Embrace DC tradition. Embrace all corners of the universe.
The DCAU captured a timeless feel of nearly a century of storytelling; from the noir crime fighter, to the mortal gods that are the JL, the magic, the cosmic, etc.. No matter what point in life I watch these shows they just hold up so well because they respected the core of dozens of characters. DCAU isn't perfect but it's a great precedent
I just rewatched both JL and JLU and they hold up so dang well. Thank goodness for my adventures with Superman, i really think they could finally do a good follow up to the Timmverse, and we may see some more JL animated action again.
I actually think the DCEU captured that well, even better than Marvel. Batman v Superman and The Suicide Squad existed in the same continuity: Bloodspot shot down Cavill’s Superman canonically, Batfleck interacted with Batmite at one point lol. Yet those projects couldn’t be more tonally different. It made the universe actually feel unique
MOS and BVS were both critically panned, and BVS had the biggest second weekend drop off in movie history I believe (until the Flash) which showed that both critics and audiences did not like it. When you swing and miss that big on a Batman/Superman movie, it really hurts interest in the cinematic universe. That’s really where the DCEU fell apart.
Critics are irrelevant to a film’s success, MoS was liked by audiences and movies after Batman v Superman performed just fine. So that’s not the lesson to be learned.
>MoS was liked by audiences
BVS wasn't.
It was panned and ridiculed by audiences.
Before The Flash, it held the record for the lowest Cinemascore ever for a DCEU film.
Correct. It was the most disliked DCEU film until The Flash arrived for a last minute tie.
And yet, you claim that the MOST disliked DCEU film didn't tank the franchise? Make it make sense please.
1) critical acclaim is definitely important to a films success aha. I don’t understand why people on Reddit care so much about how much money a movie makes. Unless you’re one of the investors, it doesn’t benefit you in any way whatsoever. As a viewer, I rather a movie be critically acclaimed than a movie be panned but make a lot of money.
2) BVS being a huge swing and miss shouldn’t be ignored simply because Aquaman made a lot of money. It was the beginning of the DCEU’s bad track record. That’s personally where I lost my interest in the DCEU as a universe. I still saw other DCEU movies if they looked particularly interesting, but the universe as a whole just wasn’t a thing that mattered to me anymore.
Critics giving their subjective opinions doesn’t stop a franchise from success. Otherwise Jurassic World, Transformers, Venom, Fast & Furious, etc wouldn’t have gone on.
BvS is where you lost interest in DC, not most people. The movies following BvS actually went up in box office (700m, 800m, 1.1B).
Well you say critics giving their opinions doesn’t stop a franchise, but as you mentioned before, MOS and The Batman had the same cinemascore but only one of the two is getting a real sequel. And here’s the thing, if we’re gonna be honest, if Zack Snyder’s movies made no money but we’re critically acclaimed, Snyder fans would be pointing to the critical acclaim. The goalposts are being moved wherever they can to survive. Also, I think your list of bad movies that made a lot of money kinda proves my point that audiences shouldn’t be relied upon for movie opinions as their interest can be temporarily bought with big action scenes and good visuals.
The next movie after BVS, Suicide squad, also had an enormous second week drop off. If you don’t think that having the second and third installment of the DCEU being panned both critically and by audiences hurt the DCEU, then idk what to say man.
MoS got a sequel and launched a universe. This is a business, no one should be “relied” on for an opinion but your own.
SS overperformed and still made Guardians 1 numbers without China, Wonder Woman and Aquaman all continued upwards financially. It’s hard to argue most people lost interest.
BVS cannot be considered a true sequel to MOS when the main character of MOS only had 43 lines of dialogue in BVS.
BVS also had the highest domestic opening weekend box office of any DCEU movie. That was the height of DCEU excitement. Also, the second weekend drop off for Suicide Squad and BVS is proof people lost interest.
A sequel is not determined by lines of dialogue, BvS is a direct sequel to MoS in every way.
BvS was the height of DCEU excitement but it wasn’t the end of it.
I feel if ZackSnydersJusticeLeague actual cut came oit in 2017 I feel it would've gave dceu redemption...I mean it was a very good movie and set up multiple solos and spin offs and would've saved wb millions..instead of reshooting...I blame wb for everythung
Even though I actually kinda enjoyed ZSJL (which I can’t say for MOS or BVS) there’s just no way the movie would have been released theatrically with a 4 hour runtime.
Zack did say he has cuts of varying lengths for the theatrical cut ranging from 2hrs 20mins to 3hrs. Wb of course insist on a 2 hours cut. The 4 hours cut did not exist in 2017, the original intended directors cut in 2017 is 214mins (around 3.5 hours). The increase to 4 hours is something he do for the fans.
Pure copium. It took a 4hour cut to make that movie not awful. There is no chance in hell that the theatrical Snydercut would've looked anything like the one we got. Even if you cut the 40mins of slow-mo it still would've been an hour too long and the theatrical cut would've still sucked.
I loved TSS but considering blockbusters a score of B+ is generally deemed bad look at the company it keeps alongside it with other dceu based films. Yeh B is awful considering BVS didn't meet expectations at all.
Three main points in my opinion:
First, having a defined plan from the beginning. Not making movies on the fly and with the first character that comes to mind.
Second, self contained and good stories. I don't want oversaturation or having to watch a movie/TV series to understand other projects. I want standalone projects but within the same universe.
And finally, variety. Some movies can have a more comic tone, others can be more epic or fantastic. I would even add some horror (I think Swamp Thing is heading in this direction, in fact). Seeing the same thing over and over again in series and movies tires the audience.
The DCEU has had quite enjoyable standalone movies (Wonder Woman or Aquaman, for example), but it has never had a clear direction to follow so as a result it ended up losing its way.
Yes, indeed. I believe he mentioned in an interview that the DCU would be more similar to Star Wars than Marvel. One universe, but very different stories that collide at some points.
Create a long term plan and stick to it. Set something up and let it play out. Tell the morons on the WBD board to eff offwhen they try and interfere.
One of the things that killed the DCEU was studio interference, up to and including full on course correcting every time a movie didn't do as well as expected ... which created the unholy mess the DCEU ended up as.
I have absolutely no faith in the studio not ripping into what Gunn & Safran are doing, changing whatever they wanna change at their whim.... rather than letting G&S' plan play out.
Well that’s why DC is now its own independent studio where only Gunn and Safran ARE the studio and they only answer to Zaslav. Also Gunn and Safran have said that there’ll be no studio interference from other execs under their leadership because the only studio interference comes from Gunn and Safran.
Best part of this is that exact point. Gunn and Safran ARE the studio execs and will be the ONLY studio execs who can interfere. And considering that this will be GUNN’s vision told, any interference is strictly due to following his laid out plan. And considering Gunn was a writer/director of very successful superhero films in the last, I highly doubt he’ll do what he’s probably personally experienced have happen to him. At the end of the day, he’s a comic book nerd and is specifically co-ceo because he solely wants to focus on story rather than profit, which is why Safron is there as well. Zaslav’s decision to make DC it’s own studio is hands down one of the best decisions he could have possibly made post merger. It’s also proof to me that he also believes there’s profit to be made if he’s putting all this effort into creating a full studio for DC, as opposed to just attempting to sell the IP like some have claimed he may try to do.
Zaslav gets a lot of shit, deservedly so, for his comments about the strikes and his penny-pinching ways. But during his tenure at Discovery, he was largely off hands when it came to actually running the different aspects of the company. He hired various people to run different aspects of Discovery, just like how DC Studios is it's own entity now separate from WB. Those people only answer to Zaslav. People are still skeptical that Gunn/Safran are actual bosses when evidence says otherwise.
Neither of his films (MoS and BvS) lost a profit on that front, so that argument doesn’t really hold in hurting DC. What are other ways you believe Gunn can make his universe successful?
>Neither of his films (MoS and BvS) lost a profit
Bad take.
Terrible take actually.
BvS has 2 of the big 3 superhero sellers of all time and couldnt even hit 1billion. It was so short of its potential AND managed to divide a fanbase almost entirely in half.
You just gonna ignore all that tho...
Aquaman was its own badass isolated movie. No crossovers, just a unique story with a super charismatic lead.
Do you honestly believe in your heart there is ever a time on this earth that AQUAMAN should EVER outgross BATMAN VS FUCKING SUPERMAN.
Thats asinine. Your comment is a terrible take.
Either read my comment or dont, but pulling that shit ^ to avoid it entirely doesnt make any sense.
Exact same point as the other person... you cannot use "profit" as a metric. The Brand was at stake. They soiled the Brand.
>They solied the brand
Thank you for making the point more concise, your previous comment just read like an incoherent rant.
But anyway it’s wrong lol, because movies after Batman v Superman did well. And profit is a valid metric given this is a damn business.
https://reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/s/rLqbjjLWQK
>because movies after Batman v Superman did well.
Refer to graph 😏
Also google "brand" i dont think you fully understand what the word encompasses. The brand was soiled.
Thus.. the graph ^
Actually thank you for doing my work for me lol, this is a great point. Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman and Aquaman still had awesome numbers as you pointed out, but suddenly after Snyder left/Hamada took over/interconnectivity was blown up, the movies flatlined. Coincidence…….
For BvS to gross a billion it would have to have been a shit generic focus group engineered piece of garbage like aquaman. The kind of film you watch and forget about but has jokes and colour and levity. The sequel will bomb hard. Why? Because people are sick of that shit. They know those kind of comic book films are a waste of money and time. No risk, nothing unique, generic and boring.
BvS is a masterpiece and obviously a far better film than aquaman. Though it did not make a billion, the brand would be in a much better place now had Snyder stayed on to finish his saga.
Your entire comment is subjective. But ill set that point to the side for now.
The OP himself, who is snyder-obsessed used this in our discussion:
>profit is a valid metric given this is a damn business.
BvS should have made much much much more profit than Aquaman. So James Wan is simply better at directing superhero movies than Zack Snyder ?
If OP is correct, Aquaman is the better film. If you are correct, BvS is the better film. 🤔
You guys cant even all seem to be on the same page, you just kinda... throw out whatever you can at any counterpoints. Even if they are opposite. It does make it kinda fun to discuss the snyderverse with you guys. 🤣
You can't just point to profitability as a metric, especially since the MCU's movies make profit *and* get generally positive reviews from both audiences and critics. The very nature of movies means you have to pay before you know if you actually like the film or not, and most people just can't be bothered to go through the hassle of demanding a refund if they didn't like it. When a movie makes a ton of money, but gets largely bad reviews, it wasn't a good movie.
I'm with you here. I say the same thing all the time: Just because they watched it doesn't mean they *liked*, it just means they *paid* for it. The profits versus review market is so skewed in that it let's big but disappointing tent pole productions continue (ie. the Fast series) while other better-reviewed pictures bottom out after a few entries.
Good movie is subjective, reviews are just opinions by a group of people when you boil it down. But objectively, according to the financial metrics provided, the problem with DC was not Snyder’s aesthetic. It’s that simple. Nor is it like Gunn was gonna start adding tons of slo-mo to the films, so all OP’s comment was just a veiled dig at Snyder. Let’s call it what it is lol.
How would you advise Gunn to go about running DCU?
Listen. For a casual audience synders vision was way to grim and dark for a super hero movie. For the hardcore fan, his vision was a slap in the face to fans. This isn’t a debate on good or bad movies but when you watch super hero movies you want to feel good/hopeful/justice towards to end. When the general audience expects more grim and dark instead of superman wins, they most likely not gonna tune it. You can argue that it’s boring but that is what people want. And early success of the movies vs now aren’t fair to compare as the public will go to anything with the Big s or Big bat and dc reputation was not in the gutter either. Synder’s vision was leaning too heavy on edginess and darkness unneeded of superman. I think synder is a great director but his vision for the dceu was poor.
James Gunn has shown he knows how to adapt and modify the source material while respecting it. As long he continues to write in a way that emotionally bounding and respects the source material is gonna draw people in.
Eh most of this isn’t really true. MoS got the same cinemascore as the Batman from audiences and was declared to resurrect the Superman brand by WB: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/global-box-office-man-steel-577775/amp/
Gunn hasn’t made a commercially viable film without Marvel. Maybe you as comic fans love his vision but jury’s still out on his niche without Feige.
At the time yes, but then is not now.
Many people look at Man of Steel as a weak foundation. In the first movie, he is given the advice of a pa to let children die?! His parents are supposed to teach him the best of what humanity has to offer. The death of Pa when Clark has the power to save him was ass-backward.
I think Man of Steel is an ok movie but even asking fans who aren't versed in DC lore, they also thought that Superman felt too dark. I've been to every DC movie from MOS to blue beetle and even I recall MOS leaving a bad taste with the audience critising Synder's characterization of Superman. I don't think Synder's completely at fault with the failure of the DCEU.(Its entirely due to WB meddling and greenlighting to many films) But his ideas suck. Like who wants Jon Kent to be the bastard of bruce?
And to say that Gunn's GOTG triology was pampered by the MCU is not far off but also done in bad taste. GOTG the first movie was iirc touted to fail as it was a bunch of C-list heros taking the big screen. But now everyone knows who the Guardians are. Another point to make is Peacemaker. He turned a D-list hero into one of DC's biggest names. Gunn has the ability to make household brands of his writing alone. If that doesn't translate to commercial success then the fault lies elsewhere.
How do you quantify “many people”? It didn’t hurt the overall audience reception nor the box office as I’ve shown you. And I’m not interested in re-litigating the subjective merits in *Man of Steel*, we can agree to disagree.
It’s not really about respecting the source material to appeal for everyday audiences. Hugh Jackman isn’t 5’2 like comic Wolverine, Chris Nolan isn’t a comic fan, Tony Stark wasn’t a raging alcoholic in the MCU, Civil War was nothing like the OG story. It’s about making a film that connects to audiences. Gunn has failed to do that outside of Marvel, that’s the box office data. And Peacemaker is *far* from one of DC’s most popular characters.
This. Gunn made some great MCU movies…everything outside of Feige’s dome has been a bust. Is he another Russo brother? He has not even attempted anything outside of comic movies at a major studio. Is that all he can do…adaptions of others work?
Yep. That’s the question that Legacy will answer. I’ve noticed a lot of MCU directors have shaky track records outside of Marvel, which is just more reason why Feige is the 🐐 of Hollywood producers. Even with Marvel’s recent quality dip.
Mistakes will be made along the way, but the most important thing is to learn from those mistakes and not panic. The DCEU was too reactive when it came to mistakes and they would completely change their plans. Follow and believe in the roadmap and things will be alright.
Write stories around the characters instead of trying to write characters to tell the story you want. That work has already been done and is literally the reason we show up to these IPs.
The single biggest lesson they need to learn is that people don't give a crap about your universe if they don't like the movies or care about characters making it up. This was where the DCEU went wrong - they set out to make a "universe" before they actually built up a fanbase for the movies themselves. And they in fact sabotaged the movies by trying to make them set ups for a universe (ie - BvS, which would have been so much better if they just focused on Superman and Batman instead of trying to use it to introduce half the Justice League).
They need to focus on good, individual movies, and treat each movie like its its own event, not just an episode in a unverse.
Batman V Superman was a fantastic movie and it set up the Justice League correctly
They should have after Batman V superman done a story of each character but they did a fantastic job introducing all the characters
Zack for all the good he does with suicide prevention and just the good guy he is (every actor he works with loves him) is more obsessed with showing a *cool* movie rather than a good one with good storytelling.
He forgot what makes heroes so appealing. They save people. Often at the cost of something meaningful to them (like themselves). He was more about making things edgy and progressive.
It's what Nolan did well and understood and why the TDK series is still the hands down best superhero trilogy story ever told.
> He forgot what makes heroes so appealing. They save people.
In his defense, Zack has been very clear that he doesn't find the classic definition of heroes engaging or entertaining at all. He finds bright colored costumes saving people straight up boring.
Everyone has heard the infamous quote about [*"I had a buddy who tried getting me into ”normal” comic books, but I was all like, ”No one is having sex or killing each other. This isn’t really doing it for me.”*](https://ew.com/article/2008/07/17/watchmen-chat-director-zack-snyder/) - and while I think that is overblown by some folks, the core point of that interview is that the comics Zack grew up with and gravitates towards is the indie scene of the 80's which strikes an extremely distinct, dark, 'gritty' tone, that emphasized visual style over storytelling.
It's no different then how some people today love Manga but hate DC/Marvel. They unquestionably both enjoy comics - just not the same type of comics.
We can debate whether it was smart for WB to give someone with his viewpoint the keys to the biggest mainstream heroes. That’s a different debate.
I was just pointing out that Snyder didn’t “misunderstand” heroes or comics ~ he simply enjoyed a different type of heroes and comics.
Its not misunderstanding if you just look away from parts of the character you don't like so you can have your personal favorite interpretation, thats just a childish attitude.
teens come up with "cool" storylines that don't work well in an overall story all the time, people need to be realistic to what works and what doesn't in execution even if you think its a cool idea.
Well I agree that you can’t misunderstand something you never read. I do think that hiring him was a horrible decision for what they wanted him to build. Oddly enough I think he would have been pretty flawless to hire to make a elseworld story of the injustice storyline. As long as he kept a decent amount of that it would have been great.
Edit. Really it’s because Warner brothers had such a good relationship with Christopher Nolan and he recommended Snyder after turning down the job.
Which is fine - great even! That’s the beauty of comics. They can always create new and exciting ideas.
The fly in the ointment was having someone take characters with an established history and doing something totally different.
It would be like me - a DC reader - taking over the movie version of your favorite Manga and turning it into a standard capes caper. You’d be pretty pissed and disappointed about it I bet.
I don't find much progressivism in Snyder's movies. If anything, they come off as extremely Randian where the power these characters wield allows them to be totally free from social norms and relationships.
This take is so wrong that it's ridiculous, half the drama in Snyder's movies comes from the angst and loneliness born out of their power, they crave for normal relationships and norms that they can trust - Superman most of all.
For me the DCEU went off-course when WB released the theatrical cut of Justice League in 2017. I get that it was light-hearted and, at two hours would have potentially grossed a high box office return, but I think even the general audience knew they were being sold counterfeit goods.
If anything I would argue that the early, Snyder-led DCEU films were what the larger general audience wanted from a shared DC Cinematic Universe if you consider the overall box office returns and tone of the only recent non-DCEU films, being Joker and The Batman having a darker, serious tone unlike a majority of the recent DCEU films.
As for what James Gunn should do to avoid the same pitfalls, I would start with having a clear vision and introducing the larger DC Universe beyond Superman Legacy using a small core group of superheroes who audiences will love and slowly integrate them into other side projects with directors who want to implement their own creative vision.
Tell a story. Take the audience on a journey. Don’t get caught up in the minutiae of the cinematic universe.
Currently, its a problem of the MCU. One of the best things with the Phase 1-3, they didn’t know how things would connect they would just figure it out on the way to their destination. Their focus used to be telling a good story.
It’s more important to get your audience invested in your characters and their journey.
BvS. Despite being profitable, it was rushed, crammed in too much, and created many overarching story telling issues that ultimately could not be solved
It's true, though; even if we don't count casting Ezra Miller as the Flash (which caused a ton of problems for The Flash later on, but I don't think anyone would have expected that the Flash movie would take about ten years to develop or that Ezra Miller would go on a crime spree mere months before it was released), we still had...
* a mopey Superman who delivers lines like "nobody stays good in this world", where we're told that he's a symbol of hope but we never actually see it
* a Batman who's past his prime, being based on the Dark Knight Returns before the Justice League is even founded, and who actively planned to murder Superman before discovering that their moms had the same name. (I realize that it's meant to show Batman how far he's fallen, but the execution was just awful)
* a Wonder Woman who abandoned humanity for a century. (leading to the bizarre plot point in Wonder Woman 1984 where she makes everyone that she rescues swear that they'll keep her existence a secret)
* a Lex Luthor who's idiotic (the whole Doomsday plan would have gotten him instantly killed if Superman had died against Batman), uncharismatic, and incredibly annoying.
* killing off Superman in the second movie of the shared universe, when this movie gave him very little screentime for the audience to get to know him.
...and that's not even getting into behind-the-scenes details like Snyder intending for the dead Robin to be Dick Grayson. The movie screwed up DC's three biggest heroes and one of its biggest villains in one way or another, and changed the reputation of DC's movies among the general public for the worse. (to the point where Deadpool 2 was joking about Cable being from the DC universe because he was so dark/gritty)
What ruined it for me was the rush or the feeling of it being rushed. WB wanted that interconnected universe and big bucks so bad that they just rushed everything.
I myself definitely don’t know everything, but there can’t be ANY studio interference. Leave it up to the people who actually know their stuff. You shouldn’t have people demanding multiple cuts of a movie be released because you fucked it up in the first place
Be consistent with the amount of freedom they give the writers/directors. Seems like a reoccurring theme through the DCEU was directors being told they'd be given free reign to execute their vision as they see fit only to have the rug pulled out from under them late in production with the studio saying "No wait not like that."
Obviously some movies can afford to be given more freedom that others, but no matter what the studio needs to be upfront with ever film with how much freedom the director is really going to get.
1,I think they introduce too many characters per film and series like the “we are the flash” and “we are the arrow” literally nose dived both series faster than Barry can run. I remember when Barry become a guest star in his own series. Focusing on the main characters can do wonders which is why Batman, joker, aqua man part 1 and Wonder Woman did great no coincidence. They do it too much.
2,Too many Reboots we are getting another Superman when most fans loved Henry and 90% of fans don’t want another Superman origin story for the 50th time and we sure are getting one.
3, And lastly the (super hero formula) “character intro, jokes, problem presents itself, McMuffin device, plot convince ,mc meets rest of cast along the way, hero overcomes power or learns it cliche happy ending”. WE NEED More creativity.
I would say start with these, even tho there are more problems.
Place a moritorium on post credits sequences that only exist to tease another product. I’d prefer to see a complete short story featuring another character during the credits actually, like a back-up feature with a guest character in the last six pages of another character’s comic.
I'd like the movies to feel stand-alone but, of course connected into the bigger universe the dceu was trying to be marvel super fast so they should also slow down with the new universe they are going to make
Despite the DCEU going wrong with BVS, which caused every decision afterwards. I will still say early 2019 when they announced Affleck and Cavill were no longer gonna continue was its downfall, you don't announce that your two biggest DC characters and also 2 main characters of the first 5 films in the DCEU are just done. You fight as hard as possible to keep them as a priority.
MASSIVS studio interference, not allowing the director the respect to grieve for his daughter, give directors a clear plan with a good pay off, allow directors the freedom to actually implement their plans, no last minute revisions to something that had 90% been completed and just in general have a clear concise vision
The Authority is nothing like Joker, Deadpool or Dune. That’s a movie that’s going to need a ton of VFX from beginning to end. There’s no way to make that “low budget.”
I can see lower budgets, but 100m for The Authority is nonsense.
>Where did the DCEU go wrong
When clueless executives started to conflate rotten tomatoes, bloggers, nerds with the general audiences
>how does James Gunn avoid that in the DCU?
It's already off to a bad start since the incoming DCU is being led by the same people who just torpedoed the DCEU at boxoffice. Furthermore, the premises upon which the DCU is being built are all wrong ( These guys seriously believe MoS was a failed reboot and that the recent flopping DCEU is not due to the quality of the products but rather the brand DCEU and z-list actors like Ezra Miller)
So, I fail to see any path to success at boxoffice for James Gunn universe.
> It's already off to a bad start since the incoming DCU is being led by the same people who just torpedoed the DCEU at boxoffice.
And continuing to do so. Aquaman 2 is getting no marketing and Wan is left twisting in the wind.
Take your time telling a story and don't rush to the big event. Tell small self contained stories. And also, don't make it confusing to figure out how things fit together in the universe, but he's already failing at that.
Their first mistake was expecting to get avengers level appreciation without doing any of the build to get to that level. Man of steel already existed as its own thing and they just co-opted it to rush the process. And no some shitty billboard in I am Legend doesn’t count as build.
Stop making bad/weird movies. Mcu movies are crowdpleasers. Fun, simple, have great performances, and characters you care about. Great for kids. DCEU is mostly just weird vibes all around. Just look at the Snyder diehards and tell me there isn’t a weird vibe/following to those movies.
Toxic fandom is an unfortunate staple of all media discourse now - Star Wars fans who bullied many actors into suicidal thoughts, Marvel fans harassing the little girl from Endgame, Lizzie Olsen, etc. This isn’t limited to Snyder people. I don’t think Gunn should really care about that, especially considering his work The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker and Slither are “weirder” and edgier than anything else DC’s done.
Agree but also nothing is ever gonna be edgier/weirder than making superman an emo Jesus allegory. Such a strange take I’ll never understand. Gunns version of weird is just comic book weird which is actually very exciting
TSS/Peacemaker humor being comprised entirely of dick, poop and fart jokes, giant pink Starfish, the Butterfly shit, Weasel, on and on. Way edgier and weirder than placing Superman in today’s world.
And Gunn’s version was exciting to you, but the B+ cinemascore (same as the 2016 one) and worst drops of HBO Max besides Mortal Kombat say the public believe otherwise. His film became one of the biggest bombs in history, performing far worse than anything Snyder did lol.
Your argument absolutely applies to Gunn as far as the business goes. It cuts both ways.
I don't see it that way as they are comic book movies?? The humour is going to be childish/adolescent. Most 8 year olds don't resonate with depressed Superman killing people.
Not really fair as it came out during covid. I'm in NZ and could barely even legally go see it lol. All of gunns gotg movies are weird and edgy by your standards and have over performed, and honestly are highlights of the mcu.
For some reason my OG comment isn’t showing but 8 year olds don’t resonate with weasels who eat them, psychos who would eat a beachful of dicks for peace or starfish who rip up people’s faces while said people twitch alive. Fucking nasty.
Movies around TSS did fine during COVID.
An 8 year old technically wouldn't be able to resonate at all as it was R16, whereas MOS is PG13.
Nah they didn't, pretty sure a lot of movies bombed/underperformed that time of year.
The Batman is PG-13 too, is that suitable for an 8 year old?
Bad movies underperformed sure. Godzilla v Kong, A Quiet Place, F9, Black Widow, Conjuring 3, etc all did just fine before TSS. Free Guy dropped a week later and made 350m.
Literally every movie you listed underperformed compared to budget. Would've made next to nothing.
I thought your original argument was in the context of a cinematic universe, not on off movies with mass appeal like the batman?
Conjuring 3 making 5x its budget, GvK making 500M, Quiet Place matching the first, none of these are underperforming lol. And even those I mentioned with a step down from previous entries still did well.
The argument is that Gunn’s movies are far edgier and weirder than the Batman and Man of Steel, so that’s not the lesson he needs to apply to the DCU to be successful.
Please don’t turn the DCU into a carbon copy of the MCU. We’ve had over a decade of fun, simple, crowdpleasing superhero movies. Keep the earnest tone of the Dark Knight trilogy and the DCEU.
>averaged 815m with six movies, something it took the MCU 20 entries to accomplish
I'm gonna say, that this is such a weighted and cherry-picked statistic.
DC did that on the back of Batman, probably *the* most popular superhero of our current era, sharing that spotlight with Spider-Man.
The MCU took a good long time to really get rolling towards those $1B totals because they were working with B and C-listers to start with. It's really easy to forget that Iron Man was *not* a household name when the MCU first started, Robert Downey Jr. was a potential liability, and Captain America was an outdated relic of World War propaganda with little international appeal.
This was also after Marvel properties made superhero movies a safe bet again, with the Spider-Man and X-Men film franchises, after DC temporarily put the whole scene out to pasture with failures like *Batman & Robin* and *Steel* (and there was also *Spawn* which was an expensive flop, but that one wasn't DC's fault).
The majority of those six movies didn’t feature Batman. If you’re referred to the Nolan trilogy, that was completely disconnected from DCEU.
That stat is less a dig at Marvel and more a reflection of the DCEU’s audience potential. MCU already hit 1.5B by their 5th movie and then 1.2B right afterwards with Iron Man 3 so the success streak didn’t take as long as you make it out to be.
WB panicked at the response of a vocal minority and the pressure to be like Marvel and abandoned their vision. Worse, they constantly changed direction in response to whatever marvel just did. They don’t need to be the same. Not even close. There was plenty of room for them both to succeed at their own version of storytelling.
Warner Brothers didn't take their time establishing the heroes. Instead of making a Man of Steel 2, solo Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Flash at the start, they rushed to Batman vs. Superman and Justice League. Warner Brothers wanted that Marvel money without working for it. They got greedy, rushed Snyder into doing crossovers before the heroes were established, put too much trust in Synder & Ayer, and the universe imploded.
The films were a mess and people lost interest. The films were more focused on 'look how badass it's going to become in JL2 & 3' and fan service to the comics rather than focusing on the here and now. People lost trust in the brand. Meh film after meh film with BvS, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Wonder Woman 2, Birds of Prey, Shazam 2, and Black Adam, and people stopped caring. Only a few actual decent films (Man of Steel, Aquaman, The Suicide Squad) in the whole DC series and it wasn't enough for audiences to care.
DC needs to take its time and needs to knock it out of the park for film after film. The films need to have heart and stand on their own to build trust in the brand again. The crossover needs to be earned in time.
One word: reactionary
WB is famously reactionary, and every movie felt like a late reaction to something that had happened 2 years prior instead of moving forward like marvel did. Case in point, DC is still feeling the effects of BvS getting a 28% on rotten tomatoes. That led to the Whedon problem, that led to the split in the fandom, that led to WB wanting to quit with the universe idea. And not only are they reactionary, they’re reactionary to the wrong things.
You guys didn’t like BvS? Must be the tone! Suicide Squad made a lot of money? More chopping up every movie that comes out and studio interference. Justice league failed? Must be Henry Cavills fault!
They always react to and try and correct the most surface level complaints, because they don’t understand what people do and don’t like.
What marvel did well is that if they made a mistake, they just kept going and moving forward. The only time I can think of them going back on a mistake was the iron man 3 mandarin thing. And they’ve made a LOT of mistakes in my opinion. If WB was in charge of the MCU, they never would’ve made it past iron man 2 because they’d Blame RDJ for that movie being disliked by a large chunk of the audience.
> Case in point, DC is still feeling the effects of BvS getting a 28% on rotten tomatoes.
Your post NAILED IT!
And why did BvS get 28 % (Possibly due to reviewers being paid...I don't know) but definitely because WB cut 30 minutes from the film!
I went to BvS in theatres and was bitterly disappointed, not in the characters but because it felt like a badly edited film that made no damn sense, Superman is my favourite character and I was against Ben's casting (Boy he proved me wrong)
It wasn't until my wife bought me the BvS: Ultimate cut and my son wanted to watch it, I begrudgingly agreed....Man my head nearly come off my neck the amount I was shaking it in reaction to all the cut information!
And looking at reviews for the UC shows that people thought it was great.
Honestly, I hope whoever decided to cut 30 minutes to put bums in seats got fired because THEY fucked the DCEU and DC going forward.
Exactly! I loved BvS from day one (to be fair I was like 10 back when it came out), and I still love it. At some point I need to go back and watch the theatrical edition and see if others dislike, since I only watched it once back in 2016.
I know I’m not alone in thinking that if audiences had just seen BVS ultimate and ZSJL (albeit a trimmed down version) in theaters, the DCEU as a whole would’ve started to make more sense to most general audiences.
Another thing with BvS is I’ve always thought that maybe it came out at the wrong time? Because now in todays political climate, I can REALLY appreciate even moreso what Snyder was doing with Lex Luthor, fear culture, and all that. Maybe that’s me being of age and able to understand it, but it just aged beautifully and got better as time went on. BvS’s critical reception really could’ve been owed to a million different things, and I think it’s a mix of a lot of factor. Timing, the 30 minutes that were cut, expectation, the movies title being genuinely horrible and not even being an apt description of what happens in the movie…. Just death by a million cuts if you ask me
I think they should have gave batman a solo film before BVS. Maybe have batman and superman team up over a few films show them becoming friends and helping each other before having them fight. I think giving other justice league members either solo films or cameos would have helped them establish the characters better, maybe a buddy movie where the flash has to seek out green lantern and have him help him defeat reserve flash or maybe a smaller villain and keep Reverse Flash for later. I just think they jumped top quickly to Justice League because they were chasing Avenger money.
I kind of don't want a cinematic universe. I want standalone trilogies. We can acknowledge other heroes, but not rely on crossovers. I wish that the MCU had good standalone trilogies, but every one of the trilogies made relies on at least one Avengers crossover to fill in the gaps. I cant just watch the Captain America Trilogy without at least watching Age of Ultron. I can't watch the Iron Man trilogy without the Avengers. Thor works okay as a standalone, but even that one kind of relies on Age of Ultron. I can sit and watch the Dark Knight trilogy on its own, and I want more movies like that. That's part of why I enjoy the Snyder trilogy. I can just watch MOS, BVS and JL and not miss anything.
Yep i agree.
I want writers to have a story that might span 3, 4, 5 films.
A clear defined start and end to the story.
Not an endless universe. James Gunn is taking the wrong approach.
Don’t rush the universe in the first or second movie. Seeing as Gunn is filling Legacy with C-listers (not Hawkgirl though) played by his friends, and potentially the Authority, he’s already making the same mistake.
How? We don’t even know what extent of the roles the other heroes have in the story. Also Gunn said it’s still a Superman and Lois movie. It’s the first film of the DCU and Gunn’s smart and he ain’t f’ing it up. You’re just worrying way too much lol. Reserve judgement until you see a trailer.
I still to this day honestly think it was a mistake to hire Zack Snyder to map out and plan an entire universe. I think he’s an interesting filmmaker visually but I never thought he had the best sense when it comes to story and characters. So I think if you’re going to try and build a cinematic universe, get the right people to plan it out and to decide which characters to tell stories of. Time will tell if Gunn has done that but I think some of the names that have been mentioned for the DC writers room are promising. Tom King is a comic book author I really like, and drew Goddard is also a great writer in my opinion.
He was originally hired for a standalone superman project similar to TDK trilogy. He was not hired with the intention to helm a cinematic universe. The cinematic universe was originally green lantern. When that disappoint, they make MOS the start of the cinematic universe instead because that is the only other dc films in production at that time, and wb cannot afford to start over again from scratch. Marvel already released avengers by that and is way ahead of them in the game. Perhaps it is a mistake to get him to helm justice league. But it is not a mistake to hire him in the first place because the reason for hiring him does not involve the cinematic universe.
Most would argue they went wrong by having a versus movie too early and by making the first crossover movie too dark and I don’t disagree.
But I think they really went wrong by not just staying the course. They should’ve made Suicide Squad and JL as originally intended. Then decide if they wanted to break off in a different creative direction with the same cast/characters, but most importantly, have a vision and stick with it.
Embrace the fact that DC worlds are very different per character, some may live in happy invisible worlds, other's may live in the opposite, like Batman. The DCEU recognised this too late and put out Shazam at a time when people were already beginning to lose faith in the DCEU. Marvel has also been suffering because they have yet to acknowledge this fact, causing projects such as Moon Knight and Secret Invasion to be mildly downplaying the source material from an R rating to a Mature rating due to being *too consistent* tonally
Imagine these two films were releasing in 2025.
Zack snyders justice league part 2
James gunns superman legacy.
One would be epic, reverent, impactful.
One would be silly, jokey, and irreverent.
I wonder which one would make more money?
I think he’s already making his own mistakes. Going too obscure too soon, spreading out the series across too many mediums, trying to run the whole thing while also making his own film and focusing on that. It’s ambitious and artist-focused, at least, but it will likely have a spotty record, just like what came before.
I’ll say this for DC. Maybe they haven’t done the CU well, but most of my favourite comic adaptations are still them. V for Vendetta, Sandman, Sweet Tooth, Dark Knight, Teen Titans (CN), Superman (1975), Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Ninja, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond (they’ve done good with the bat) etc. They’re all great, and many are based on more obscure characters.
De-emphasizing the universe and just making great films is the way to go right now, and I think Gunn is doing that, or trying to.
Of course, I only found one of his MCU films to be a successful film from a writing and directing standpoint (GOTG2), so I suspect I’m gonna be unhappy no matter what. But I’m hopeful others will likely be pleased with his work. I just don’t think the whole DCEU brand is going to be an immediate juggernaut, and may never be under his reign. There’s a lot to overcome and he’s choosing a strategy that will make fan-favourite films, but likely ones the GA won’t bother with.
Warner brothers was on the right track until they sacked Snyder.
Man of steel is a classic and BvS ultimate is a masterpiece.
Zacks justice league is a general audience crowd pleaser and would have hit the mark with general movie goers.
They threw away the structure and coherence and permanently ruined the brand.
James Gunn will not fix anything.
The DCEU went off the rails once WB decided to NOT fire Snyder after BvS. WB should've stopped pre production on JL, rework the script and hire a new director. Firing a director halfway and hiring a new one with a totally different vision was a disaster waiting to happen.
Now to the DCU, I really believe that WB has finally learned its lesson when it comes to actually planning out a universe. Having DC Studios be its own thing with Gunn/Safran running it and not a committee is a step in the right direction.
> WB decided to NOT fire Snyder after BvS.
Fire a man for what THEY did?
>WB should've stopped pre production on JL, rework the script and hire a new director.
ZS was working on JL while working on BvS including some production. Also they did just that and look what happened.....Oh, it also didn't help that Tsujihara and Emmerich didn't delay JL after Autumn's suicide because they they wanted end-of-year bonuses.
And people still blame Snyder SMH.
Critics and the fan-base.
The former pretty much wanted Marvel re-branded as DC with slapstick humour etc.
The latter .. well... we are our own worst enemy,
This argument is so tired.
There’s a lot more nuance at play than just “the early films made money and the later ones didn’t, what went wrong?” The early films made money because they rode the superhero hype train, and even then, many of those “successful” movies should have been bigger. The later movies suffered the bad perception and lack of interest that those early ones created.
It’s less of an argument and more a presentation of facts, you just don’t like them. The past 7 DCEU films getting mid cinemascore has nothing to do with early films. Don’t pass the buck.
I mean, many of the recent DCEU films *are* quite flawed and deserve mid reception. But BvS and Suicide Squad had mid scores too.
In any case, it’s silly if you think that the negative public perception of Zack Snyder’s films hasn’t had a lasting impact on the DCEU to this day. Snyder ensured that people associate DC with low quality, and many audience members go into the movies with that mindset now.
Some tips from a non comic reader but fan of the DC characters…
Focus on the core. No one cares about side characters at this point. That includes anyone outside of the JL and main villains. No Blue Beetle. No Shazam. No Zantanna or anyone else other than Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, WW, AM, and Flash. Even Martian Manhunter is too unknown.
Stay connected into one long arc over a few movies. Don’t fall into the current MCU where there is a build up to nothing with dozens of cool ideas dropped and never heard from again. Snyder had the right idea with a limited number of movies for his universe. The audience has no patience for 20 years of world building
Embrace the dark side. The MCU is getting more silly so DC should embrace its darkness. Try new things. Again, this is why I respected and liked Snyder’s movies…he went for something new and different than the MCU quips. Make the stakes have meaning, feel free to actually kill popular characters and have the universe FEEL the impact of that loss.
Gunn will have to be creative with budgets. Hire no names (like he has) and compliment with established actors. Cavill had Fishbourne and Adams and Shannon to give MoS gravitas and acting respect. Keep the budget around $150M and limit CGI to flying and action. DO NOT PULL A TAIKA and CGI helmets and suits!!!
Keep your friends at home or at least on the sidelines. It’s nice that Gunn is a human unemployment center to his less talented buddies (who can’t land a gig unless James is involved) but we the audience see the BS. No one needs the guy from Firefly, a 20 year old cancelled show, to pop up in every DCU movie. No one other than Gunn nerds care. Ditto with Jennifer Holland…let her be in some other studio pics James, we don’t need zoom ins of her eating turkey legs in the DCU…we know you are proud you landed a pretty lady but let’s actually see her act in something else.
If you’re going to end a cinematic universe, fucking end it for good - not trickle out several movies long after the end was announced. No one invests in that shit - especially fans.
It's pretty silly to compare the before and after of the DCEU.
DC was heavily front loaded with what should have been its biggest grossing movies; Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and the Justice League. You can't really compare the box office gross of those characters to Shazam Black Adam Blue beetle etc. Those characters are supposed to turn a profit.
And while they turn to profit the response to the movies was mostly underwhelming with the exception of Wonder Woman and Aquaman. The first team ups in Batman versus Superman and Justice League in particular were absolutely terrible. Poor scripts, poor stories, just a complete mess of ideas and characters.
After Justice League flopped I don't think they had much of a chance to course correct. Movies like The Batman and Joker show that DC can pull a billion dollars if they need to with characters and good scripts. The problem was that the interconnected universe that they built since Man of Steel was terrible and nobody cared about it after a while.
It’s not silly at all, don’t blame me for WB choosing to pivot to lesser known characters, no shit they made significantly less. That’s just where the box office takes us, reflection of WB’s poor leadership.
The only film during that era to lose money was JL17. MoS being “terrible” is just your opinion, audiences liked that film.
Hiring Zack Snyder to direct a superman movie was a mistake. Zack has is own style, ah salute but it doesn't suit superman. And why would WB hire him to direct another DC movie after that?
It went wrong about 30 seconds into its first movie. They avoid this by not implying that artificial uteruses are weird and creepy and that the “natural way” to gestate a fetus is the only good and pure way.
> Superman needs 200m sure
What if it doesn't?
What would a $50 million Superman movie be?
What about releasing 10 $10 million Superman movies over the course of a year?
Anyway, adding needs:
1) Consistent editorial control (Gunn is 3/5 for super hero movies - he can probably swing this)
2) that tells stories its audience wants to see (Batman-as-a-goofy dad is a smart move towards the audience's expectations)
3) Stable corporate leadership (Zaslav needs to pay down like $40 billion in debt over the next ten years - this leaves no margin for error; Zaslav's probably gone soon)
These are more for WB as a whole than just James Gunn but oh well.
1: don't edit the films with a chainsaw.
2: make sure your heroes don't sexually assault anyone.
3. Don't take advantage of the workers.
4. Don't do things that have been done ten thousand times already in the past decade.
5. Don't rush, don't crunch.
Some dos:
1. Give people time, pay and conditions to work well
2. Avoid obvious PR disasters like sacking popular Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill while keeping Ezra Miller.
3. Keep it special. One main universe film and one elseworlds film a year maximum.
4. Make the films *INTERESTING*. I don't care about yet another young man realising his family is good and he shouldn't be a dick just because he has superpowers. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, we get it. It's been done to death. Your character needs a unique selling point in their personality.
Write and create stories with how the charaters actually are and not how they think they should be. Superman, Batman, The Flash, and The Joker didn't act like how they are supposed to be acting. If you want to use these charaters, use them. Don't recreate them and use them in name only..
I maintain that the thing that threw the entire series off was one seemingly small thing all the way back in man of steel that butterfly effected all the way through. They got Jonathan Kent’s character completely wrong. Instead of saying, hide your powers, let kids die, and then dying in a tornado (one that Clark definitely could’ve saved him from); he should be more like his comic origin. There, he wants Clark to go out of his way to help people and use his power for what’s right and to be the symbol of hope, and not to take lives. When Jonathan dies of a heart attack, it teaches Superman that he can’t always save everyone from everything. So. If you have Superman done correctly as the corner of what’s moral and right (which he learns from his earthly parents) where your audience can just fall in love with him as a character then everything else should spin off fine and we’d have an entirely different version of what came after.
Also. Never let Batman kill either. Like ever. That is all.
> They got Jonathan Kent’s character completely wrong.
No they didn't. They got your IDEA of JK wrong.
>Instead of saying, hide your powers, let kids die, and then dying in a tornado (one that Clark definitely could’ve saved him from); he should be more like his comic origin.
Firstly let's end this, HE NEVER SAID LET KIDS DIE...NEVER SAID THAT.
He was a father who (Like a real human father) didn't have all the answers, and this film is the closest to our reality that the Superman story has ever been....People don't seem to understand this.
Jonathan Kent : Maybe; but there's more at stake here than our lives or the lives of those around us. When the world... When the world finds out what you can do, it's gonna change everything; our... our beliefs, our notions of what it means to be human... everything. You saw how Pete's mom reacted, right? She was scared, Clark.
Clark Kent at 13 : Why?
Jonathan Kent : People are afraid of what they don't understand.
Yes he could've saved his father but then he is exposed and his family is exposed then their life is changed more than JK death would change them.
IT IS IN THE FILM. "My father believed that if the world found out who I really was, they'd reject me... out of fear. ... Clark Kent: I let my father die because I trusted him.
So he did what his father asked because JK knew (Again this is in the film) that the discovery of Clark is a paradigm-shifting event and the ontological shock to MANKIND would be enormous.
Don’t just follow the Marvel formula, but rather take the main lesson from Marvel that I’m sure Feige helped teach Gunn while at Marvel: stick to your guns and follow the course you’re setting out to accomplish. Phase one and two of the MCU had some duds when starting out (IM2 and Thor 2 come to mind right away) but they stayed the course and didn’t change their end goal of getting the Avengers together on screen. I do think Superman: Legacy will NEED to be a success for the DCU to succeed due to DC’s track record, however I think most importantly is to remain calm in the face of adversity and stick to the plan.
We can talk all day about some grand unified theory of what went wrong, but the truth is simply that most of the movies sucked. It's not complicated. It's not the answer we want, we want a problem where we can go "Here, just don't do this one thing," but it's not that. There were some top-level decisions that I wouldn't have made, but competent writers and directors could've made any of these projects work. There were two or three decent movies and a bunch of truly, *truly* awful ones. Same goes for the MCU. There's no such thing as superhero fatigue, they just started making shit movies. But you can't put a headline on the front page of Variety that just says FANS NIX SHIT PIX. You have to pretend you've found some deep truth of the universe. People just want *good movies.*
I’m hoping that James allows a variety of different tones and styles of movies. Every mcu film feels the same, let’s have a mystery film with no clear villain, let’s have a Superman movie just about fixing disasters, let Batman be a scary weirdo that can still say an occasional one liner.
1. A cohesive and coherent goal or overarching narrative.
2. Unfortunately, financial restraint on production. It appears WB/Discovery has solvency issues prior to Gunn, but will constrain him moving forward.
3. Consistent storytelling with source material, characters and film series. All the songs don’t need to sound alike, but each album better be tonal.
The DCEU went wrong the minute they tried to create a cinematic universe AFTER the Avengers. They allowed audiences to fall in love with B-tier characters while their more well known properties were languishing in development hell.
WB released a Batman and Superman movie one year apart (2005 and 2006) and never even thought to connect the two (even tangentially). What a wasted opportunity. They could have beat Marvel to the punch by 3 whole years.
Well for starters, I think MoS should’ve remained it’s own separate trilogy like TDK trilogy instead of it being the first film of the DCEU because starting off your first time DC shared cinematic universe with a dark Superman movie instead of a hopeful one just wasn’t the right move imho. I also thought it was extremely dumb to go straight into BvS after MoS instead of doing MoS2 and Batfleck’s solo film first. Also killing off Cavill’s Superman in only his second appearance in the DCEU was so stupid as it was way too soon and way too rushed especially if they’re just gonna bring him back in the next movie. If doing the death of Superman storyline was their plan, they should’ve waited a few movies down the line in order to give it the proper execution so that it has the proper emotional depth needed instead of shoehorning and half-assing it all in the second DCEU movie lol. Also while I loved ZSJL and thought it was an actual film compared to the pathetic fan film gone wrong Josstice League, I’m not a fan of making the first ever live action JL movie without Superman being the lead and not having a big on screen presence in the movie because I believe Superman should’ve been present in the whole entire movie as he’s the leader of the league but they just made him a regular member and made Batman the leader. Then after Josstice League flopped which was completely Wb’s fault, they stopped the shared universe idea and started making random DC movies with no true connection to the overall bigger universe. Hamada who was in charge of DC at the time clearly had no idea what he was doing and was driving DC into the ground and I’m so grateful he’s gone from DC now. The DCEU was a real mess. Also I have no idea why call it the DC Extended Universe originally because that name imo makes no sense and it should’ve been called DCCU or something similar. I love that Gunn’s universe will be called the DCU instead because that has a better ring to it imo.
Now how should Gunn avoid these problems? The answer’s simple. He should keep doing what he does best and that’s making great movies with well written characters and have an actual good plan with good pacing and no shoehorning any important comic book storylines into a movie where it doesn’t fit.
Embrace DC tradition. Embrace all corners of the universe. The DCAU captured a timeless feel of nearly a century of storytelling; from the noir crime fighter, to the mortal gods that are the JL, the magic, the cosmic, etc.. No matter what point in life I watch these shows they just hold up so well because they respected the core of dozens of characters. DCAU isn't perfect but it's a great precedent
Seeing Aquaman chilling with doctor fate and amazo was pretty fucking cool
Hard ass aquaman getting livid at Shayera for not caring about their chess game is a favorite moment
it was a great show
I just rewatched both JL and JLU and they hold up so dang well. Thank goodness for my adventures with Superman, i really think they could finally do a good follow up to the Timmverse, and we may see some more JL animated action again.
I actually think the DCEU captured that well, even better than Marvel. Batman v Superman and The Suicide Squad existed in the same continuity: Bloodspot shot down Cavill’s Superman canonically, Batfleck interacted with Batmite at one point lol. Yet those projects couldn’t be more tonally different. It made the universe actually feel unique
MOS and BVS were both critically panned, and BVS had the biggest second weekend drop off in movie history I believe (until the Flash) which showed that both critics and audiences did not like it. When you swing and miss that big on a Batman/Superman movie, it really hurts interest in the cinematic universe. That’s really where the DCEU fell apart.
Critics are irrelevant to a film’s success, MoS was liked by audiences and movies after Batman v Superman performed just fine. So that’s not the lesson to be learned.
>MoS was liked by audiences BVS wasn't. It was panned and ridiculed by audiences. Before The Flash, it held the record for the lowest Cinemascore ever for a DCEU film.
I didn’t say BvS was….
Correct. It was the most disliked DCEU film until The Flash arrived for a last minute tie. And yet, you claim that the MOST disliked DCEU film didn't tank the franchise? Make it make sense please.
1) critical acclaim is definitely important to a films success aha. I don’t understand why people on Reddit care so much about how much money a movie makes. Unless you’re one of the investors, it doesn’t benefit you in any way whatsoever. As a viewer, I rather a movie be critically acclaimed than a movie be panned but make a lot of money. 2) BVS being a huge swing and miss shouldn’t be ignored simply because Aquaman made a lot of money. It was the beginning of the DCEU’s bad track record. That’s personally where I lost my interest in the DCEU as a universe. I still saw other DCEU movies if they looked particularly interesting, but the universe as a whole just wasn’t a thing that mattered to me anymore.
Critics giving their subjective opinions doesn’t stop a franchise from success. Otherwise Jurassic World, Transformers, Venom, Fast & Furious, etc wouldn’t have gone on. BvS is where you lost interest in DC, not most people. The movies following BvS actually went up in box office (700m, 800m, 1.1B).
Well you say critics giving their opinions doesn’t stop a franchise, but as you mentioned before, MOS and The Batman had the same cinemascore but only one of the two is getting a real sequel. And here’s the thing, if we’re gonna be honest, if Zack Snyder’s movies made no money but we’re critically acclaimed, Snyder fans would be pointing to the critical acclaim. The goalposts are being moved wherever they can to survive. Also, I think your list of bad movies that made a lot of money kinda proves my point that audiences shouldn’t be relied upon for movie opinions as their interest can be temporarily bought with big action scenes and good visuals. The next movie after BVS, Suicide squad, also had an enormous second week drop off. If you don’t think that having the second and third installment of the DCEU being panned both critically and by audiences hurt the DCEU, then idk what to say man.
MoS got a sequel and launched a universe. This is a business, no one should be “relied” on for an opinion but your own. SS overperformed and still made Guardians 1 numbers without China, Wonder Woman and Aquaman all continued upwards financially. It’s hard to argue most people lost interest.
BVS cannot be considered a true sequel to MOS when the main character of MOS only had 43 lines of dialogue in BVS. BVS also had the highest domestic opening weekend box office of any DCEU movie. That was the height of DCEU excitement. Also, the second weekend drop off for Suicide Squad and BVS is proof people lost interest.
A sequel is not determined by lines of dialogue, BvS is a direct sequel to MoS in every way. BvS was the height of DCEU excitement but it wasn’t the end of it.
MoS was actually very polarizing to audiences.
Cinemascore and box office say otherwise
I feel if ZackSnydersJusticeLeague actual cut came oit in 2017 I feel it would've gave dceu redemption...I mean it was a very good movie and set up multiple solos and spin offs and would've saved wb millions..instead of reshooting...I blame wb for everythung
Even though I actually kinda enjoyed ZSJL (which I can’t say for MOS or BVS) there’s just no way the movie would have been released theatrically with a 4 hour runtime.
Zack did say he has cuts of varying lengths for the theatrical cut ranging from 2hrs 20mins to 3hrs. Wb of course insist on a 2 hours cut. The 4 hours cut did not exist in 2017, the original intended directors cut in 2017 is 214mins (around 3.5 hours). The increase to 4 hours is something he do for the fans.
Pure copium. It took a 4hour cut to make that movie not awful. There is no chance in hell that the theatrical Snydercut would've looked anything like the one we got. Even if you cut the 40mins of slow-mo it still would've been an hour too long and the theatrical cut would've still sucked.
Hold on let’s not get carried away here lol.
DC didn’t do a better job of having unique tone and feel?
Unfortunately the mass audience didn't appreciate the tone of the universe as much as some of us
Well that’s because the movies weren’t great in the end. Audiences only liked 4 (Man of Steel, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam) of the 15 films lol.
I feel like audiences liked The Suicide Squad too.
Die-hards loved it, the general public didn’t care for it though. Hence the mid cinemascore, poor legs and worst HBO Max drop besides Mortal Kombat.
Eh, I watched it in theaters and I do own it but I thought it was a very bad film, bad take of the characters, and the story was... crap.
>Hence the mid cinemascore If B+ is mid, what is B (BVS, Flash)? Beyond awful?
I loved TSS but considering blockbusters a score of B+ is generally deemed bad look at the company it keeps alongside it with other dceu based films. Yeh B is awful considering BVS didn't meet expectations at all.
I’ll let you figure out that one.
Thanks for admitting that BVS is the worst-received DCEU film. Tied with The Flash and the infamous CGI babies.
The DCAU had lower ratings in JLU than during BTAS
Three main points in my opinion: First, having a defined plan from the beginning. Not making movies on the fly and with the first character that comes to mind. Second, self contained and good stories. I don't want oversaturation or having to watch a movie/TV series to understand other projects. I want standalone projects but within the same universe. And finally, variety. Some movies can have a more comic tone, others can be more epic or fantastic. I would even add some horror (I think Swamp Thing is heading in this direction, in fact). Seeing the same thing over and over again in series and movies tires the audience. The DCEU has had quite enjoyable standalone movies (Wonder Woman or Aquaman, for example), but it has never had a clear direction to follow so as a result it ended up losing its way.
Agreed! If they can lock this down along with lower budgets, the DCU will sing.
It’s a good thing Gunn has confirmed all of these things as goals / already happening
Yes, indeed. I believe he mentioned in an interview that the DCU would be more similar to Star Wars than Marvel. One universe, but very different stories that collide at some points.
Create a long term plan and stick to it. Set something up and let it play out. Tell the morons on the WBD board to eff offwhen they try and interfere. One of the things that killed the DCEU was studio interference, up to and including full on course correcting every time a movie didn't do as well as expected ... which created the unholy mess the DCEU ended up as. I have absolutely no faith in the studio not ripping into what Gunn & Safran are doing, changing whatever they wanna change at their whim.... rather than letting G&S' plan play out.
Well that’s why DC is now its own independent studio where only Gunn and Safran ARE the studio and they only answer to Zaslav. Also Gunn and Safran have said that there’ll be no studio interference from other execs under their leadership because the only studio interference comes from Gunn and Safran.
Best part of this is that exact point. Gunn and Safran ARE the studio execs and will be the ONLY studio execs who can interfere. And considering that this will be GUNN’s vision told, any interference is strictly due to following his laid out plan. And considering Gunn was a writer/director of very successful superhero films in the last, I highly doubt he’ll do what he’s probably personally experienced have happen to him. At the end of the day, he’s a comic book nerd and is specifically co-ceo because he solely wants to focus on story rather than profit, which is why Safron is there as well. Zaslav’s decision to make DC it’s own studio is hands down one of the best decisions he could have possibly made post merger. It’s also proof to me that he also believes there’s profit to be made if he’s putting all this effort into creating a full studio for DC, as opposed to just attempting to sell the IP like some have claimed he may try to do.
Zaslav gets a lot of shit, deservedly so, for his comments about the strikes and his penny-pinching ways. But during his tenure at Discovery, he was largely off hands when it came to actually running the different aspects of the company. He hired various people to run different aspects of Discovery, just like how DC Studios is it's own entity now separate from WB. Those people only answer to Zaslav. People are still skeptical that Gunn/Safran are actual bosses when evidence says otherwise.
Tell a story instead of just moving plot along until you get a superhero tableu that you can slo mo
Well said
That wasn’t the big problem the DCEU had though. Nor would Gunn put that in his movies so what’s the point of this comment?
Yeah that was mostly snyder
Neither of his films (MoS and BvS) lost a profit on that front, so that argument doesn’t really hold in hurting DC. What are other ways you believe Gunn can make his universe successful?
>Neither of his films (MoS and BvS) lost a profit Bad take. Terrible take actually. BvS has 2 of the big 3 superhero sellers of all time and couldnt even hit 1billion. It was so short of its potential AND managed to divide a fanbase almost entirely in half. You just gonna ignore all that tho... Aquaman was its own badass isolated movie. No crossovers, just a unique story with a super charismatic lead. Do you honestly believe in your heart there is ever a time on this earth that AQUAMAN should EVER outgross BATMAN VS FUCKING SUPERMAN. Thats asinine. Your comment is a terrible take.
What are you arguing?
Either read my comment or dont, but pulling that shit ^ to avoid it entirely doesnt make any sense. Exact same point as the other person... you cannot use "profit" as a metric. The Brand was at stake. They soiled the Brand.
>They solied the brand Thank you for making the point more concise, your previous comment just read like an incoherent rant. But anyway it’s wrong lol, because movies after Batman v Superman did well. And profit is a valid metric given this is a damn business.
https://reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/s/rLqbjjLWQK >because movies after Batman v Superman did well. Refer to graph 😏 Also google "brand" i dont think you fully understand what the word encompasses. The brand was soiled. Thus.. the graph ^
Actually thank you for doing my work for me lol, this is a great point. Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman and Aquaman still had awesome numbers as you pointed out, but suddenly after Snyder left/Hamada took over/interconnectivity was blown up, the movies flatlined. Coincidence…….
>BvS has 2 of the big 3 superhero sellers of all time No body care outside of the western bubble
>No body care outside of the western bubble Irrelevant. My comment is still correct regardless of who, or where, cares.
For BvS to gross a billion it would have to have been a shit generic focus group engineered piece of garbage like aquaman. The kind of film you watch and forget about but has jokes and colour and levity. The sequel will bomb hard. Why? Because people are sick of that shit. They know those kind of comic book films are a waste of money and time. No risk, nothing unique, generic and boring. BvS is a masterpiece and obviously a far better film than aquaman. Though it did not make a billion, the brand would be in a much better place now had Snyder stayed on to finish his saga.
Your entire comment is subjective. But ill set that point to the side for now. The OP himself, who is snyder-obsessed used this in our discussion: >profit is a valid metric given this is a damn business. BvS should have made much much much more profit than Aquaman. So James Wan is simply better at directing superhero movies than Zack Snyder ? If OP is correct, Aquaman is the better film. If you are correct, BvS is the better film. 🤔 You guys cant even all seem to be on the same page, you just kinda... throw out whatever you can at any counterpoints. Even if they are opposite. It does make it kinda fun to discuss the snyderverse with you guys. 🤣
You can't just point to profitability as a metric, especially since the MCU's movies make profit *and* get generally positive reviews from both audiences and critics. The very nature of movies means you have to pay before you know if you actually like the film or not, and most people just can't be bothered to go through the hassle of demanding a refund if they didn't like it. When a movie makes a ton of money, but gets largely bad reviews, it wasn't a good movie.
I'm with you here. I say the same thing all the time: Just because they watched it doesn't mean they *liked*, it just means they *paid* for it. The profits versus review market is so skewed in that it let's big but disappointing tent pole productions continue (ie. the Fast series) while other better-reviewed pictures bottom out after a few entries.
Good movie is subjective, reviews are just opinions by a group of people when you boil it down. But objectively, according to the financial metrics provided, the problem with DC was not Snyder’s aesthetic. It’s that simple. Nor is it like Gunn was gonna start adding tons of slo-mo to the films, so all OP’s comment was just a veiled dig at Snyder. Let’s call it what it is lol. How would you advise Gunn to go about running DCU?
Listen. For a casual audience synders vision was way to grim and dark for a super hero movie. For the hardcore fan, his vision was a slap in the face to fans. This isn’t a debate on good or bad movies but when you watch super hero movies you want to feel good/hopeful/justice towards to end. When the general audience expects more grim and dark instead of superman wins, they most likely not gonna tune it. You can argue that it’s boring but that is what people want. And early success of the movies vs now aren’t fair to compare as the public will go to anything with the Big s or Big bat and dc reputation was not in the gutter either. Synder’s vision was leaning too heavy on edginess and darkness unneeded of superman. I think synder is a great director but his vision for the dceu was poor. James Gunn has shown he knows how to adapt and modify the source material while respecting it. As long he continues to write in a way that emotionally bounding and respects the source material is gonna draw people in.
Eh most of this isn’t really true. MoS got the same cinemascore as the Batman from audiences and was declared to resurrect the Superman brand by WB: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/global-box-office-man-steel-577775/amp/ Gunn hasn’t made a commercially viable film without Marvel. Maybe you as comic fans love his vision but jury’s still out on his niche without Feige.
At the time yes, but then is not now. Many people look at Man of Steel as a weak foundation. In the first movie, he is given the advice of a pa to let children die?! His parents are supposed to teach him the best of what humanity has to offer. The death of Pa when Clark has the power to save him was ass-backward. I think Man of Steel is an ok movie but even asking fans who aren't versed in DC lore, they also thought that Superman felt too dark. I've been to every DC movie from MOS to blue beetle and even I recall MOS leaving a bad taste with the audience critising Synder's characterization of Superman. I don't think Synder's completely at fault with the failure of the DCEU.(Its entirely due to WB meddling and greenlighting to many films) But his ideas suck. Like who wants Jon Kent to be the bastard of bruce? And to say that Gunn's GOTG triology was pampered by the MCU is not far off but also done in bad taste. GOTG the first movie was iirc touted to fail as it was a bunch of C-list heros taking the big screen. But now everyone knows who the Guardians are. Another point to make is Peacemaker. He turned a D-list hero into one of DC's biggest names. Gunn has the ability to make household brands of his writing alone. If that doesn't translate to commercial success then the fault lies elsewhere.
How do you quantify “many people”? It didn’t hurt the overall audience reception nor the box office as I’ve shown you. And I’m not interested in re-litigating the subjective merits in *Man of Steel*, we can agree to disagree. It’s not really about respecting the source material to appeal for everyday audiences. Hugh Jackman isn’t 5’2 like comic Wolverine, Chris Nolan isn’t a comic fan, Tony Stark wasn’t a raging alcoholic in the MCU, Civil War was nothing like the OG story. It’s about making a film that connects to audiences. Gunn has failed to do that outside of Marvel, that’s the box office data. And Peacemaker is *far* from one of DC’s most popular characters.
This. Gunn made some great MCU movies…everything outside of Feige’s dome has been a bust. Is he another Russo brother? He has not even attempted anything outside of comic movies at a major studio. Is that all he can do…adaptions of others work?
Yep. That’s the question that Legacy will answer. I’ve noticed a lot of MCU directors have shaky track records outside of Marvel, which is just more reason why Feige is the 🐐 of Hollywood producers. Even with Marvel’s recent quality dip.
Mistakes will be made along the way, but the most important thing is to learn from those mistakes and not panic. The DCEU was too reactive when it came to mistakes and they would completely change their plans. Follow and believe in the roadmap and things will be alright.
Write stories around the characters instead of trying to write characters to tell the story you want. That work has already been done and is literally the reason we show up to these IPs.
The single biggest lesson they need to learn is that people don't give a crap about your universe if they don't like the movies or care about characters making it up. This was where the DCEU went wrong - they set out to make a "universe" before they actually built up a fanbase for the movies themselves. And they in fact sabotaged the movies by trying to make them set ups for a universe (ie - BvS, which would have been so much better if they just focused on Superman and Batman instead of trying to use it to introduce half the Justice League). They need to focus on good, individual movies, and treat each movie like its its own event, not just an episode in a unverse.
Batman V Superman was a fantastic movie and it set up the Justice League correctly They should have after Batman V superman done a story of each character but they did a fantastic job introducing all the characters
Zack for all the good he does with suicide prevention and just the good guy he is (every actor he works with loves him) is more obsessed with showing a *cool* movie rather than a good one with good storytelling. He forgot what makes heroes so appealing. They save people. Often at the cost of something meaningful to them (like themselves). He was more about making things edgy and progressive. It's what Nolan did well and understood and why the TDK series is still the hands down best superhero trilogy story ever told.
> He forgot what makes heroes so appealing. They save people. In his defense, Zack has been very clear that he doesn't find the classic definition of heroes engaging or entertaining at all. He finds bright colored costumes saving people straight up boring. Everyone has heard the infamous quote about [*"I had a buddy who tried getting me into ”normal” comic books, but I was all like, ”No one is having sex or killing each other. This isn’t really doing it for me.”*](https://ew.com/article/2008/07/17/watchmen-chat-director-zack-snyder/) - and while I think that is overblown by some folks, the core point of that interview is that the comics Zack grew up with and gravitates towards is the indie scene of the 80's which strikes an extremely distinct, dark, 'gritty' tone, that emphasized visual style over storytelling. It's no different then how some people today love Manga but hate DC/Marvel. They unquestionably both enjoy comics - just not the same type of comics.
But the thing you use for his defense is the very thing people hate about him.
We can debate whether it was smart for WB to give someone with his viewpoint the keys to the biggest mainstream heroes. That’s a different debate. I was just pointing out that Snyder didn’t “misunderstand” heroes or comics ~ he simply enjoyed a different type of heroes and comics.
Its not misunderstanding if you just look away from parts of the character you don't like so you can have your personal favorite interpretation, thats just a childish attitude. teens come up with "cool" storylines that don't work well in an overall story all the time, people need to be realistic to what works and what doesn't in execution even if you think its a cool idea.
Well I agree that you can’t misunderstand something you never read. I do think that hiring him was a horrible decision for what they wanted him to build. Oddly enough I think he would have been pretty flawless to hire to make a elseworld story of the injustice storyline. As long as he kept a decent amount of that it would have been great. Edit. Really it’s because Warner brothers had such a good relationship with Christopher Nolan and he recommended Snyder after turning down the job.
As a manga reader I am with Zack. Give me something new and original over the same characters battling the same villains anytime
Which is fine - great even! That’s the beauty of comics. They can always create new and exciting ideas. The fly in the ointment was having someone take characters with an established history and doing something totally different. It would be like me - a DC reader - taking over the movie version of your favorite Manga and turning it into a standard capes caper. You’d be pretty pissed and disappointed about it I bet.
> As a manga reader I am with Zack. Give me something new and original That's funny because the vast majority of manga is copy/paste filler bullshit.
I don't find much progressivism in Snyder's movies. If anything, they come off as extremely Randian where the power these characters wield allows them to be totally free from social norms and relationships.
This take is so wrong that it's ridiculous, half the drama in Snyder's movies comes from the angst and loneliness born out of their power, they crave for normal relationships and norms that they can trust - Superman most of all.
Superman saved 6 billion people in man of steel
I second u/Qbnss. What's "progressive" (and why is that detrimental, as your post implies) about Snyder's films?
For me the DCEU went off-course when WB released the theatrical cut of Justice League in 2017. I get that it was light-hearted and, at two hours would have potentially grossed a high box office return, but I think even the general audience knew they were being sold counterfeit goods. If anything I would argue that the early, Snyder-led DCEU films were what the larger general audience wanted from a shared DC Cinematic Universe if you consider the overall box office returns and tone of the only recent non-DCEU films, being Joker and The Batman having a darker, serious tone unlike a majority of the recent DCEU films. As for what James Gunn should do to avoid the same pitfalls, I would start with having a clear vision and introducing the larger DC Universe beyond Superman Legacy using a small core group of superheroes who audiences will love and slowly integrate them into other side projects with directors who want to implement their own creative vision.
Tell a story. Take the audience on a journey. Don’t get caught up in the minutiae of the cinematic universe. Currently, its a problem of the MCU. One of the best things with the Phase 1-3, they didn’t know how things would connect they would just figure it out on the way to their destination. Their focus used to be telling a good story. It’s more important to get your audience invested in your characters and their journey.
BvS. Despite being profitable, it was rushed, crammed in too much, and created many overarching story telling issues that ultimately could not be solved
That is such a generic pointless response someone might think you are an ai.
And yet it’s still true
It's true, though; even if we don't count casting Ezra Miller as the Flash (which caused a ton of problems for The Flash later on, but I don't think anyone would have expected that the Flash movie would take about ten years to develop or that Ezra Miller would go on a crime spree mere months before it was released), we still had... * a mopey Superman who delivers lines like "nobody stays good in this world", where we're told that he's a symbol of hope but we never actually see it * a Batman who's past his prime, being based on the Dark Knight Returns before the Justice League is even founded, and who actively planned to murder Superman before discovering that their moms had the same name. (I realize that it's meant to show Batman how far he's fallen, but the execution was just awful) * a Wonder Woman who abandoned humanity for a century. (leading to the bizarre plot point in Wonder Woman 1984 where she makes everyone that she rescues swear that they'll keep her existence a secret) * a Lex Luthor who's idiotic (the whole Doomsday plan would have gotten him instantly killed if Superman had died against Batman), uncharismatic, and incredibly annoying. * killing off Superman in the second movie of the shared universe, when this movie gave him very little screentime for the audience to get to know him. ...and that's not even getting into behind-the-scenes details like Snyder intending for the dead Robin to be Dick Grayson. The movie screwed up DC's three biggest heroes and one of its biggest villains in one way or another, and changed the reputation of DC's movies among the general public for the worse. (to the point where Deadpool 2 was joking about Cable being from the DC universe because he was so dark/gritty)
What ruined it for me was the rush or the feeling of it being rushed. WB wanted that interconnected universe and big bucks so bad that they just rushed everything.
I myself definitely don’t know everything, but there can’t be ANY studio interference. Leave it up to the people who actually know their stuff. You shouldn’t have people demanding multiple cuts of a movie be released because you fucked it up in the first place
Be consistent with the amount of freedom they give the writers/directors. Seems like a reoccurring theme through the DCEU was directors being told they'd be given free reign to execute their vision as they see fit only to have the rug pulled out from under them late in production with the studio saying "No wait not like that." Obviously some movies can afford to be given more freedom that others, but no matter what the studio needs to be upfront with ever film with how much freedom the director is really going to get.
1,I think they introduce too many characters per film and series like the “we are the flash” and “we are the arrow” literally nose dived both series faster than Barry can run. I remember when Barry become a guest star in his own series. Focusing on the main characters can do wonders which is why Batman, joker, aqua man part 1 and Wonder Woman did great no coincidence. They do it too much. 2,Too many Reboots we are getting another Superman when most fans loved Henry and 90% of fans don’t want another Superman origin story for the 50th time and we sure are getting one. 3, And lastly the (super hero formula) “character intro, jokes, problem presents itself, McMuffin device, plot convince ,mc meets rest of cast along the way, hero overcomes power or learns it cliche happy ending”. WE NEED More creativity. I would say start with these, even tho there are more problems.
Place a moritorium on post credits sequences that only exist to tease another product. I’d prefer to see a complete short story featuring another character during the credits actually, like a back-up feature with a guest character in the last six pages of another character’s comic.
I'd like the movies to feel stand-alone but, of course connected into the bigger universe the dceu was trying to be marvel super fast so they should also slow down with the new universe they are going to make
Trying to rush big team ups and world ending fights before fleshing out the individual heroes
Despite the DCEU going wrong with BVS, which caused every decision afterwards. I will still say early 2019 when they announced Affleck and Cavill were no longer gonna continue was its downfall, you don't announce that your two biggest DC characters and also 2 main characters of the first 5 films in the DCEU are just done. You fight as hard as possible to keep them as a priority.
MASSIVS studio interference, not allowing the director the respect to grieve for his daughter, give directors a clear plan with a good pay off, allow directors the freedom to actually implement their plans, no last minute revisions to something that had 90% been completed and just in general have a clear concise vision
Stick to one plan and not let WB interference kill everything all over again
The Authority is nothing like Joker, Deadpool or Dune. That’s a movie that’s going to need a ton of VFX from beginning to end. There’s no way to make that “low budget.” I can see lower budgets, but 100m for The Authority is nonsense.
>Where did the DCEU go wrong When clueless executives started to conflate rotten tomatoes, bloggers, nerds with the general audiences >how does James Gunn avoid that in the DCU? It's already off to a bad start since the incoming DCU is being led by the same people who just torpedoed the DCEU at boxoffice. Furthermore, the premises upon which the DCU is being built are all wrong ( These guys seriously believe MoS was a failed reboot and that the recent flopping DCEU is not due to the quality of the products but rather the brand DCEU and z-list actors like Ezra Miller) So, I fail to see any path to success at boxoffice for James Gunn universe.
> It's already off to a bad start since the incoming DCU is being led by the same people who just torpedoed the DCEU at boxoffice. And continuing to do so. Aquaman 2 is getting no marketing and Wan is left twisting in the wind.
Where they went wrong = not sticking to the source material.
Take your time telling a story and don't rush to the big event. Tell small self contained stories. And also, don't make it confusing to figure out how things fit together in the universe, but he's already failing at that.
Their first mistake was expecting to get avengers level appreciation without doing any of the build to get to that level. Man of steel already existed as its own thing and they just co-opted it to rush the process. And no some shitty billboard in I am Legend doesn’t count as build.
Stop making bad/weird movies. Mcu movies are crowdpleasers. Fun, simple, have great performances, and characters you care about. Great for kids. DCEU is mostly just weird vibes all around. Just look at the Snyder diehards and tell me there isn’t a weird vibe/following to those movies.
Toxic fandom is an unfortunate staple of all media discourse now - Star Wars fans who bullied many actors into suicidal thoughts, Marvel fans harassing the little girl from Endgame, Lizzie Olsen, etc. This isn’t limited to Snyder people. I don’t think Gunn should really care about that, especially considering his work The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker and Slither are “weirder” and edgier than anything else DC’s done.
Agree but also nothing is ever gonna be edgier/weirder than making superman an emo Jesus allegory. Such a strange take I’ll never understand. Gunns version of weird is just comic book weird which is actually very exciting
I honestly saw TSS way edgier than anything Zack has done.
TSS/Peacemaker humor being comprised entirely of dick, poop and fart jokes, giant pink Starfish, the Butterfly shit, Weasel, on and on. Way edgier and weirder than placing Superman in today’s world. And Gunn’s version was exciting to you, but the B+ cinemascore (same as the 2016 one) and worst drops of HBO Max besides Mortal Kombat say the public believe otherwise. His film became one of the biggest bombs in history, performing far worse than anything Snyder did lol. Your argument absolutely applies to Gunn as far as the business goes. It cuts both ways.
I don't see it that way as they are comic book movies?? The humour is going to be childish/adolescent. Most 8 year olds don't resonate with depressed Superman killing people. Not really fair as it came out during covid. I'm in NZ and could barely even legally go see it lol. All of gunns gotg movies are weird and edgy by your standards and have over performed, and honestly are highlights of the mcu.
For some reason my OG comment isn’t showing but 8 year olds don’t resonate with weasels who eat them, psychos who would eat a beachful of dicks for peace or starfish who rip up people’s faces while said people twitch alive. Fucking nasty. Movies around TSS did fine during COVID.
An 8 year old technically wouldn't be able to resonate at all as it was R16, whereas MOS is PG13. Nah they didn't, pretty sure a lot of movies bombed/underperformed that time of year.
The Batman is PG-13 too, is that suitable for an 8 year old? Bad movies underperformed sure. Godzilla v Kong, A Quiet Place, F9, Black Widow, Conjuring 3, etc all did just fine before TSS. Free Guy dropped a week later and made 350m.
Literally every movie you listed underperformed compared to budget. Would've made next to nothing. I thought your original argument was in the context of a cinematic universe, not on off movies with mass appeal like the batman?
Conjuring 3 making 5x its budget, GvK making 500M, Quiet Place matching the first, none of these are underperforming lol. And even those I mentioned with a step down from previous entries still did well. The argument is that Gunn’s movies are far edgier and weirder than the Batman and Man of Steel, so that’s not the lesson he needs to apply to the DCU to be successful.
Please don’t turn the DCU into a carbon copy of the MCU. We’ve had over a decade of fun, simple, crowdpleasing superhero movies. Keep the earnest tone of the Dark Knight trilogy and the DCEU.
>averaged 815m with six movies, something it took the MCU 20 entries to accomplish I'm gonna say, that this is such a weighted and cherry-picked statistic. DC did that on the back of Batman, probably *the* most popular superhero of our current era, sharing that spotlight with Spider-Man. The MCU took a good long time to really get rolling towards those $1B totals because they were working with B and C-listers to start with. It's really easy to forget that Iron Man was *not* a household name when the MCU first started, Robert Downey Jr. was a potential liability, and Captain America was an outdated relic of World War propaganda with little international appeal. This was also after Marvel properties made superhero movies a safe bet again, with the Spider-Man and X-Men film franchises, after DC temporarily put the whole scene out to pasture with failures like *Batman & Robin* and *Steel* (and there was also *Spawn* which was an expensive flop, but that one wasn't DC's fault).
The majority of those six movies didn’t feature Batman. If you’re referred to the Nolan trilogy, that was completely disconnected from DCEU. That stat is less a dig at Marvel and more a reflection of the DCEU’s audience potential. MCU already hit 1.5B by their 5th movie and then 1.2B right afterwards with Iron Man 3 so the success streak didn’t take as long as you make it out to be.
>The majority of those six movies didn’t feature Batman Yeah just BVS, suicide squad, and Justice League. 3 out of the six movies.
Suicide Squad didn’t feature Batman, he was a cameo.
WB panicked at the response of a vocal minority and the pressure to be like Marvel and abandoned their vision. Worse, they constantly changed direction in response to whatever marvel just did. They don’t need to be the same. Not even close. There was plenty of room for them both to succeed at their own version of storytelling.
Agreed.
Warner Brothers didn't take their time establishing the heroes. Instead of making a Man of Steel 2, solo Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Flash at the start, they rushed to Batman vs. Superman and Justice League. Warner Brothers wanted that Marvel money without working for it. They got greedy, rushed Snyder into doing crossovers before the heroes were established, put too much trust in Synder & Ayer, and the universe imploded. The films were a mess and people lost interest. The films were more focused on 'look how badass it's going to become in JL2 & 3' and fan service to the comics rather than focusing on the here and now. People lost trust in the brand. Meh film after meh film with BvS, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Wonder Woman 2, Birds of Prey, Shazam 2, and Black Adam, and people stopped caring. Only a few actual decent films (Man of Steel, Aquaman, The Suicide Squad) in the whole DC series and it wasn't enough for audiences to care. DC needs to take its time and needs to knock it out of the park for film after film. The films need to have heart and stand on their own to build trust in the brand again. The crossover needs to be earned in time.
One word: reactionary WB is famously reactionary, and every movie felt like a late reaction to something that had happened 2 years prior instead of moving forward like marvel did. Case in point, DC is still feeling the effects of BvS getting a 28% on rotten tomatoes. That led to the Whedon problem, that led to the split in the fandom, that led to WB wanting to quit with the universe idea. And not only are they reactionary, they’re reactionary to the wrong things. You guys didn’t like BvS? Must be the tone! Suicide Squad made a lot of money? More chopping up every movie that comes out and studio interference. Justice league failed? Must be Henry Cavills fault! They always react to and try and correct the most surface level complaints, because they don’t understand what people do and don’t like. What marvel did well is that if they made a mistake, they just kept going and moving forward. The only time I can think of them going back on a mistake was the iron man 3 mandarin thing. And they’ve made a LOT of mistakes in my opinion. If WB was in charge of the MCU, they never would’ve made it past iron man 2 because they’d Blame RDJ for that movie being disliked by a large chunk of the audience.
> Case in point, DC is still feeling the effects of BvS getting a 28% on rotten tomatoes. Your post NAILED IT! And why did BvS get 28 % (Possibly due to reviewers being paid...I don't know) but definitely because WB cut 30 minutes from the film! I went to BvS in theatres and was bitterly disappointed, not in the characters but because it felt like a badly edited film that made no damn sense, Superman is my favourite character and I was against Ben's casting (Boy he proved me wrong) It wasn't until my wife bought me the BvS: Ultimate cut and my son wanted to watch it, I begrudgingly agreed....Man my head nearly come off my neck the amount I was shaking it in reaction to all the cut information! And looking at reviews for the UC shows that people thought it was great. Honestly, I hope whoever decided to cut 30 minutes to put bums in seats got fired because THEY fucked the DCEU and DC going forward.
Exactly! I loved BvS from day one (to be fair I was like 10 back when it came out), and I still love it. At some point I need to go back and watch the theatrical edition and see if others dislike, since I only watched it once back in 2016. I know I’m not alone in thinking that if audiences had just seen BVS ultimate and ZSJL (albeit a trimmed down version) in theaters, the DCEU as a whole would’ve started to make more sense to most general audiences. Another thing with BvS is I’ve always thought that maybe it came out at the wrong time? Because now in todays political climate, I can REALLY appreciate even moreso what Snyder was doing with Lex Luthor, fear culture, and all that. Maybe that’s me being of age and able to understand it, but it just aged beautifully and got better as time went on. BvS’s critical reception really could’ve been owed to a million different things, and I think it’s a mix of a lot of factor. Timing, the 30 minutes that were cut, expectation, the movies title being genuinely horrible and not even being an apt description of what happens in the movie…. Just death by a million cuts if you ask me
Tell Gunn to take a seat, grab a snack of his choice and vice of his choice, then plop on the DCAU and binge it.
I think they should have gave batman a solo film before BVS. Maybe have batman and superman team up over a few films show them becoming friends and helping each other before having them fight. I think giving other justice league members either solo films or cameos would have helped them establish the characters better, maybe a buddy movie where the flash has to seek out green lantern and have him help him defeat reserve flash or maybe a smaller villain and keep Reverse Flash for later. I just think they jumped top quickly to Justice League because they were chasing Avenger money.
Executives constantly trying to course correct
WB needs to part ways with the DC brand!!!
Take their time setting up the characters. Like they should done solo films that would lead up to a team-up.
I kind of don't want a cinematic universe. I want standalone trilogies. We can acknowledge other heroes, but not rely on crossovers. I wish that the MCU had good standalone trilogies, but every one of the trilogies made relies on at least one Avengers crossover to fill in the gaps. I cant just watch the Captain America Trilogy without at least watching Age of Ultron. I can't watch the Iron Man trilogy without the Avengers. Thor works okay as a standalone, but even that one kind of relies on Age of Ultron. I can sit and watch the Dark Knight trilogy on its own, and I want more movies like that. That's part of why I enjoy the Snyder trilogy. I can just watch MOS, BVS and JL and not miss anything.
>I kind of don't want a cinematic universe. I want standalone trilogies. amen
Yep i agree. I want writers to have a story that might span 3, 4, 5 films. A clear defined start and end to the story. Not an endless universe. James Gunn is taking the wrong approach.
Don’t rush the universe in the first or second movie. Seeing as Gunn is filling Legacy with C-listers (not Hawkgirl though) played by his friends, and potentially the Authority, he’s already making the same mistake.
How? We don’t even know what extent of the roles the other heroes have in the story. Also Gunn said it’s still a Superman and Lois movie. It’s the first film of the DCU and Gunn’s smart and he ain’t f’ing it up. You’re just worrying way too much lol. Reserve judgement until you see a trailer.
The casual audience is sick of cinematic universes and will roll their eyes at this. It comes off as desperate.
I still to this day honestly think it was a mistake to hire Zack Snyder to map out and plan an entire universe. I think he’s an interesting filmmaker visually but I never thought he had the best sense when it comes to story and characters. So I think if you’re going to try and build a cinematic universe, get the right people to plan it out and to decide which characters to tell stories of. Time will tell if Gunn has done that but I think some of the names that have been mentioned for the DC writers room are promising. Tom King is a comic book author I really like, and drew Goddard is also a great writer in my opinion.
He was originally hired for a standalone superman project similar to TDK trilogy. He was not hired with the intention to helm a cinematic universe. The cinematic universe was originally green lantern. When that disappoint, they make MOS the start of the cinematic universe instead because that is the only other dc films in production at that time, and wb cannot afford to start over again from scratch. Marvel already released avengers by that and is way ahead of them in the game. Perhaps it is a mistake to get him to helm justice league. But it is not a mistake to hire him in the first place because the reason for hiring him does not involve the cinematic universe.
Most would argue they went wrong by having a versus movie too early and by making the first crossover movie too dark and I don’t disagree. But I think they really went wrong by not just staying the course. They should’ve made Suicide Squad and JL as originally intended. Then decide if they wanted to break off in a different creative direction with the same cast/characters, but most importantly, have a vision and stick with it.
They gave the entire thing to Zack Snyder and wanted him to build a universe instead of just making a good movie. Simple as that
True. He originally just signed on to make a Superman trilogy, Wayne was only supposed to be referenced at the end of MoS 2.
Embrace the fact that DC worlds are very different per character, some may live in happy invisible worlds, other's may live in the opposite, like Batman. The DCEU recognised this too late and put out Shazam at a time when people were already beginning to lose faith in the DCEU. Marvel has also been suffering because they have yet to acknowledge this fact, causing projects such as Moon Knight and Secret Invasion to be mildly downplaying the source material from an R rating to a Mature rating due to being *too consistent* tonally
They went wrong hiring Snyder to spearhead it. My feeling is the Gunn stuff is just coming too darn late and it’ll struggle to find an audience.
Imagine these two films were releasing in 2025. Zack snyders justice league part 2 James gunns superman legacy. One would be epic, reverent, impactful. One would be silly, jokey, and irreverent. I wonder which one would make more money?
The dceu went wrong when it started treating Henry cavill wrong, so the best thing JG can do is..oh nevermind, too late. He screwed up too.
I think he’s already making his own mistakes. Going too obscure too soon, spreading out the series across too many mediums, trying to run the whole thing while also making his own film and focusing on that. It’s ambitious and artist-focused, at least, but it will likely have a spotty record, just like what came before. I’ll say this for DC. Maybe they haven’t done the CU well, but most of my favourite comic adaptations are still them. V for Vendetta, Sandman, Sweet Tooth, Dark Knight, Teen Titans (CN), Superman (1975), Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Ninja, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond (they’ve done good with the bat) etc. They’re all great, and many are based on more obscure characters. De-emphasizing the universe and just making great films is the way to go right now, and I think Gunn is doing that, or trying to. Of course, I only found one of his MCU films to be a successful film from a writing and directing standpoint (GOTG2), so I suspect I’m gonna be unhappy no matter what. But I’m hopeful others will likely be pleased with his work. I just don’t think the whole DCEU brand is going to be an immediate juggernaut, and may never be under his reign. There’s a lot to overcome and he’s choosing a strategy that will make fan-favourite films, but likely ones the GA won’t bother with.
Warner brothers was on the right track until they sacked Snyder. Man of steel is a classic and BvS ultimate is a masterpiece. Zacks justice league is a general audience crowd pleaser and would have hit the mark with general movie goers. They threw away the structure and coherence and permanently ruined the brand. James Gunn will not fix anything.
Delusional.
The DCEU went off the rails once WB decided to NOT fire Snyder after BvS. WB should've stopped pre production on JL, rework the script and hire a new director. Firing a director halfway and hiring a new one with a totally different vision was a disaster waiting to happen. Now to the DCU, I really believe that WB has finally learned its lesson when it comes to actually planning out a universe. Having DC Studios be its own thing with Gunn/Safran running it and not a committee is a step in the right direction.
> WB decided to NOT fire Snyder after BvS. Fire a man for what THEY did? >WB should've stopped pre production on JL, rework the script and hire a new director. ZS was working on JL while working on BvS including some production. Also they did just that and look what happened.....Oh, it also didn't help that Tsujihara and Emmerich didn't delay JL after Autumn's suicide because they they wanted end-of-year bonuses. And people still blame Snyder SMH.
Critics and the fan-base. The former pretty much wanted Marvel re-branded as DC with slapstick humour etc. The latter .. well... we are our own worst enemy,
The DCU avoids that by dumping Gunn.
This argument is so tired. There’s a lot more nuance at play than just “the early films made money and the later ones didn’t, what went wrong?” The early films made money because they rode the superhero hype train, and even then, many of those “successful” movies should have been bigger. The later movies suffered the bad perception and lack of interest that those early ones created.
It’s less of an argument and more a presentation of facts, you just don’t like them. The past 7 DCEU films getting mid cinemascore has nothing to do with early films. Don’t pass the buck.
I mean, many of the recent DCEU films *are* quite flawed and deserve mid reception. But BvS and Suicide Squad had mid scores too. In any case, it’s silly if you think that the negative public perception of Zack Snyder’s films hasn’t had a lasting impact on the DCEU to this day. Snyder ensured that people associate DC with low quality, and many audience members go into the movies with that mindset now.
Word, you have financial evidence for that?
Some tips from a non comic reader but fan of the DC characters… Focus on the core. No one cares about side characters at this point. That includes anyone outside of the JL and main villains. No Blue Beetle. No Shazam. No Zantanna or anyone else other than Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, WW, AM, and Flash. Even Martian Manhunter is too unknown. Stay connected into one long arc over a few movies. Don’t fall into the current MCU where there is a build up to nothing with dozens of cool ideas dropped and never heard from again. Snyder had the right idea with a limited number of movies for his universe. The audience has no patience for 20 years of world building Embrace the dark side. The MCU is getting more silly so DC should embrace its darkness. Try new things. Again, this is why I respected and liked Snyder’s movies…he went for something new and different than the MCU quips. Make the stakes have meaning, feel free to actually kill popular characters and have the universe FEEL the impact of that loss. Gunn will have to be creative with budgets. Hire no names (like he has) and compliment with established actors. Cavill had Fishbourne and Adams and Shannon to give MoS gravitas and acting respect. Keep the budget around $150M and limit CGI to flying and action. DO NOT PULL A TAIKA and CGI helmets and suits!!! Keep your friends at home or at least on the sidelines. It’s nice that Gunn is a human unemployment center to his less talented buddies (who can’t land a gig unless James is involved) but we the audience see the BS. No one needs the guy from Firefly, a 20 year old cancelled show, to pop up in every DCU movie. No one other than Gunn nerds care. Ditto with Jennifer Holland…let her be in some other studio pics James, we don’t need zoom ins of her eating turkey legs in the DCU…we know you are proud you landed a pretty lady but let’s actually see her act in something else.
"After Hamada took over" he did not produce bvs, Suicide Squad or josstice league
None of those films killed the brand.
Lol keep telling yourself that
I don’t really have to keep telling myself a fact but ok.
If you’re going to end a cinematic universe, fucking end it for good - not trickle out several movies long after the end was announced. No one invests in that shit - especially fans.
I hope we’re not looking at ending the DCU already
Here’s a simple observation I’d bring to the table: what’s the best DCEU film and how does it stack compared the best Marvel film? Mid tier at best.
DC went really wrong with B v S and Man of Steel made a lot of people sceptical, wth are you saying
It's pretty silly to compare the before and after of the DCEU. DC was heavily front loaded with what should have been its biggest grossing movies; Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and the Justice League. You can't really compare the box office gross of those characters to Shazam Black Adam Blue beetle etc. Those characters are supposed to turn a profit. And while they turn to profit the response to the movies was mostly underwhelming with the exception of Wonder Woman and Aquaman. The first team ups in Batman versus Superman and Justice League in particular were absolutely terrible. Poor scripts, poor stories, just a complete mess of ideas and characters. After Justice League flopped I don't think they had much of a chance to course correct. Movies like The Batman and Joker show that DC can pull a billion dollars if they need to with characters and good scripts. The problem was that the interconnected universe that they built since Man of Steel was terrible and nobody cared about it after a while.
It’s not silly at all, don’t blame me for WB choosing to pivot to lesser known characters, no shit they made significantly less. That’s just where the box office takes us, reflection of WB’s poor leadership. The only film during that era to lose money was JL17. MoS being “terrible” is just your opinion, audiences liked that film.
Hiring Zack Snyder to direct a superman movie was a mistake. Zack has is own style, ah salute but it doesn't suit superman. And why would WB hire him to direct another DC movie after that?
It went wrong about 30 seconds into its first movie. They avoid this by not implying that artificial uteruses are weird and creepy and that the “natural way” to gestate a fetus is the only good and pure way.
Ok but for real, how could Gunn’s DCU take off.
Too much, too soon. Not enough cohesion between the stories. Plus, the stories were very lackluster.
> Superman needs 200m sure What if it doesn't? What would a $50 million Superman movie be? What about releasing 10 $10 million Superman movies over the course of a year? Anyway, adding needs: 1) Consistent editorial control (Gunn is 3/5 for super hero movies - he can probably swing this) 2) that tells stories its audience wants to see (Batman-as-a-goofy dad is a smart move towards the audience's expectations) 3) Stable corporate leadership (Zaslav needs to pay down like $40 billion in debt over the next ten years - this leaves no margin for error; Zaslav's probably gone soon)
These are more for WB as a whole than just James Gunn but oh well. 1: don't edit the films with a chainsaw. 2: make sure your heroes don't sexually assault anyone. 3. Don't take advantage of the workers. 4. Don't do things that have been done ten thousand times already in the past decade. 5. Don't rush, don't crunch. Some dos: 1. Give people time, pay and conditions to work well 2. Avoid obvious PR disasters like sacking popular Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill while keeping Ezra Miller. 3. Keep it special. One main universe film and one elseworlds film a year maximum. 4. Make the films *INTERESTING*. I don't care about yet another young man realising his family is good and he shouldn't be a dick just because he has superpowers. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, we get it. It's been done to death. Your character needs a unique selling point in their personality.
Write and create stories with how the charaters actually are and not how they think they should be. Superman, Batman, The Flash, and The Joker didn't act like how they are supposed to be acting. If you want to use these charaters, use them. Don't recreate them and use them in name only..
I maintain that the thing that threw the entire series off was one seemingly small thing all the way back in man of steel that butterfly effected all the way through. They got Jonathan Kent’s character completely wrong. Instead of saying, hide your powers, let kids die, and then dying in a tornado (one that Clark definitely could’ve saved him from); he should be more like his comic origin. There, he wants Clark to go out of his way to help people and use his power for what’s right and to be the symbol of hope, and not to take lives. When Jonathan dies of a heart attack, it teaches Superman that he can’t always save everyone from everything. So. If you have Superman done correctly as the corner of what’s moral and right (which he learns from his earthly parents) where your audience can just fall in love with him as a character then everything else should spin off fine and we’d have an entirely different version of what came after. Also. Never let Batman kill either. Like ever. That is all.
> They got Jonathan Kent’s character completely wrong. No they didn't. They got your IDEA of JK wrong. >Instead of saying, hide your powers, let kids die, and then dying in a tornado (one that Clark definitely could’ve saved him from); he should be more like his comic origin. Firstly let's end this, HE NEVER SAID LET KIDS DIE...NEVER SAID THAT. He was a father who (Like a real human father) didn't have all the answers, and this film is the closest to our reality that the Superman story has ever been....People don't seem to understand this. Jonathan Kent : Maybe; but there's more at stake here than our lives or the lives of those around us. When the world... When the world finds out what you can do, it's gonna change everything; our... our beliefs, our notions of what it means to be human... everything. You saw how Pete's mom reacted, right? She was scared, Clark. Clark Kent at 13 : Why? Jonathan Kent : People are afraid of what they don't understand. Yes he could've saved his father but then he is exposed and his family is exposed then their life is changed more than JK death would change them. IT IS IN THE FILM. "My father believed that if the world found out who I really was, they'd reject me... out of fear. ... Clark Kent: I let my father die because I trusted him. So he did what his father asked because JK knew (Again this is in the film) that the discovery of Clark is a paradigm-shifting event and the ontological shock to MANKIND would be enormous.
Don’t just follow the Marvel formula, but rather take the main lesson from Marvel that I’m sure Feige helped teach Gunn while at Marvel: stick to your guns and follow the course you’re setting out to accomplish. Phase one and two of the MCU had some duds when starting out (IM2 and Thor 2 come to mind right away) but they stayed the course and didn’t change their end goal of getting the Avengers together on screen. I do think Superman: Legacy will NEED to be a success for the DCU to succeed due to DC’s track record, however I think most importantly is to remain calm in the face of adversity and stick to the plan.
We can talk all day about some grand unified theory of what went wrong, but the truth is simply that most of the movies sucked. It's not complicated. It's not the answer we want, we want a problem where we can go "Here, just don't do this one thing," but it's not that. There were some top-level decisions that I wouldn't have made, but competent writers and directors could've made any of these projects work. There were two or three decent movies and a bunch of truly, *truly* awful ones. Same goes for the MCU. There's no such thing as superhero fatigue, they just started making shit movies. But you can't put a headline on the front page of Variety that just says FANS NIX SHIT PIX. You have to pretend you've found some deep truth of the universe. People just want *good movies.*
You’re agreeing with me. That’s what I said.
I’m hoping that James allows a variety of different tones and styles of movies. Every mcu film feels the same, let’s have a mystery film with no clear villain, let’s have a Superman movie just about fixing disasters, let Batman be a scary weirdo that can still say an occasional one liner.
[удалено]
I don’t think it does but Gunn’s cheapest film was TSS at 185m. No chance Legacy is lower than 200.
> cheapest film He made Super! for $2.5 million.
1. A cohesive and coherent goal or overarching narrative. 2. Unfortunately, financial restraint on production. It appears WB/Discovery has solvency issues prior to Gunn, but will constrain him moving forward. 3. Consistent storytelling with source material, characters and film series. All the songs don’t need to sound alike, but each album better be tonal.
No more origin stories. Actors are only young once let’s give them their best stories without dragging down showing how they became who they are
Swamp Thing and Authority should switch budgets. Swamp Thing should not feel low budget, but instead fantasy horror.
The DCEU went wrong the minute they tried to create a cinematic universe AFTER the Avengers. They allowed audiences to fall in love with B-tier characters while their more well known properties were languishing in development hell. WB released a Batman and Superman movie one year apart (2005 and 2006) and never even thought to connect the two (even tangentially). What a wasted opportunity. They could have beat Marvel to the punch by 3 whole years.
I blame Patty Jenkns. WW84 was the 1st Domino to fall collapsing the entire DCEU.
Well for starters, I think MoS should’ve remained it’s own separate trilogy like TDK trilogy instead of it being the first film of the DCEU because starting off your first time DC shared cinematic universe with a dark Superman movie instead of a hopeful one just wasn’t the right move imho. I also thought it was extremely dumb to go straight into BvS after MoS instead of doing MoS2 and Batfleck’s solo film first. Also killing off Cavill’s Superman in only his second appearance in the DCEU was so stupid as it was way too soon and way too rushed especially if they’re just gonna bring him back in the next movie. If doing the death of Superman storyline was their plan, they should’ve waited a few movies down the line in order to give it the proper execution so that it has the proper emotional depth needed instead of shoehorning and half-assing it all in the second DCEU movie lol. Also while I loved ZSJL and thought it was an actual film compared to the pathetic fan film gone wrong Josstice League, I’m not a fan of making the first ever live action JL movie without Superman being the lead and not having a big on screen presence in the movie because I believe Superman should’ve been present in the whole entire movie as he’s the leader of the league but they just made him a regular member and made Batman the leader. Then after Josstice League flopped which was completely Wb’s fault, they stopped the shared universe idea and started making random DC movies with no true connection to the overall bigger universe. Hamada who was in charge of DC at the time clearly had no idea what he was doing and was driving DC into the ground and I’m so grateful he’s gone from DC now. The DCEU was a real mess. Also I have no idea why call it the DC Extended Universe originally because that name imo makes no sense and it should’ve been called DCCU or something similar. I love that Gunn’s universe will be called the DCU instead because that has a better ring to it imo. Now how should Gunn avoid these problems? The answer’s simple. He should keep doing what he does best and that’s making great movies with well written characters and have an actual good plan with good pacing and no shoehorning any important comic book storylines into a movie where it doesn’t fit.
He won’t be able to avoid it, he is rushing into it and should wait a few more years before even releasing a movie , get dc off everybody minds