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Oh dear.

Looks like the DCEU Flash movie won't be seen until 2019 at the earliest.

Report from DenofGeek UK

I really think WB/DC need to stop and have a proper think about their movie universe. The three so far definitely have their fans, but fell somewhat short of the box office gold they were hoping for - I for one blame Zak 'we'll have no coherent plot here!' Snyder myself. Dude hasn't made a decent movie since Dawn of the Dead!

I blame Barry for always screwing up the timeline.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh dear.

Looks like the DCEU Flash movie won't be seen until 2019 at the earliest.

Report from DenofGeek UK

I really think WB/DC need to stop and have a proper think about their movie universe. The three so far definitely have their fans, but fell somewhat short of the box office gold they were hoping for - I for one blame Zak 'we'll have no coherent plot here!' Snyder myself. Dude hasn't made a decent movie since Dawn of the Dead!

IIRC but Dark Knight is the highest grossing comic book movie of all time.
Suicide Squad did well.

So far the only dud appears to have been B vs. S.

And Man of Steel, which was awful.

Suicide Squad did, purely in terms of Superheromovies, ok.

Alleged budget? $175,000,00. Box office take? $745,600,000.

Compare to its Marvel stable mate equivalent, Guardians of the Galaxy.

Alleged budget? £170,000,000. Box office take? $773,000,000

Allowing of course for some currency drift, Guardians comes out on top, and generally is a film much better thought of - certainly I know which I consider to the clearly superior film.

The of course compare to Marvel's big hitters, and it's a no-contest.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And Man of Steel, which was awful.
***Loved it. It also made gobs of money.

Suicide Squad did, purely in terms of Superheromovies, ok.
***Quite well actually.

Alleged budget? $175,000,00. Box office take? $745,600,000.
***Thats a hit, pardon the pun.

Compare to its Marvel stable mate equivalent, Guardians of the Galaxy.

Alleged budget? £170,000,000. Box office take? $773,000,000
***You just typed that GOTG cost twice as much but made the same, give the currency difference. What?

Missed a zero off Suicide Squad's budget! My bad. Should be $175,000,000 - so $5,000,000 more than Guardians of the Galaxy.

Rest should make sense with that correction

BvS did relatively poor business - remember, purely in the context of Superhero Movies. £872,000,000, off the back of a reported $250,000,000 budget. The first Avenger's took $1,500,000,000 off a $220,000,000 budget. Deadpool? $760,300,000 from a truly piffling £52,000,000 budget. Man of Steel, an actual proper 'tent pole' DC movie? A relatively small $668,000,000, with a budget of £225,000,000....

So whilst nobody could argue DC have actually had any box office flops (they've all proved profitable, even once advertising is factored in, which I understand isn't typically quoted in budget?) they're have a string of disappointments - and they've been all been mauled by critics.

How Suicide Squad, a horrific narrative mess that cast a tosser as Joker and got a tosser playing some kind of god awful wannabe gangster you kind of suspect still lives with his Mam, and somehow contrived to miss the point of Harley Quinn made as much money as it did truly baffles me.

Evidently you did not like Suicide Squad.

Found it to be an absolute mess of a movie. Characters were poor, acting was average, soundtrack was misplaced.

Marvel have trouble with convincing villains. DC seem to have doubled down on that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Found it to be an absolute mess of a movie. Characters were poor, acting was average, soundtrack was misplaced.

Marvel have trouble with convincing villains. DC seem to have doubled down on that.

I bet you like Cap America Winter Soldier and Civil War didn't you?

 Frazzled wrote:
IIRC but Dark Knight is the highest grossing comic book movie of all time.

In what timeline?

Marvel's The Avengers - $1,518,800
Avengers: Age of Ultron - $1,405,400
Iron Man 3 - $1,214,800
Captain America: Civil War - $1,153,300
The Dark Knight Rises - $1,084,900
The Dark Knight - $1,004,600

It's the 6th highest comic book movie of all time, and 28th of all time.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Found it to be an absolute mess of a movie. Characters were poor, acting was average, soundtrack was misplaced.

Marvel have trouble with convincing villains. DC seem to have doubled down on that.

I bet you like Cap America Winter Soldier and Civil War didn't you?

Yup Both were quite different from Marvel's previous output, being more in the mould of a political thriller.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Found it to be an absolute mess of a movie. Characters were poor, acting was average, soundtrack was misplaced.

Marvel have trouble with convincing villains. DC seem to have doubled down on that.

I bet you like Cap America Winter Soldier and Civil War didn't you?

Yup Both were quite different from Marvel's previous output, being more in the mould of a political thriller.

Mmm...yea. Get thee to thine TV and watch Day of the Jackal, Seven Days in May, or even Doctor Strangelove young Padiwon.
EDIT: Thats not meant as a hit. If you like political thrillers there are titans in the field well worth watching. Some of them are almost terrifying. For a more humorous one Wag the Dog is a Great comedy. I'll mention Black Sunday here as well just because.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
IIRC but Dark Knight is the highest grossing comic book movie of all time.

In what timeline?

Marvel's The Avengers - $1,518,800
Avengers: Age of Ultron - $1,405,400
Iron Man 3 - $1,214,800
Captain America: Civil War - $1,153,300
The Dark Knight Rises - $1,084,900
The Dark Knight - $1,004,600

It's the 6th highest comic book movie of all time, and 28th of all time.

Thanks I stand corrected.

Oh there's definitely far better political thrillers out there - but they were the first sure sign Marvel weren't afraid of mixing up their tones - and they certainly seem to pull it off.

DC? Grittyshitty, Grittyshitty, Grittyshitty. Ridiculously dark palette, fight scenes where it's near impossible to see what's going on, characters acting out of character (Superman's double genocide, Batman just taking stuff at face value with no actual investigation, Joker being a very, very bad joke and not in the way it would work)

You're the first person I've met who doesn't like the Joker.

 Frazzled wrote:
You're the first person I've met who doesn't like the Joker.

Seriously? Most of the people I talk to don't like Leto Joker at all.

What WB is doing now is conducting their business like Marvel/Disney. Those Marvel films are incredibly studio-driven, and the directors are just there to execute the studio's vision instead of being the overall creative mastermind. Some films break the mold more than others, but overall it's still about the studio having a clear vision of what they want and what they need each film to set up.

WB started the DCEU as a director-driven vehicle, but the critical reception in 2016 has them shifting gears and emulating the Marvel approach. Personally I think at least half of the Marvel films are utterly forgettable. But what they are is crowdpleasing, which BvS in particular failed to pull off. So I expect to see more crowdpleasing films from WB/DC going forward. And I suspect that the next Flash script will probably be a little more conventional, crowdpleasing, and less quirky than the Rick F. version would have been. (Although I would have liked to have seen it.)


Regarding particular DC films, Man of Steel is a good movie and I'll go to my grave defending it. Too many people got weird about some imaginary destruction and the fact that it wasn't yet another rehash of the ancient Chris Reeve films. It's an absolute joke that the awful Superman Returns movie got better reviews. There isn't a single aspect of that film that's better. (And don't give me John Williams...that score is almost 40 years old now.)

BvS definitely had its issues. The ultimate edition cleans up a LOT of story issues, though. Luthor's plan is much clearer and many more scenes suddenly make sense. But then it's 3 hours long, and takes too long to get to the action. IMO, the real failing with it was that the creators were too sensitive to the criticisms of MoS and spent too much time on the personal drama instead of listening to their guts and giving us a good movie-long Bats vs. Supes slugfest. Regardless of what the critics thought, it seemed like most people liked the action once it finally arrived.

 AduroT wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
You're the first person I've met who doesn't like the Joker.

Seriously? Most of the people I talk to don't like Leto Joker at all.

I love the Joker, in general. I thought Ledger was excellent in the Dark Knight.

I fething Hate the Leto Joker. They could have left him completely out and the movie would not have missed it.

I don't get the criticism that the Batman/Superman fight was too short. I appreciate that it's the name of the film and that a lot of people would watch just wanting to see that, but to say that the film only delivers on its title for 8 minutes is missing the point completely, that it's about way more than just two guys punching. It's conflict that runs through the whole film that the title refers to; ideals versus pragmatism, the powerful versus the powerless, the familiar versus the alien. It was Batman versus Superman as symbols, not as two blokes in capes. Funny how you don't see anyone complaining that Civil War was disappointing because Cap and Iron Man only fight for about 10 minutes of screen time.

And as for the fight itself, I think it was brilliant. So it's only about 8 minutes... find me a good movie fight scene with only two people involved that lasts significantly longer than that. There's nothing in Marvel's output, there's nothing in Star Wars, there's nothing in any of the X-men films. Even leaving aside that narratively, it had to be a short fight for it not to be totally one-sided, I don't think it would gain anything by being any longer. I can see why people would be disappointed if that was what they were expecting, but to see a 3-hour movie just for one scene and ignoring everything else excellent about it is baffling to me.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh there's definitely far better political thrillers out there - but they were the first sure sign Marvel weren't afraid of mixing up their tones - and they certainly seem to pull it off.

DC? Grittyshitty, Grittyshitty, Grittyshitty. Ridiculously dark palette, fight scenes where it's near impossible to see what's going on, characters acting out of character (Superman's double genocide, Batman just taking stuff at face value with no actual investigation, Joker being a very, very bad joke and not in the way it would work)

This is the only Batman film in recent memory where he's done any detective work at all, aside from the sci-fi reconstruction of a fingerprint on a bullet in The Dark Knight, so to say he's not doing any investigation when that's all he does in the first hour of the film is a little unfair.

@Paradigm: True about the investigation. But Gorgon is totally wrong about MoS. It's acceptable (after multiple viewings), but it feels more like hermit Clark running from everything. It doesn't "feel" like Superman.

Because it's not a Superman film. There's a reason Superman isn't in the title and the name is only used ironically. It's not a story about Superman, it's a story about Clark becoming Superman, a journey that's continued in BvS. When he comes back in JL, that will be when we get the version of Superman that is the symbol of hope and justice, prepared to sacrifice everything ect. It took the events of BvS to establish him as that in this universe, which is much more believable than people instantly getting behind an ultra-powerful alien without taking some convincing.

 kronk wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
You're the first person I've met who doesn't like the Joker.

Seriously? Most of the people I talk to don't like Leto Joker at all.

I love the Joker, in general. I thought Ledger was excellent in the Dark Knight.

I fething Hate the Leto Joker. They could have left him completely out and the movie would not have missed it.

Whilst I can't stand Leto, let alone his Joker, I don't feel Heath Ledger's character was The Joker.

Don't get me wrong - it was an excellent performance, and a damned good villain, but for me wasn't Joker. He had the creepy psychopath down, but none of the charm or craziness. I never got the impression he was playing a joke on anyone, no matter how obtuse.

But Leto remains the single worst Joker ever. None of Nicholson's charm. None of Romero's camp, none of Ledger's chill. He was like some tosser cosplaying Joker, despite never having researched the character, in the hope it'll get him some Halloween Nerd Girls...

And don't get me started on imbeciles craving a Joker/Harley Quinn relationship. It's not a good thing. That's a major part of Harley's character development over the years! Hell, it's even strongly hinted at, if not outright made clear that Joker beat the crap out of her to cause a miscarriage. Seriously. It's not a doomed romance, it's straight up abusive relationship writ large. That's how badly they fethed it up in Suicide Squad.

And Joker's motivation makes no sense.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
@Paradigm: True about the investigation. But Gorgon is totally wrong about MoS. It's acceptable (after multiple viewings), but it feels more like hermit Clark running from everything. It doesn't "feel" like Superman.

Well, that's your *opinion* and I don't share it one bit.

One lesson that came out of the post-MoS hubbub is that although the character is iconic, that also means people have different, personal, firmly engrained ideas about the character. But Superman has been different things at different times over the years.

The MoS Superman is a Clark-centric take on the character, which is pretty much how it's been in the comics since the Crisis. Personally, I don't mind that the movie showed him struggling to figure it out. That fits the more human, post-Crisis version of the character and the grounded approach the movie was striving for. Clearly however, there were people that don't want their Superman to struggle or fail. They wanted a more Silver/Bronze Age "Supergod" version like in the Reeve films.

Honestly, I don't think the creators of MoS were ever going to "win" without doing something incredibly middle-of-the-road and bland with the character. Marvel didn't have this same problem because it had to use its B- and C-list properties. Not all of those characterizations came in "right" compared to the comics -- again if that's even a thing -- but few complained because there wasn't as many set ideas regarding those characters.

But I don't think we're treading any new ground here with the MoS talk. I'm interested to see where the newer DCEU films go, although I'm afraid that they're going to emulate Marvel's worst qualities -- formulaic, bland, and so inoffensive as to be forgettable.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don't feel Heath Ledger's character was The Joker.

Then you feel wrongly and should feel bad about being so wrong.

To be fair, Ledger's Joker, fantastic as it was, had very little in common with any comic book iteration. The voicework and mannerisms were fine, you can read Joker lines in that style and it works, but his motivations and methods were vastly different. In that regard, Leto's is actually closer to the mark. He's a crime boss. He wants money, he wants power, and he appreciates the value of such things, whereas Ledger's demonstrates he hold them in contempt to the point of nihilism; all he's trying to do is make a point, he's got no long term goal or endgame in sight. He doesn't even really have the fixation with Batman that most comic versions have.


Doesn't take anything away from the stunning performance, but he's The Joker in name only (the same could be said for Hardy's Bane as well, though perhaps to a lesser extent).

Obligatory "Mark Hamill is the one true Joker" comment.

Now that's done...

One thing to remember about Suicide Squad was that it was banned in China. - Having an income they did with a whole market missing is a big deal.

I think part of the problem DC has is that they keep on trying to do 'fresh' takes on characters without realising that the cinema audiences haven't even seen the normal takes on the characters, found in the comic books and animated programmes.

Heck, the best take we've had on Lex Luthor in live action is Smallville. SMALLVILLE!

Imagine if, in Superman Returns, instead of having "Kevin Spacey doing an impression of Gene Hackman" Lex Luthor, we had "Francis Underwood Kevin Spacey" instead.

 gorgon wrote:

But I don't think we're treading any new ground here with the MoS talk. I'm interested to see where the newer DCEU films go, although I'm afraid that they're going to emulate Marvel's worst qualities -- formulaic, bland, and so inoffensive as to be forgettable.

I don't think DC are in danger of copying The Marvel Formula. Marking themselves out as different is fundamental, even if in the short run it got BvS and MoS slammed for daring to have more ambition than the Marvel way of doing things. Behind the scenes, they might switch over to the more studio-focused method, but on-screen I think they'll continue down their route of making films to serve the characters and stories, rather than cut and pasting the same formula over and over again.

In the short term, it's biting them in the arse, but eventually people are going to tire of the standard Marvel film structure that, aside from TWS and Civil War, has remained largely unchanged since Iron Man. Which isn't to say it can't work exceptionally, Guardians and Ant-man for instance follow that narrative structure to the letter but are fun and charming enough that they're still damn enjoyable films, but ultimately people are going to cotton on, and while Marvel might change their style going into Phase 4, DC will be one step ahead.

I'm fully confident that this'll be the year DC's films start going head to head with Marvel, critically, commercially and in general audience reception. All the signs for WW and JL are good, and while there are people out there who will set out bash DC (and Snyder for some reason) without needing a reason to, I think the consensus will start to turn around... which will hopefully lead to the earlier being reconsidered as well, but if not then never mind, I'm still free to maintain that MoS and BvS are masterpieces better than even Marvel's (excellent) best efforts.

 Compel wrote:


Imagine if, in Superman Returns, instead of having "Kevin Spacey doing an impression of Gene Hackman" Lex Luthor, we had "Francis Underwood Kevin Spacey" instead.

Nice!

However, even with the changes with Spacey's Luthor you've proposed, I think we can all agree that that particular film would still be dreadful.

 Paradigm wrote:
To be fair, Ledger's Joker, fantastic as it was, had very little in common with any comic book iteration.

And many of the comic iterations were very different from each other so it seems a bit silly to say "well it is ok when different people have a different angle on the same character as long as it is in a comic but this one version isn't allowed". If one didn't care for it that is fine but the bs excuse of "not the Joker" is just that: bs. That interpretation is just as valid as any.

 kronk wrote:

 Compel wrote:


Imagine if, in Superman Returns, instead of having "Kevin Spacey doing an impression of Gene Hackman" Lex Luthor, we had "Francis Underwood Kevin Spacey" instead.

Nice!

However, even with the changes with Spacey's Luthor you've proposed, I think we can all agree that that particular film would still be dreadful.

And yet Superman Returns is a 72(!) on Metacritic, HIGHER than Batman Begins (70). Actually, a 72 is higher than a lot of movies that most people would consider to be far superior. Perhaps the lesson there is that a 'return' -- i.e. oddly apeing a defunct movie series from decades ago -- plays better even to critics than a 'beginning' -- i.e. offering a new take on a character.

But really, I think the critics mostly view superhero stuff as silly, and so you risk incurring their wrath by even attempting something that isn't by-the-book or tongue-in-cheek. It's better to stay 'in the box' and not get their attention. Witness Avengers 2 and its score of 66, which is probably double what it should have received.

In other superhero critical weirdness news, Batman Forever scored a 51, just 4 points behind Man of Steel. I don't see how that makes sense to anyone other than the most rabid Zack Snyder hater. Batman Forever is almost an objectively terrible movie at nearly every level. Man of Steel may have its controversial aspects, but it isn't that.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
To be fair, Ledger's Joker, fantastic as it was, had very little in common with any comic book iteration.

And many of the comic iterations were very different from each other so it seems a bit silly to say "well it is ok when different people have a different angle on the same character as long as it is in a comic but this one version isn't allowed". If one didn't care for it that is fine but the bs excuse of "not the Joker" is just that: bs. That interpretation is just as valid as any.

I think it's important to view any Joker in the context of his respective Batman. The Nolan Batman was very much a post-9/11 version of the character -- witness the military-styled hardware, 'tactical' matte black everywhere, and (I think importantly) the almost animalistic rage in response to the violence done to him. And that Joker -- which for me was really summed up in that interrogation room scene -- represented those terrorists who seemed above our ability to combat through conventional means or even really understand.

The Nicholson Joker was the right counterpart to the Keaton Batman just as the Romero Joker was for the West Batman. They always go together.

Quite frankly, I think the issue with the Leto Joker is that we met him outside the context of a proper Affleck Batman film. They go together, and their dynamics are worthy of an entire film, not just some flashbacks.

 kronk wrote:

 Compel wrote:


Imagine if, in Superman Returns, instead of having "Kevin Spacey doing an impression of Gene Hackman" Lex Luthor, we had "Francis Underwood Kevin Spacey" instead.

Nice!

However, even with the changes with Spacey's Luthor you've proposed, I think we can all agree that that particular film would still be dreadful.

Fun side note - I haven't actually sat down and watched House of Cards, but my roommate had it on and I caught enough of it to remark "You know, Kevin Spacey would make a really good Lex Luthor. Why haven't they tried him?"

There was an awkward silence while we both remembered.