stories would probably take place earlier. It's hard to say when Suicide Squad actually takes place, but the Batman movie could very easily show us how Batman got to the point where he is in BvS. What happened to Robin and Batgirl? It would be great if Affleck brought Nightwing into that story and maybe ended it with the introduction of Tim Drake.

If most of those movies stand on their own, how much do they really need to work together? They have a team of people working across different movies, so do they need one person directing the whole thing? I don't know. It seems like the Snyders are overseeing the general direction of the movies, but there could be a hundred other people out there, making sure that Wonder Woman doesn't contradict Aquaman.

Would I say that the Marvel model has worked in this regard? No. I don't think the movies work well as one whole creation. I think there are continuity problems between the movies. I think the characterization between movies has been pretty bad. I think there is a huge disconnect between the films and the TV shows that are supposed to take place in the same universe, so DC's decision to keep them separate (yet within the same multiverse) makes more sense at this point. While I think that Marvel has put out some fun products along the way, I don't think that I would point to them as a model of how to get things done.

Setting aside any discussion of quality --

That's the financial situation as well. Warner Bros. was sure a Batman and Superman film would easily hit 500 million domestic and 500 million foreign within two weeks, likely make at least $1.5 billion by the end of its theatrical run, and leave any competition in the dust. They put nearly half a million (estimated) into the project, expecting to make about $900 million in profit.

But three weeks in, it's made $300 million domestically, $500 million in foreign sales and ticket sales dropped 70 per cent with the second week, and now they'll likely make about $278 million in profit.

That makes superhero movies a lousy investment; they cost half a billion dollars to make and their profit margins aren't high enough to justify the risk and funds especially when sequels inevitably see diminishing returns. Warner Bros. has to ask themselves: why are they spending so much money to earn a 55 per cent return on investment that inevitably gets whittled away by continued costs of operating? In order for the studio to see a significant gain, they need to see a profit of at least 100 to 300 per cent of what they invested.

So, the issue isn't that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN isn't earning money; it's that it isn't earning money to entirely validate the money that was spent. If BVS had cost $250 million to produce and market, the current earnings would be fine.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I think casting Ben Afflect was likely more expensive than BVS's earnings justify; I'm guessing he was paid anywhere from $30 million to $40 million. The second expense was filming locations -- Detroit and Chicago and Yorkville might have been best replaced entirely with soundstages, Vancouver or Los Angeles, and the use of second unit filming and computer recomposition to create the illusion of the actors being on location, much as HEROES created locations with stock footage and digitally merging it with newly filmed material.

Another insane use of funds was extremely poor preparation that is fairly common to studio films, sadly. They hired Jena Malone and filmed extensive sequences that aren't in the film, so they paid her for nothing and paid the crew to film all those scenes for no reason. At a midpoint in editing, the film had an additional two hours of additional scenes -- not extended moments, but additional scenes -- that were filmed and ultimately not included, which means that Snyder and the producers exercised poor judgement when deciding to spend money filming script pages that weren't used. It really is not difficult to sit down over a weekend, read a script and identify what scenes will likely be cut.

Setting aside any question of quality, all of Marvel's films have been unquestionably profitable and the disappointment over AGE OF ULTRON at Marvel Studios was because it cost more $30 million more than AVENGERS but earned about $100 million less -- it was a hit, but it didn't move the studio to a higher level of financial prosperity beyond where AVENGERS had already put them. It wasn't an improvement, financially. But Marvel movies tend to operate like DC's TV shows -- they're on a budget where even if the earnings aren't spectacular, they're still pretty solid and aren't cause to question the value of the superhero cinema.

I think that's an area where DC's slate could benefit -- they spend way too much money without control, attention or frugality. When Batman is the star of your movie, you don't need to hire a movie star to play him. You don't need to pay for actors and sequenecs that will ultimately be cut. Location filming is wonderful, but this is not the 1990s anymore and the 'bottled' look of SLIDERS on Season 3 - 5 soundstages can now be dodged with craft and skill, allowing a location look for less cost while still having money for Superman and Wonder Woman to fight Doomsday. The movie side could learn some things about cost effective creativity from the TV side.

Look, I have no reason to think that DC won't be a unified front.  That Batman in BvS will match Batman in Suicide Squad that will match Batman in Affleck's solo film.  I don't think we'll suddenly get Adam West Batman in Suicide Squad because that movie is a little goofier.

I have no reason to believe that things won't go sour.  But I also have no reason to think that they won't.  And I think the problem is that this universe has a tone, and it's Zack Snyder's tone.  And Zack Snyder has a very specific and very unique tone - it's grim, it's dour, and it's muted.  Yes, he takes things very seriously, and that's awesome.  But all his movies are, on one level or another, extremely depressing.  For the most part, these movies don't even end happily.  Watchmen, 300, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel.  Every one of them ends with the hero either dying or walking away from some sort of huge tragedy.  I know you thought Man of Steel was hopeful, but I thought it ended on a really dark note.  BvS ends on a really dark note.

So, honestly, I'd *love* it if Snyder was fired and they went in a different direction.  But I don't think that benefits anyone.  We have to have a Superman who is publicly cold and alien.  We have to have a Batman who is more-than-willing to kill when the situation calls for it.  Because if we don't, we're contradicting what's been established.  And that's more than twisting the narrative so that Thor can end up on Earth with the Bifrost destroyed.  It's more than Captain America's wardrobe or Black Widow's boyfriend.  Superman never smiling is a part of his character across his entire career.  Batman's willingness to kill is something that is a part of his character.

And so if Superman shows up in a Flash movie, he can't all-the-sudden start acting fun and playful.  If Batman shows up in an Aquaman movie and has a chance to kill a villain who's doing harm, he has to take the shot.  And whether 12 people are doing it or one person is doing it, those characteristics have to apply to all the movies in the DCCU or there's no reason to even do a cinematic universe.

SMALLVILLE, for all its many, many, many, many, many, many faults, appreciated that the most exciting visual was Tom Welling pulling people out of car wrecks and burning buildings and racing them out of explosions and never had trouble communicating that Clark cared about people.

**

Location filming will never be matched by HEROES style of second unit and stock footage meshed with soundstage material -- but big budget Hollywood films are getting ridiculously bloated. Television, whether it's THE FLASH or DOCTOR WHO or SUPERNATURAL, have all had to work with budget reductions compared to previous years due to economic pressures. SLIDERS used a lot of neat tricks in Seasons 1 - 2 to make the most of its money; interior sets were often empty studio space with props and set dressing wheeled in and out to turn the space into a hotel, a courtroom, Quinn's basement, a police station, etc..

The people who make big studio movies, however, seem to balk at sober fiscal consideration. Let's rent an entire farm! Let's rent out an entire library for one scene with Bruce and Diana! Let's rent an entire art museum for Lex's reception! Let's rent Old Wayne County Building for the Senate! Creating just enough set dressing for the shots we need!? That's for the peasants who work in TV!

As nice as it is to have these things, a little craft and care could see the movie get by without these things, slim down the budget considerably and we wouldn't be looking at all these grim reports of BVS having little to show the studio for all its spending. Zack Snyder, no matter what anyone thinks of him, is a very experienced and capable director; he could make the best of it.

But did they stop everything in the middle of an episode to have a random sequence of him saving people who had nothing to do with the plot of the episode? The problem with Batman v Superman, in terms of this conversation, is that it isn't a Superman movie. Relatively little time is devoted to Clark's point of view. When we do see him, it's more about how others view him. We see Clark in specific moments, reacting to specific events, but we don't see his day to day life. We don't see him fighting a lesser villain that he doesn't stress out over.

The movie is mostly from Batman's point of view. We also get some POV from normal people looking at Superman. There is some stuff from Clark's point of view, but not a lot. Maybe that is a weakness. Maybe the movie should have been an hour longer, so they could dig deeper into his character. I'd certainly love to see more of that character, so I won't disagree with that. But I don't view him the same way you all seem to, so I guess it doesn't feel like quite as big of a gap to me.

I agree, but cautiously. Films do spend way too much money. The Veronica Mars movie was made for about six million dollars. Granted, that is with a lot of people working on it as a labor of love, but it is still an example of a movie that still feels and looks like a complete movie, without going crazy with the budget. Most movies today could be made for much less money, and a lot of TV shows do prove that filming on a shorter schedule doesn't mean that it has to look cheap.

That said, cutting too many corners will make movies look bad. A lot can be covered by adding scenery in the computer, but when you stick to sound stages too much, it does feel claustrophobic. And sticking to basic camera angles because you can't afford to get creative will come with a cost as well. So yes, they should reconsider how they do things, but they shouldn't take it to extremes. Some of Marvel's stuff has taken it too far.

My biggest problem with Superman has always been that those writing him view him as "Superman". They don't think about his motivation, or his inner monologue, or his emotional state, because he's "Superman". Because of this, he is usually a very flat character. He's an ideal, who recites perfect lines of inspiration because those writing him are basing their work on an image that they've had in their head since they were kids.

To me, "super-hope" is more alien than what we have in BvS. To have him fly around as the perfect person, doing perfect things is not something that I have ever related to. And I don't think it's right for the character. He is supposed to be human in every way except for those added powers. He is the version of us that can make a difference. He should feel the way we feel. He should think the way we think. Those writing him should look at his situation, where he comes from, how he grew up, who he loves, what motivates him, and they should write him just as they would write any normal person... except, he can fly, lift things, use heat vision, etc.

Smallville was a huge step forward. I am thinking of writing up a character breakdown of Clark from the point of view of a writer, so I won't get into a lot of that here. But what I see on the screen looks real to me. For the first time on the big screen, I can understand what is going on in Superman's head. I know why it killed him to kill Zod. I know why he was begging Batman to save Martha. I know why he always sees the flood raging on or the fire burning, more than the people who are thanking him for being a god.

I probably would have opened with a sequence of some big heroic event by Superman. His saving the day and everyone cheering.

But, would that serve the plot of this movie? His arc in this movie is about being chased by the darkness. No matter how much he tries to hold back the rushing waters, people still suffer (the flood seems to be a recurring theme, from the moment he gets into the tub with Lois, causing water to overflow from the tub, to the flood victims, to the Jonathan Kent sequence). He killed Zod, which was fully justified and heroic, but it went against every fiber of his being. All he does is feel for people and he tries to save them, but it never stops. He goes from one disaster to another, and no matter how hard he pushes himself, he is surrounded by death.

He wants to fight the darkness. He wants to put an end to it (Batman is the darkness in this scenario), but nobody else sees it the way he does. People suffering isn't headline news, and his view of the world and the people who live in it are outdated.

To me, this is the same Superman as in Man of Steel. But "coming out" doesn't make his life perfect or even good. He hasn't yet figured out how to make that life work, if there even is such a way.

I think his rebirth could be a doorway to that. Having friends and allies who do what he does could make a big difference. He may not feel so isolated. He may be happier by the time we get to the next big Superman movie (I assume that there will be another Superman movie at some point, just like it was always a safe bet that there would be a Batman movie). But I hope they don't make him happier at the expense of the humanity that this franchise has finally given the character.

Regardless of quality, I think the economics would indicate that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN spent too much money on something that wasn't a universal crowdpleaser, and if you're spending $500 million, you have to make a universal crowdpleaser if you intend to get a decent return on your investment. As it stands, BVS is making strong ticket sales, but it's not getting repeated ticket sales; it's not drawing people back to see it again and again and again in the way the audience wanting to see Han and Chewie in theatres a second and third and fourth time took THE FORCE AWAKENS to two billion.

I'm all for artistic expression and stylized storytelling that makes Informant happy, but I'm not sure it's worth a half a billion dollars when $54 million seems adequate for making Informant happy via Marvel's Netflix shows.

The thing is, we have a lot of Superman movies and TV shows. We have a lot of images of Superman being the ideal person. What we don't have are a lot of people building that character as they would any other character that they were writing. From the ground up, trace that character, how he thinks, how he feels. He is supposed to be very human, on an emotional and mental level. That is the point of the character. Despite being an alien with these amazing powers, he is still one of us. He should be written like a person, not a symbol (because, as I said, we already have that version of him in a ton of other adaptations).
That has always been my problem with Superman. Everyone writing him treated him like an alien. The character identified with kryptonians more than humans. He is above us and never one of us. Clark Kent is an act. And the Superman in Man of Steel, and even in Batman v Superman is the opposite of all of that.

I'm not saying that the movie was perfect. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have liked to see more of Clark's life as Superman. Hell, I want another Superman movie sooner rather than later. Down the line, they could even introduce Supergirl and have Clark showing her this world and how to be the best person that she can be, and it can show how far he has come in life. (or Superboy, if they don't wan to step on too many toes, which doesn't seem to bother them with The Flash, but whatever). But I think that this is a valid version of Clark. I think it's unfair to say that Snyder is just out to make things broody and grim an ugly, or that the violence in Man of Steel goes against the nature of the character. I came across one discussion online that pointed to this clip from the Justice League cartoon:  https://youtu.be/6BJ1-trrgqc

Yeah, the circumstances in that video aren't the same as in MoS. They're an idealized, watered down, children's cartoon version. But some of the shots are almost identical to the Battle of Metropolis.

I know what Superman is supposed to be. I know what people expect from him. It's just that I've been waiting my whole life for someone to take him seriously as a character and I'm glad that someone finally did it. I'd like to get my hands on the actual script and see what's on the page, versus the screen. I don't think that it was distorted. I think it just played with the perception of Superman, seeing him through the eyes of various people throughout the movie.

What is a universal crowdpleaser? If we assume that it is even possible for something like that to exist, it would have to be something so devoid of vision and so lacking in depth that the audience would have no reason to think about the movie at all. What movie is both universally beloved and actually good and meaningful? What book, music or painting could even claim such a thing?

I think that you're forgetting a vital piece of information in regards to ticket sales and repeat ticket sales. Young children will not be seeing Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad. A lot of those kids have seen the Marvel movies. My nephew dressed up as Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy for Halloween last  year. My niece will not be dressing up like Harley Quinn... *ever*, I hope.
That fact alone drops ticket sales a ton.  Those little kids are the ones who want to see movies over and over and over. And when those kids can't go, it means that many family outings will be redirected toward whatever cartoon is out at the moment.
Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. The family friendly Superman movies and shows are still out there, making money for the studio. These new movies are being aimed at older fans, and apparently toward fans of the comics, since these are not the mainstream versions of the characters that we have seen on the screen before. These are more like something from the comic books.

Break down Batman v Superman in your head and convert the imagery to comic book art. It works perfectly well. Comic book movies aren't usually made with the same mentality as comic books, but these characters have reached a point where that's possible.

I'm still not sure if the marketing budget was ever confirmed. Is it just a rumor or do we know that for a fact?

Either way, fair enough. Though the scale of a Superman movie is going to be bigger than Daredevil. I don't want them cheaping out when it comes to a battle with Zod or Doomsday. They really went for it with these films. They have only used the biggest villains so far. Like I said, I'm sure there's a happy middle ground between a bargain basement movie and what they actually spend on these films.

Well, that's the thing.  Marvel movies are fun and stupid and goofy.  But they're for everyone (kids, adults, etc).  So they can be financial successes because a) the audience is larger and b) people go see it multiple times.  We know that there are less people going to see BvS multiple times because the box office numbers dropped big time after the first week.  Everyone that wanted to see the movie saw it the first week, and then the stragglers saw it.

The other problem is that kids cannot see this movie.  There were tons of reports of kids running out of the theater crying.  The movie is too dark, it's too violent, and it has none of the fun of the Marvel movies.  They should've just gone for the R rating because I don't know if they would've lost any of their audience. 

WB probably banked on Dark Knight Trilogy numbers, and this was never going to be that.  It's a Man of Steel sequel with Ben Affleck as Batman added to the cast.  The original movie was divisive, the casting was divisive, and the look of the movie was divisive.  WB got cocky, and they're paying for it.

The next movie probably won't be as big of a budget, and it probably won't get the same level of marketing.  Hopefully they learn their lesson.  Because there's clearly a market for this, but it isn't as big as they thought.

I can't judge a film based on how much it cost to make. The audience was there. It made a lot of money. The general audience reaction to it has been good. The studio spent a lot of money, but that is really their problem. We don't know what deals they struck or how they balanced it all out. It really isn't for us to try to guess their happiness with how much return they got on their investment. We can judge the audience side of it, and in audience terms, it doesn't matter if the film's budget was huge or small. The audience went, and I think that anyone expecting it to be the biggest movie success ever was dreaming (and I may be guilty there too). It is the sequel to a movie that did well, bit not great. And it is about the billionth time these characters have been on screen. Add to that the fact that young kids can't go... Why would this movie be the highest grossing movie of all time? To comic book fans, it is huge to see these characters together. To random people who don't care, it might as well be Alien vs Predator.

I still say that the bad publicity pushed a lot of casual viewers away, and that had nothing to do with the quality of the movie. The press was out to kill this movie for a long time. It didn't work entirely, bit they left a mark.

Yeah, possibly, but word of mouth usually corrects that.  If casual people loved BvS, they would've told their friends and they would've seen it.  I don't buy that critics have that much power.  I listen to my friends more than I listen to critics.

They can fix a lot of this with Justice League.  I just don't know if I trust Snyder to fix it.  The script can be lighter than BvS, but I don't know if Snyder is the guy to film it.  And even if he is, I wonder if he's already burned through most of his goodwill.

Speaking of wasting money, did you guys see that James Cameron and 20th Century Fox are making FOUR Avatar sequels at the same time.  Did anyone ask for that???

Well it was a huge movie.  Made a ton of money.  But had zero cultural impact.  I'd want to see the first sequel succeed before I committed to FOUR.

You ever see the story of Pocahontas?  Then you pretty much saw Avatar.

Yeah, that's what I figured (one response to two separate posts!).

Well, if it's anything like BvS, it'll be the KnightFall storyline, the Kingdom Come storyline, the Flashpoint storyline, the formation of the Teen Titans, and a lot more of Dark Knight returns all in one

In all seriousness, they've said it will be lighter in tone.  Hopefully it's actually one villain and not some sort of obscure alien/robot invasion like Avengers.  What I'd like is for the first part of the movie to establish these guys and their powers.  I want to see what each of these guys can do.  Have a scene where they come together but get defeated because they can't work together.  Then team them up properly to take whoever down.

Maybe Mongul first?  And save Darkseid for the second movie?

The Jungle Book...

Budget: $175 million (plus marketing)
Total domestic take thus far: $191,477,426   
Total Foreign take thus far: $341,300,000   
Equaling: $532,777,426

Pretty good, right?

Batman v Superman (after it's second week, assuming my numbers are right):

Budget: $250 (plus marketing)
Domestic: $260,408,047
Foreign: $422,500,000
Total: $682,908,047

I'm not going to compare movies. I'm going to compare media reactions... For the Jungle Book, I've seen a lot of stories about its huge success and how much people love the movie. Nothing about not fining an audience. Nothing about how much they need to make in order to make up for the cost of marketing. I could just be missing those articles, but I haven't seen them.

So, why the difference? The Jungle Book is a family friendly movie which people will probably see multiple times. It didn't bring in as much money in terms of product tie-ins (based on what I've seen in stores, it's just not as visible as BvS). So if all things are equal, shouldn't the articles be written about how disappointing this big budget movie with a lot of A-list names behind it is?

I'm fascinated by the media portrayal of Batman v Superman. I can't help it. I have nothing against The Jungle Book. It's doing well. But the overall narrative is that BvS failed to connect to an audience and that it was a failure, despite the fact that it did pretty well at the box office (especially for a movie that kids can't see) and actual audience reactions have been favorable. Where is the media coming from? What is their angle? Is a flop a better story?

That doesn't explain the fascination with including their (rumored) marketing budget in with the movie's budget while failing to include product tie-ins with the profits. They're inflating the cost of the movie while deflating the earnings, just so they can make the story sound more grim.

One thing that I think may have hurt return viewing was the announcement of the extended cut so close to the theatrical release. If I see that, I'm not going to bother going to see it in the theater again. I'm going to save my money and wait for the extended "real" version of the movie. I think the movie will do well when it comes to home video.

It's also not really a movie that lends itself to be seen multiple times, I don't think.  I'm pretty sure I've seen every Zach Snyder film, but the only one I've watched repeatedly is, oddly enough, Dawn of the Dead.  I also think, while that movie is certainly grim, that it's his most fun movie.

(I found his filmography, and I saw that he did Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, which I bet is both less grim and more fun than any of Snyder's other films put together.  I don't know.  I haven't seen it.  Leaving in my mistake for reference sake)

When 300 or Watchmen or even Man of Steel come on, I watch a little of it and then I find something else.  It isn't that I didn't like those movies, but they're always so heavy and you sorta have to watch the whole thing to get any enjoyment of it.

(SPOILERS FOR EVERY SNYDER FILM COMING UP).

Yeah, everyone dies in Dawn of the Dead....but you only know that if you watch the post-credit stuff.  And it's a zombie flick.
Everyone dies in 300.
In Watchmen, the bad guy wins and the good guys are okay with it.  The only good guy that isn't is murdered.  And then, possibly, ruins everything by exposing it.
Sucker Punch, most of the girls die, right?  The main girl survives, but she's now by herself and alone.
And in Man of Steel, Superman comes into his own, but he had to murder a guy and be a party to hundreds of thousands of deaths for it to happen.
And in BvS, Superman dies and there's this ominous threat that something is coming and it's up to Batman, Wonder Woman, and three guys we saw on video to save the day.

I saw every one of those movies except 300 in theaters.  I didn't walk out of any of those movies depressed or anything, but they're not the kind of movie that puts a smile on your face.  Most of them are sepia-toned, dark, with this shroud of death covering the ending to each of them.

And so I think they're the type of movie that people watch, a lot of people like, and then that's it.  And while that's fine...it isn't the type of movie (like Deadpool or Avengers) that lends itself to making a ton of money.  And, of course, you don't have little kids begging to go see a movie again because no kids went to see this.

And if Snyder directs Justice League, I think you have to expect the same.  A lot of people will see it opening weekend, and there will be a sharp decline.  At the end of the first month in theaters, it'll be an afterthought.

There are reports that JUSTICE LEAGUE will be more lighthearted. And I will say this -- regardless of our issues with Snyder, he's a good director. I was not entirely on board with some of BVS, but it was certainly a memorable and striking film. ("Did your parents teach you that you mean something -- that you're here for a reason? My parents taught me a different lesson -- dying in the gutter for no reason at all.") Snyder wanted to be grim and downbeat and he does grim and downbeat very well. And I think that if he wants to be lighthearted and uplifting, he can do that as well.

As for the money -- nobody would spend $500 million dollars if the expectation was to do a touch better than break even. BVS is estimated to need to earn $920 million to be moderately profitable/not a disaster; surely Warner Bros. was hoping to do better than be moderately successful when they invested half a billion.

A lot of the media reports on BVS seem to be drawing on past history, specifically SUPERMAN RETURNS and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN II. Both films had high budgets with extremely optimistic projections. Both films were thought to be the starting point for multiple spin-offs and sequels that were approved well in advance of completion. Both films would, on the surface of it, seem to have been successful at box office.

But both films eventually turned out to be below the studio's needs and expectations; SUPERMAN RETURNS' modest profit and the likelihood that a sequel would earn about the same or less given the mixed reception made WB decide to wait out Brandon Routh's contract and shut down Bryan Singer's sequel. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN II, like BVS, was estimated to need to make $1 billion in order to be considered successful; $770 million and mixed reception likely meaning similar or less earnings for a sequel made Sony decide to shut down all the spin-offs and follow-ups.

And now we have BVS, which would appear to be following the ASM2 track of multiple sequels and spin-offs matched with a massive budget and the need for a near $1 billion dollar earning to be considered a success -- and basically limping its way there with massive drops in ticket sales every week. ASM2 also suffered from a lack of repeat viewings. History appears to be repeating itself --

Except WB is in too deep to cancel their spin-offs, so...

One question that has been bugging me:

Why didn't WB release the "extended" version?  And why not "re-release" the extended version in theaters?

I'm serious.  Releasing an incomplete, lesser version of the movie seems confusing now that I think about it.  Most movies choose to avoid the R rating, but Deadpool showed that an R-rated film can make just as much (and, so far, more) money than a PG-13 film.  It's true that BvS was able to, for lack of a better term, "trick" some parents into taking their kids to their movie.  If a dad took his three kids to see BvS, that's $30-$45 that they probably wouldn't have gotten if they'd released an R-rated film.

There's also the teenagers who can handle the violence/darkness that couldn't legally pay for tickets to go see the movie with an R-rating.  They might sneak in to see it, but that gross wouldn't go to the studio unless they happened to buy tickets to another Fox film to sneak in.

But if the extended version reviews better, would that scare less people away from the theater?  Would it improve word of mouth?

Because this movie isn't for kids.  So the rating shouldn't be that big of an issue.  The length is a problem (181 minutes) but Interstellar 169 minutes.  The Revenant was 156.  The theatrical version of BvS is 153.  It'd be long, but the theatrical version never really dragged.  I complained it was much too long, but if it fixes some of the major flaws of the film?  If the extra 30 minutes makes Superman more likable?  Or helps with plot holes?

And even if they wanted to take advantage of PG-13, why not theatrically release the extended version now?

http://www.superherohype.com/news/37289 … ifferences
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/04/29/ … or-to-exit

Not to pile on the DC movies, but this is why I think DC needs a Kevin Feige.  If one person is in charge of the vision, then there's no confusion when hiring a director.  I know this has happened with Marvel (notably Ant-Man), but two directors leaving in one day is a sign that there's some issues at the top.

Well this is why I'd want to get someone in charge now.  Suicide Squad is done.  Wonder Woman is almost done.  So with Flash and Aquaman possibly needing new directors, get someone in there now who can be in charge during filming of Justice League and preproduction of the other movies. 

I mean, hiring someone to oversee this stuff isn't exactly a sign of surrender, is it?  And there'd be a million people who'd love to do it, and a thousand who'd be great at it.  This is a monumental thing they're attempting, and if DC wants to make bigger, smarter, stronger, films I'd think they'd need a Feige WAY more than Marvel does.

I've read the same thing you've read.  That there's a bunch of people filling that role.  That it's sorta Geoff Johns and sorta Zach Snyder and sorta some other people.  But Geoff Johns plate is way too full, Snyder can't be directing everything and also in charge of other stuff.  Also, I think he's the wrong guy

I'm not hating on DC.  I like those characters better so my hopes are higher for it.  And I just think DC/WB is kind of a mess.  Just like Fox is kind of a mess with X-Men and Fantastic Four.  I think Marvel has the advantage of having everything in house (with a monster like Disney backing them) so all they have to worry about is this stuff.

I think the Marvel movies are as successful as they can in presenting the Marvel Universe as a single reality given that all the characters are from completely different genres that would ideally exist in their own world. As for DC -- stepping back from my personal opinions, I think we could all agree that creatively, DC is quite happy with their approach to their universe. WB executives stood up and applauded at the first screening of BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN. They didn't cancel any upcoming movies. They are looking to add a bit more humour. Aside from that, however, they're continuing as planned.

I mean... I agree that there needs to be some person or people who are in charge of these projects, if that's what you mean. Like the Executive Producer of a TV series would do.

But whether that's one person or more, I can't really say which would be better.

BvS was a box office success but didn't perform up to WB's expectations. The initial weekend was extremely strong, but the fall-off in ticket sales was huge.

Right now, between Flash losing its director, Aqua Man's director not sure if he wants to continue, the entirety of Batman's rogues gallery being in the stand-alone film the DC 'franchise' looks like a dumpster fire. WB let the wrong guy create their universe, and now they're desperately flailing about trying to save it. No, you don't have to copy Marvel to be successful (and I'm a long-time DC guy), but you do need to have someone somewhere who loves the source material. Someone has to be able to say, "let's get things going before we 'deconstruct' the universe."