DC Superheroes in Film (1943 - 2024) (Page 14 of 19)

Suicide Squad 2 is supposed to start filming within the next year, I think. I think that's further along than it seems. These movies just don't have a ton of talk around them. The average person probably doesn't even know that Shazam is coming (and I do believe that it is part of the DCEU, but I could be wrong). It is a very different way of going about it, since we know every Marvel movie that will be released ten years in advance, but it's probably smarter. The DCEU won't get good press, so why give people that much longer to write articles about how doomed they are?

Christopher McQuarrie, director of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE V and VI, doesn't really like computer generated imagery when it's central. Both he and Tom Cruise prefer practical effects as much as possible.

In M:I2 (directed by John Woo), when Cruise had a hunting knife thrust within a few centimetres of his eye, that blade was a real weapon with the actor stabbing towards Cruise's face at full force at Cruise's insistence -- with the cable holding the knife back painted out in post. In M:I5 (which McQuarrie did direct), when Cruise is running across the wing of a plane and hanging onto its side as it takes off or when he's performing motorcycle students or diving into pools, he's doing it for real -- although other cars and harnesses and rigs are removed and the backgrounds are altered.

There's a genuine sense of reality in the McQuarrie's approach: there's wind blowing into Cruise's eyes when he dives off a building and his body is really coiled to anticipate the hundred-foot drop and you can see Cruise's terror and determination as he performs jumps and takes punches and handles falls as Ethan Hunt, a human crash dummy of a secret agent. And Cavill would be made to do the same things.

I don't think McQuarrie would be happy having one of his actors perform such scenes with a CG mustache; it would affect what parts of the actor's face are visible and the actor would adjust his expressions accordingly. I don't think McQuarrie would want a CG creation at the center of Henry Cavill's shots when he wants the actor to control the physicality and tone of the performance, not a special effects artist in a computer lab. CG is for adjustments, not centerpieces, in McQuarrie's world.

McQuarrie will accept CGI for painting out cars, cleaning up backgrounds, removing safety gear, changing a pool into a lake, etc., but he wants his actors to be reacting and performing according to as much physical reality as he can offer and a CG mustache is the antithesis of McQuarrie's aesthetic.

McQuarrie would also not be happy having an actor film chase sequences and fight scenes with a fake mustache that would need to be reglued, rearranged, realigned and restyled for every single shot. "That's just not Mission," he would probably say.

As for why the character had to have a mustache, well -- Cavill has a friendly face, he's playing a deadly assassin who has no issue with casualties in contrast to Ethan Hunt's decidedly non-lethal approach. A mustache makes Cavill look more sinister, it's part of the look that McQuarrie designed for this role and McQuarrie was responsible for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT, not JUSTICE LEAGUE.

I don't think it is really the fault of either studio or the actor. The person directing those shots should have made adjustments for the situation. If it's raining, you adjust. If the sun is shining into the camera, you adjust. If you can't get your actor back at all, you adjust. The director has to make a million adjustments as he goes along, which is why a good director is a good leader who can make those changes.

This was Whedon, guys. He is stubborn and didn't roll with the punches at all. Honestly, they probably would have been better off letting the DP direct the reshoots (since this person would have worked closely with Snyder on designing the look of the movie), but they brought someone in who was supposed to alter the bones of the movie, yet wasn't up for the task. That part is Warner's fault.

I still like the movie. The mustache doesn't really bother me too much. But still, if it's an issue, it is Whedon who should carry that blame.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/41763 … n#/slide/1

In very unsurprising news, Steve Trevor is back.

Two fun DC nuggets that came out this week.

1. Remember the "Unite the Seven" poster that came out during the promotional period of Batman v. Superman with Aquaman?  For some reason, this poster really bothered people because 1) there were no subsequent posters that tied in (nothing for Flash or Cyborg or Wonder Woman, or even anything that related to Batman or Superman) 2) it didn't make any sense - there's only six Justice Leaguers, even when you include Superman (who wasn't really part of the uniting process).

Well, they've come out with an explanation that fits - it's technically a poster for the Aquaman movie (or, at least, the Aquaman character).  It's to unite the seven underwater kingdoms.  It feels like quite the retrofit, but as I said, it does fit.

2. Matt Reeves says that the first draft of his Batman movie is done.  But I felt like he already had a first draft done.  Or did he only re-write the Affleck draft?  This movie seems like it's a bit of a mess, but with the one-off movies that DC is doing (Joker), I actually think it'd fit in nicely.

*******

Comic-Con news.

1. I'm probably most excited about the Aquaman movie, but I did feel like the trailer was pretty paint-by-numbers.  I'm interested to know how it ties in with what we saw in Justice League.

2. The Shazam trailer was pretty entertaining, and I think it'll be like another Suicide Squad - playing on the perimeter of the DCEU.  After a lighter-toned Justice League movie, I think some of the goofiness of this character fits.  And there's rumors of a Superman cameo, which I think would fit right in.

One note before I get quotey - We didn't skip over Dick because he's dead (at least, according to Snyder - https://movieweb.com/batman-v-superman- … -confirms/ ).  Maybe Reeves' movie will explore that a bit, or maybe it won't be in continuity.  All Reeves has said is that it isn't Year One.

Oh, I get that it's a process.  The only thing that surprised me was the whole "first draft" thing.  I get that movies are written and re-written, but a first draft is a first draft.  There was at least one first draft because it was written by Affleck.  Then, I swear, Reeves went to work re-writing that.  I get that Reeves might have started completely over from scratch and this is a new "first draft" but that just surprised me.

Well, the common theory is that Snyder was fired, and they (either the studio or a combination of the studio and Snyder) used the tragedy to cover to avoid the "bad press" of Snyder being fired because they didn't like his vision.  It's a bit irresponsible, but I think most comic book movie sites are just cutting to the chase.  Because there were rumors that Snyder was in trouble before the tragedy, and it makes sense that both parties would be happy to walk away from each other.  And Snyder's activity on social media shows a bit that he's not super pleased with them, meaning there was a lot of stuff going on in the background to indicate that the split was more than it was.

WB/DC made a lot of mistakes along the way.  The first was to try and go head to head with Marvel at a bad time.  Man of Steel came out a month after Iron Man 3.  At that time, Marvel was just about to hit their stride - Phase 2 was just beginning after the mixed bag that was Phase One (I maintain that, outside of the first Iron Man and the fun of Avengers, Phase One is easily the worst, critically and commercially).

If DC had taken things slowly, like Marvel did, they could've been forgiven.  With the exception of Iron Man, people generally love Marvel sequels better than the originals.  Setting up the world is the hard part - playing in the world is easy.

And I'm not even talking about solo films.  I'm just talking about making mistakes.  The first Marvel film is generally considered one of the best MCU films, but the 2nd film was the Incredible Hulk, a movie where the main character was recast and the movie has been all-but-forgotten.  People hate Iron Man 2.  Thor has bleached eyebrows in the first movie.  The First Avenger is "a trailer for the Avengers"

The problem was that, in between Man of Steel and BvS, Marvel started hitting home runs.  Captain America: the Winter Soldier was a critical and financial success.  People went crazy for it, and it's definitely considered one of the best MCU films.  They hit another home run with Guardians of the Galaxy, a quirky and fun movie that surprised everyone.  Then came Age of Ultron, a movie that people generally dislike, but it was the *second* Avengers movie.

And instead of taking their time and building their universe, DC tried to catch up.  They could've released another solo film - maybe hire Affleck to do his Batman solo film before jumping into a shared universe.  Maybe the Affleck Batman movie ends with the battle in Metropolis, leaving a huge tease to Batman facing off against Superman.  Maybe you go Wonder Woman first.  Or maybe you do a Man of Steel 2.

The problem is that you jumped right into a movie that was divisive.  And I don't even mean based on reactions - I mean literally divisive - you have Batman against Superman.  And like with any battle, people are going to pick sides.

It was compared, quite unfairly, to Civil War.  Because there was a lot more nuance, from the audience, in Civil War.  Love him or hate him, we'd cheered for Tony Stark.  Boring or not, we'd cheered for Steve Rogers.  And forgettable or not, we understood all the side characters on the Tony vs. Steve fight.

With jumping right into BvS, you're forcing fans to choose between them.  And while most fans know Downey as Iron Man and Evans as Captain America, Batman and Superman are timeless.  You're not only having Cavill vs. Affleck, you're having Bale and Keaton vs. Christopher Reeve.  These characters mean something different to everyone.  And to get two good guys to fight, they had to make the other look a little sinister, screwing with the way we see the characters.

Batman has to be legitimately dangerous for Superman to treat him like any other criminal.  So Batman has to casually kill and brand people.  Superman has to be a legitimate threat to humanity for Batman to want to eliminate him.  So Superman is cold and alien whenever he's in public.  You have the World's Greatest Detective and *two* great Daily Planet reporters, and neither does enough investigation to see that both guys are, generally, pretty good.

I mentioned the Affleck solo film that ends in Metropolis.  Maybe it shows how tired Batman is.  Maybe it's one last hurrah for him - he's either sufficiently cleaned up Gotham or he's about to give up.  And Metropolis shows him that he has one more fight.  But Man of Steel could've been Superman's set up.  Maybe Superman faces off against someone like Parasite, and that fight takes him to Gotham.  A B-story could be Clark or Lois looking into this mysterious Batman.  He started off a noble and virtuous vigilante, but now something is happening to him.  Whenever Clark gets close enough, he's forced back.  The investigation doesn't end - Superman is still suspicious.

If you do stuff like this, you spend an entire movie inside the character's mind - and you can understand his viewpoint.

The other issue with BvS is that it felt so much like a catch-up.  It's the second movie in the franchise, and here's a Batman solo movie blended into a Man of Steel sequel.  And Wonder Woman is in it!  And Flash!  Aquaman!  Cyborg!  Doomsday!

It felt like an attempt to do Marvel Phase One in one movie.  Thor and Hulk and Captain America solo films were lazy so we'll just throw in bits and pieces of Wonder Woman/Aquaman/Cyborg/Flash and pretend that they were solo films that you saw and forgot about.  It's five films in one, and that's why it felt so overloaded to some.

If you take your time and make some of these movies, I think you give the audience a chance to warm up to your vision.   Like I said, make your Batfleck movie.  Make Man of Steel 2.  Make Wonder Woman.  If you want to grow the universe with each movie, do that.  There's ways to bring Aquaman or Atlantis or Atlanteans in your Wonder Woman movie like you had with the Flash cameo in Suicide Squad.  Cyborg could easily be in a Man of Steel sequel.  Batfleck could connect to Suicide Squad.

And if you want to move from Batman to Superman, don't make them immediately fight.  Have them team up but not entirely trust each other.  Or have them cross paths but not meet.  Let us meet the characters before we're forced to root against them.  Take things slowly.

It's why Marvel can make 20 films in 10 years and it felt fresh, and why DC can only make a handful in half the time and feel bloated.

Well, it's one thing to say that Marvel is Disney and is going after a broader audience, but I really think that only applies to kids.  The days of comic book movies only going after comic book audiences is sorta over.  It started with Spider-Man, continued through with the Dark Knight, and Marvel has really picked up the torch and ran with it.  People that don't love comic book movies love Marvel movies, and it's not just kids.  Kids help, obviously, because it's a whole segment of an audience, and kids see movies multiple times (and come with parents/guardians that pay to see the movie multiple times too).

DC might not be trying to reach the kid audience, but they can still reach a broader audience.  And that's why I think the Marvel/DC conversations are relevant.  But it's also why the DC/Dark Universe conversations are relevant and the DC/Monsterverse conversations are relevant.  These are big studio, shared universe movies that don't exist in a bubble.

It's easy to call DC a bit of a financial mixed bag.

But it's first movie was successful enough to actually launch a series (The Mummy / Dark Universe)
It's done a good-enough job of linking the universe to feel wholly connected (Godzilla / Monsterverse)
It still feels fresh/fun after many movies (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Transformers franchise, etc)

Marvel is the gold standard for shared universes, but DC isn't far behind.

DC is actually doing what I'm talking about now.  They rushed in with the "Superman Trilogy" of Snyder films, but the movies they're talking about now are the smaller movies that are allowed to play in the sandbox.  Wonder Woman was a self-contained movie.  The sequel looks the same.  Suicide Squad was fun and played around its own world.  Aquaman is expanding it under water.  Shazam is experimenting with magic.  Everything about the Batman seems like it's smaller and lower stakes.  The Joker movie is going to be unique.

These are the movies that are going to build this universe into something where we look forward to team-ups and connections.  And maybe, to that grander audience, Phase One of the DCEU will be just like the Phase One of the MCU - important but not necessarily worth revisiting

Well, as we've discussed, WB is throwing a lot of darts on the board and seeing what sticks.  Which, and I agree with Informant here, is a good strategy.  Get a couple dozen scripts, and produce the best ones.  Maybe they'll be big ones (Man of Steel 2, Flashpoint, etc), maybe they'll be smaller (Nightwing, Blue Beetle, New Gods, etc), or maybe they'll be out of continuity (Joker, maybe the Batman, etc).  At the end of the day, I'm interested in more good comic book movies, and this is definitely more "creative pool" than any of the other shared universes.

I think this is what really bugs me about the way DC has handled things so far.  I think DC probably could've done a bigger, badder version of what Marvel did.  Not only should they have done it first, but they had all the pieces to do it.  DC has most of the heroes that people recognize and could've done things in a really cool way.  A Superman movie, a Batman movie, a Wonder Woman movie, a Flash movie, a Hawkman/Hawkgirl movie, an Aquaman movie, a Suicide Squad movie, a Teen Titans movie.  Then BAM, Justice League with all these heroes in one movie.

They had all the rights, and name-brand characters.  There's no excuse that we're getting two Ant-Man movies before we get Aquaman *or* Flash.

You'd think it'd be Marvel who, stringing together all the characters they had rights to, throwing together a cinematic universe to try and keep up.  Iron Man (2013), followed by Iron Man and the Hulk (2016), leading to a divisive Avengers movie (2017).

And I should note that there's been a thought to doing Supergirl since the original Man of Steel.  There's an open pod on the Kryptonian ship that was a backdoor way of getting Kara involved.

Well, and I think that's another issue with the route that Snyder took with this.  In my opinion, he messed it up a couple of different times but in different ways.

Man of Steel is one of two "solo" movies that the DCEU has done - everything else is an ensemble piece with no clear protagonist.  In that movie, we get a pretty good idea of who Superman is.  There are three moments in that film that really bug people, and I think at least 2/3 of them can be written off.

- Clark kills Zod - this is what bothers people, and I don't get it.  People say that "Clark doesn't kill" but that doesn't really seem to be a guiding principle for him (and doesn't really seem to be an issue for Snyder, as I'll get to later).  Zod was a threat to humanity as a whole, and he had to be dealt with.  Clark tried to reason with him, but it didn't work.  Clark also has a bit of a breakdown after this, implying that he knew it was a bad thing to do, even if it was the right thing to do.

- Clark's fight with Zod leads to collateral damage.  This, again, isn't a problem.  A fight between two gods would result in collateral damage.  The one thing I can point to is that Clark doesn't seem overly concerned with the damage, either in Smallville or Metropolis.  If Metropolis were the only fight, I could see it getting out of hand.  But after essentially destroying Smallville (and that's something people don't usually point out), he should've been more prepared to *try* to draw the fight away from the city.  He knows the damage that a fight like that would cost, and I wish there were a line in the movie where he tries and Zod won't let him.  At the end of the day, this doesn't bother me as much - what bothers me is the way the *films* handle it, and that's not on Clark.

- Clark lets his father die.  This is the biggest "that's not my Superman" argument in my opinion.  Clark is fast enough to save Jonathan without outing himself.  I think it's an incredibly dumb scene that didn't make sense.  I almost understand what they're going for, but the idea of something killing a loved one that Clark can't fight (like the traditional heart attack) is a much better lesson to teach Clark.  Especially because, when Clark revisits Jonathan's lesson from the movie (exposing his secret), there's zero consequences.  So, in my eyes, Jonathan dies for no reason and Clark learns nothing.

If you can forgive that Clark was just doing what his father told him to do (however irresponsible), Clark's characterization in Man of Steel makes sense.  I think Man of Steel is a solid movie that provides a nice introduction to a DC Extended Universe.

The problem comes in BvS.  We've already gone over this ad nauseum, and there's no reason to go line by line again.  The main issue, for me, is that the characterization from Man of Steel doesn't seem to translate to BvS.  Clark from MoS and Superman from BvS seem like two very different characters.  And while Superman is allowed to emote without being emo, Clark's public persona always seems to be scowling or frowning.  It's hard to represent hope when it looks like you're fighting a battle that you're, at best, indifferent to.

I think that's what people liked about Superman in Justice League.  It's the same thing that people liked about Wonder Woman in her three movies - she seems to genuinely enjoy the fight.  She finds joy in defeating the bad guy and saving the innocent.  Clark finds joy in Lois, and he seems to dread every second he's wearing the costume in BvS.

With Batman, Snyder made the opposite mistake.  With no solo film, we don't really know what to make of Batman.  Like Superman, he seems to have no qualms about killing people.  I know that "Batman doesn't kill people" is a rule that doesn't really fit in the movies, but a more apt rule is "Batman doesn't try to kill people."  In BvS, he does seem to go out of his way to kill people, using unnecessary force in situations he has complete control over.  In the chase sequence, he's in an unstoppable tank doing unnecessary damage.  In the warehouse fight, he's being unnecessarily brutal against people that can't compete with him.

In the scenes where we get to look inside Batman's head, there's a clear disagreement from Alfred, but there's never a scene where it's discussed.  And because Alfred has been there the whole time, he's either okay with how Batman now operates, or it's how Batman has always operated.  Either way, it's a departure from what we've seen before.

It comes down to two things for me:

- In BvS, the characterization issues come down to the fact that they lend themselves to the story that Snyder wanted to tell.  If he's going to tell a story where Batman and Superman are both good guys that decide to try and kill each other, then they have to see each other as threats.  Batman has to be a deadly, murderous vigilante who has taken things too far.  Superman has to be a cold, distant alien.

- Snyder himself sees heroism in a very uber-masculine way.  Superman and Batman are both insanely jacked (like Leonidas before them), and they do what's necessary to save the day.  If that means snapping a neck or blowing up a car full of bad guys, so be it.  Superman and Batman don't have "no kill" rules because Snyder thinks they're dumb.  And that's fine - they're his movies.  But I think that's where the criticism comes from.

It's what makes me a little curious about Snyder's original Justice League vision.  From the bits and pieces I've figured out, it would've featured a more troubled/suicidal Victor Stone, and a depressed/alcoholic Arthur Curry.  And from the trailers, it seems like Wonder Woman would've failed to stop the bombs in Paris.  It might've taken BvS' depressing tone and turn it outright nihilistic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQ4sB-mSHc

This was released as a deleted scene.

Henry Cavill has been fired????  If true, this is totally absurd.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat- … up-1142306

The main problem, in regards to the media, is the fact that no one is the face of DC right now.  I hate to keep harking on the Feige thing, but if Feige says something, it's news.  It's official.  At DC, it's the Wild West so rumors are free to run wild and rampant.

With dozens of ideas floating around tied to dozens of creatives, it's hard to tie down what's really happening at DC.  Only a couple of movies are official, and it does seem like DC is in the process of going from more of a shared universe to more of a multiverse concept with a standalone Joker movie and a potentially-standalone Batman movie among the likelier films to get made.

Rumors like this don't happen at Marvel - good or bad.  I think that's because everything flows through Feige.  If he hasn't confirmed it, it's not real.  When there's no one to confirm or deny, anything is potentially true.

*****************************

Speaking of rumors, there was a thought that WB might want Kit Harrington star as Batman.  That's just such a bad idea that I'm hoping Informant's thoughts on the media is 100% right.

The new rumor is that they're considering Michael B. Jordan as Superman.

Because that worked really well last time....

I have nothing against Michael B. Jordan, and I'm sure that there are many characters that he'd be great for. But no. If these rumors were true (and I don't believe them), I'd probably just walk away. They have a good thing going in the movies, so if they choose to much that up for some silly reason, I'm out. The DC tv shows crumbled (at least a couple of them because of their over-politicization) and I find this whole environment exhausting.

The problem is, they already killed him off... and brought him back.
They already made him bad... and turned him good (though, very quickly)

They spent Suicide Squad and Justice League showing us a world without Superman. It wasn't good. So if they then turn around and boot Superman from the DCEU, they undermine everything that they've built.

I have no problem with them deciding to bring in some other characters, no matter how obscure. But they need to leave Superman alone.

It just doesn't make sense, which is why I have a hard time buying these rumors. If Warner is doing this to try to appease all of those people who whined about "Not my Superman" when they saw Man of Steel, why would they choose to make an even bigger move away from Superman, right as they've positioned Clark to become the person that everyone wanted him to become in the first place?

And again, why does a "teenage Supergirl" concept mean that Cavill is too old? Is there a continuity where she becomes Supergirl while he is still a baby? None of this makes any sort of logical sense, even from a panicked, reactionary position. Bringing in a new director to make a Man of Steel sequel, with Clark as he is now, seems to be the answer to everyone's problems. And it's what Cavill was talking about a little while ago... which is the only legitimate information we have on any sort of talks that have taken place.

I never believe news just because people tell me to. Every major news outlet is referring back to The Hollywood Reporter, which is itself basing its story on an anonymous source, who doesn't seem to know anything about the source material, or the contracts that are in place. They play down the comments from Warner Bros, but that is the only legitimate part of the whole story.

I think you're looking for the wrong things from DC. So far, the movies have felt like the same universe to me, but more than that, they've felt like the comic books. Yes, different stories have different tones or even styles, but they still fit into the same world. Suicide Squad felt like BvS to me. Wonder Woman feels like Man of Steel (in terms of universes, not overall story).

But if you're looking for "Where is this going", I think you'll be waiting for a while. The DC universe isn't about where we'll be ten years from now. It's about the movie we're watching right now. This probably makes it look more chaotic than it is, in the press, because they're looking for "In six years, we'll have Darkseid show up, but we have to set up Jason Todd and Booster Gold first", and that's just not happening.

Shazam is in the DCEU. As is Aquaman. They might not have a ton of crossovers, but that's not any sort of correction. It's been the plan all along.

Anyway, does anyone follow Henry Cavill on Instagram? He is either trolling all of the people who are upset at his leaving (which would be out of character for him), or he is making fun of the needless chaos.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnpPIrmFN9n … snwxs5vqh4

The Joker movie is a different thing. I have no idea what it is, or how to judge it just yet. Sometimes it sounds cool, and like it could be disconnected from the Batman character entirely. It could just be a crime story, based on the character. But at other times, the movie sounds like a disaster, filled with poorly-conceived political commentary and horrible casting.

I guess we'll see.

Aquaman does connect to the DCEU. It features at least two characters/actors from Justice League. I don't see how that's viewed as any sort of step away from the established continuity. The movie is about Aquaman, and will be its own thing, but it's the same universe, the same characters, the same mythology created as a backstory in Justice League.

And the Batman movie... we know nothing about. There's talk that it's a whole new thing, with a whole new cast... but these rumors are born from not having any actual information. We have to separate out the wild speculation and sloppy ponderings from the actual reality of the situation.

Is it me, or could we just swap out comic book themes for politics and just as easily be talking about any other story in the news right now?

I think they just mean that, like Wonder Woman or Suicide Squad, the movie is its own thing, while existing in that universe. Whereas Marvel will bring Spider-Man into Civil War and then his whole movie has to revolve around that Peter/Tony angle, Aquaman won't be feeding into any larger DCEU stories, or following up on any from before, which makes sense. It's very much in keeping with the comic books, whereas the Marvel approach is to create one large painting with all of these characters in different corners of the same canvas.

I don't think non-comic book people are going to follow the DCEU. I think that well probably dried up a while ago (at least for Batman and Superman), so they have to take those characters who have already been in a ton of movies, and try to play a different angle. This is another reason why the Aquaman/Shazam/Wonder Woman movies would be handled differently than the Batman/Superman movies.

It would be nice to have someone officially representing the franchise. I thought Geoff Johns was supposed to be doing that, but he doesn't seem to be.

That said, letting the press go crazy is sometimes a smart tactic. Warner can release all of these rumors about Cavill being fired, which will bring more support to Cavill (because people like him as an actor). Then the next Superman movie, which non-DCEU fans would probably not care about, suddenly becomes a rallying point... all while Warner Bros gets to shrug and ask what all of the fuss was about, because they never fired anyone. They have no movie in production, but they still have headlines.

Knowing how to manipulate the swarm of hack reporters is a talent that people underestimate.

TMZ is reporting that the whole thing is fake:
http://www.tmz.com/2018/09/13/henry-cav … ch_Results

Negotiating in the press? Maybe. I love how they're keeping open the possibility that someone else would come in to play him. At face value, it seems like Warner Bros is trying to keep Cavill on his toes during negotiations. However, I'm inclined to believe that they're keeping the rumor mill spinning. Cavill has another movie on his contract (probably with a big pay raise over his previous movies). The Shazam movie would have been a new negotiation, and it (apparently) fell through (thought there has been some interaction between Cavill and Zachary Levi on social media). Cavill loves playing with the minds of the fans (as he did while teasing Green Lantern stuff before Justice League came out), so he knows what he's doing here.

People (and by this, I mostly mean entertainment reporters) need to spot BS. There were a lot of tells in that original report, which anyone with a passing knowledge of DC characters, or Cavill's position on the DCEU should have picked up on.

They've said repeatedly, they're working on the next Man of Steel movie. They have nothing to move forward with because they're trying to put the project together. There are about a hundred movies in the same position, which you'll be sitting down to watch in a couple of years.

And yeah, it's gossip. But it was sloppy gossip that shouldn't have been picked up by nearly as many of the media outlets as it was. Especially the geekier sites, which reported it despite the obvious flaws in the story. I can never understand why people will believe whatever they're told, regardless of how credible those reports are. If I could look at that report and tell that it was fake, the Hollywood Reporter, and all of the other people who make a living at this crap, have no reason not to do the same. Which mean, they reported it despite knowing that it stank.

Geoff Johns seems to have been, in practical terms, kicked to the curb except for projects that were already in development.  The exception may be the Berlanti shows, but time will tell.

Johns and Diane Nelson made a mistake in trying to fix the Justice League movie; they should have let it stand or fall for what it was, and then picked up the pieces afterward to do it right with the films that followed.  By stepping in, all Johns and Nelson accomplished was to take a share of the blame; and it cost them.

Johns was already on shaky ground after Green Lantern, though.  He fought tooth and nail to get it done his way; but because Warner only half listened to him, it ended up being messy.

Never saw any details leaked; just reporting about the struggle.

By the time Johns was given the Green Lantern comic, he was popular enough and established enough at DC Comics to have the freedom to do what he wanted; so I would say look to his comics run for how he would do it.  In those comics, Krona is not Parallax; Abin Sur dies of his own fear and paranoia that grew from a prophecy an enemy shared; Sinestro trained Jordan personally (which led to Sinestro being thrown out of the Corps when Jordan exposed that Sinestro was using his ring to control his home world like a fascist dictator).  That’s just a few things off the top of my head; but I feel confident Johns comics likely show what he wanted.

Well, this doesn't sound very good.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/42206 … e#/slide/1

Apparently Thomas Wayne is going to be in it so it'll definitely have connections to DC.  I think it could actually be one of the "better" DC movies because it's so simply its own thing, and it won't have to worry about franchises or anything like that.

Well, I wonder if WB could've used a successful tactic from the days of old and done serials of sorts.  What if, instead of two $300 million movies, they did 12 $50 million movies?  Hire young actors/actresses and lock them into 10+ movie contracts, and do stories that don't require a bunch of special effects.  Every month, release a movie.  A Batman noir detective story.  The origin of Barry Allen.  A grounded Wonder Woman story.  Green Arrow.  Every movie is about 90 minutes, and if you want, do a 10-15 minute mini-movie about someone like the Question or Blue Beetle or someone like that.

Maybe after the first year, they start bumping into each other.  Batman meets Flash.  Cyborg meets Wonder Woman.  And then you start seeing some blue woosh every once in a while.  Characters start talking about an invulnerable man with incredible strength.  Maybe Barry sees a man running pretty fast - maybe as fast as he is.  Maybe you get a Supergirl movie where Kara is trying to understand what's happened to her and looking for her cousin.

Then you do one big budget film as Superman shows up, steps out of the shadows, and the Justice League rises to face some big villain.

So it's the ireactions idea - small-screen stories bumped up for the big screen, told like they were on television on a budget that's fairly easy to get back.  Probably too much to coordinate but I think you'd just need to run it like the Arrowverse is run and churn everything out as best as you can.

I don't think the divide between MAN OF STEEL and SUPERGIRL is in terms of the amount of effects but rather how elaborate the process is. MAN OF STEEL spent a year or two preparing conceptual work for how it would look when Superman lifted things, punched enemies or flew; SUPERGIRL took maybe a month. MAN OF STEEL's fights unfolded across an entire town and then a city; SUPERGIRL's fights are isolated to a single space. The TV scale is more minimalistic, and maybe movies need to start doing the same thing in process and visualization too.

MAN OF STEEL, BVS and JUSTICE LEAGUE were filmed all around the globe; SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH are filmed entirely in Vancouver these days.

So, if you were to have done MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE on a closer to TV budget, you wouldn't have Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne or any other movie star performers with their movie star quotes. You wouldn't have non-Vancouver location filming, so any non-urban environments like Smallville, Africa or the Arctic would be natural Vancouver areas without buildings, stock footage, greenscreen work and sets. Superman and Zod would fight in the sewers, not across a whole city. There would be an emphasis on superheroes using their powers in one specific way in one powerful slow motion shot rather than lengthy sequences of them using their powers in different ways.

Whatever their faults, MAN OF STEEL, BVS and JUSTICE LEAGUE showed superheroes at full power without SMALLVILLE's offscreen power usage, without THE FLASH and SUPERGIRL's reliance on standing sets and a generic city background and without single-room fights. Can an audience that's seen MAN OF STEEL level supeheroics accept stepping back to a superhero film that's closer to ARROW than BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN? I do not know.

The simple answer for the question of whether a Man of Steel audience would accept Supergirl level stories is... no. I think the CW shows worked when it was Oliver fighting for one city, at street-level. It was gritty and grounded. One you started introducing larger elements like magic, superpowers, or even Felicity's hacking in every episode, the series fell apart. This could be fixed with better writing. But Supergirl (when last I watched, which was a while ago) looked horrible.

I think a TV audience would accept these characters shifting to TV, but we can't be talking about CW-style TV here. We have to be talking more along the lines of Game of Thrones, Man in the High Castle, or Stranger Things... not all necessarily large spectacles, but all carefully considered. The world building still needs to be there. The quality has to be movie-level. The budget would still need to be much higher than what we see on network TV, but there's no reason why a Batman series can't be done on a Netflix budget. Superman would be tricky, because he needs the scale of what we saw in Man of Steel... but we wouldn't necessarily need extended space scenes, massive government forces fighting alien space ships, etc. Some stuff could be trimmed.

Warner Brothers needs to stop throwing money out the window, for sure. The next Batman movie doesn't need a $200 million budget. Batman is a normal people, fighting mostly crazy-but-normal people. With Batman, bigger isn't necessarily better.

Hiddleston’s Loki is popular with fans; but without him, I think people wouldn’t care much for the character.  I’m curious if they’ll pull other stars into it too.  They recently did a storyline where Loki stole Doctor Strange’s mantle as Sorcerer Supreme; and with Benedict Cumberbatch receptive to television, I could see him joining the project to explore that story.

With Olsen, I’m not sure where they could go with that; her solo stories have usually included more than her (either co-starting her brother Quicksilver, Vision or the entire Marvel U such as in House of M).  But, her series would be an opportunity to give a soft introduction to the MCU’s version of mutants and the X-men universe.

Of course, one could argue the DC Universe service is taking steps toward this too.  The new Doom Patrol series has cast Timothy Dalton as The Chief; and he’s a recognizable name.  But even with that, it’s still Berlanti and the feel of an extension to his CW universe.  That’s not a bad thing; it’s just not the theatrical to tv model we’re discussing.

No. No. No. Not only do they not need to bring in a guy who immediately makes people think of pedophilia, but they also don't need to bring in another Marvel outcast.

I don't know how true this is, but if rumors like this are true, it's like Warner Bros is actively trying to bring down the DCEU at this point.

James Gunn is no great and special talent. He made one good movie in his multi-decade career, and a sequel that, while great by Marvel standards, was not a good movie. If Warner wants to work with Gunn, they should let him go off and make his own original content. He shouldn't be tied to a franchise like this.

The question is, are they just looking for him to write a Guardians movie and swap out the names? Because while the movies had some similarities, they weren't exactly the same type of movies.

I just don't get why, with all of the talent out there in the world, Warner Bros keeps bringing in Marvel's table scraps. They're the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. They don't need to chase anyone, and yet they keep doing it. And that is what is ultimately doing them the most harm.

Disney fired Gunn because they didn't want their brand mentioned in the same articles as those horrible tweets and pictures. Warner Bros is actively pursuing those articles. Why?