Movies Warner Bros. and DC Seem Ta Have Finally Figured It Out...

[skillzdadirecta]

After success of Aquaman, will focus less on a "Shared Universe".

 

Quote

We all feel like we've turned a corner now. We're playing by the DC playbook, which is very different than the Marvel playbook. We are far less focused on a shared universe. We take it one movie at a time. Each movie is its own equation and own creative entity. If you had to say one thing about us, it's that it always has to be about the directors.

 

[Remarkableriots]

RIP Justice League 2.

[skillzdadirecta]

46 minutes ago, Remarkableriots said:

RIP Justice League 2.

Yup.

[CitizenVectron]

Good. Just make solo movies and if you feel the need to have a cameo or something, then great! But it doesn't all need to tie together. Just made interesting one-off movies. There are so many interesting comic stories they could tell! I still don't trust WB/DC though, and I think each movie will continue to be "Hero vs world-ending destruction with 3 set-piece action scenes."

[skillzdadirecta]

Just now, CitizenVectron said:

Good. Just make solo movies and if you feel the need to have a cameo or something, then great! But it doesn't all need to tie together. Just made interesting one-off movies. There are so many interesting comic stories they could tell!

 

This is the approach they should have taken in the first place instead of rushing to try and emulate what Marvel was doing. Their two non-Snyder solo movies have both been unexpected hits so it's not the characters at all and never has been. It was them trying to emulate what Marvel was doing, just be true to the characters and make good movies.

[EternallDarkness]

1 hour ago, Remarkableriots said:

RIP Justice League 2.

 

I wouldn't say that. They'll probably just ignore whatever happens in other movies.

[RedSoxFan9]

Cancel all DC movies except aquaman and joker movies

[LazyPiranha]

5 hours ago, RedSoxFan9 said:

Cancel all DC movies except aquaman and joker movies

 

[HGLatinBoy]

They finally figured out what everyone was saying?  There approach was so ass backwards

[5timechamp]

The part of not butting in and interfering with Directors (movie makers in general) is the bigger concern... choice of stories to tell seems poor as well..

 

hopefully the animated side of the house doesnt shit out a crap version of "Hush"..

[skillzdadirecta]

4 hours ago, 5timechamp said:

The part of not butting in and interfering with Directors (movie makers in general) is the bigger concern... choice of stories to tell seems poor as well..

 

hopefully the animated side of the house doesnt shit out a crap version of "Hush"..

 

Not sure you could make that story any crappier than it already was 

 

I'm only kidding a little bit... Hush is overrated as fuck though.

[Hurdyb1]

I think DC was being to ambitious with the share world and made it more difficult than it needed to be. 

 

I personally can't wait for the Hush animation. 

[5timechamp]

6 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Not sure you could make that story any crappier than it already was 

 

I'm only kidding a little bit... Hush is overrated as fuck though.

 

I agree it is overrated, hopefully this is one of thise stories thats altered for the better (Under the Red Hood Style) and not wasted (like Court of Owls was)

[skillzdadirecta]

1 minute ago, 5timechamp said:

 

I agree it is overrated, hopefully this is one of thise stories thats altered for the better (Under the Red Hood Style) and not wasted (like Court of Owls was)

 

Agreed on both points. 

[SaysWho?]

The Dark Knight trilogy remain my favorite superhero movies; you don't have to follow Marvel, who is succeeding very well in a shared universe. Do what you were already doing and refine it.

[Jason]

Have they fired Snyder yet?

[Remarkableriots]

https://screenrant.com/dc-batman-movie-matt-reeves-title-changed/

Quote

The standalone Batman movie project from Warner Bros. and DC is no longer called The Batman as previously believed. Directed and written by Matt Reeves, the film has been in development for quite a while now, with several reported production starts that didn't pan out. Now, it's tipped to begin filming in November, supposedly with a brand new title.

 

[skillzdadirecta]

47 minutes ago, Remarkableriots said:

https://screenrant.com/dc-batman-movie-matt-reeves-title-changed/

 

"The Dark Knight Strikes Back!"

[Man_of_X]

On 1/19/2019 at 1:30 PM, skillzdadirecta said:

 

This is the approach they should have taken in the first place instead of rushing to try and emulate what Marvel was doing. Their two non-Snyder solo movies have both been unexpected hits so it's not the characters at all and never has been. It was them trying to emulate what Marvel was doing, just be true to the characters and make good movies.

 

I don't think there was anything wrong with their approach or desire to do a shared universe.  I also don't think they were necessarily trying to emulate Marvel just because they did it first, but they definitely wanted those dollars.

 

Therein lies the problem.  They were greedy fucks and wanted what Marvel built over a decade in what, like a third of the time.  They butchered the last half of Green Lantern.  All of Snider's films had serious problems of one sort or another.  They rushed the shit out of everything and fucked it all up because they couldn't just take the fantastic characters they had and make great movies and let everything else fall into place.

 

I was really hoping with Geoff Johns involved that he could be like their Kevin Feige.  That obviously didn't pan out.

 

They're going to concentrate on solo movies, not because of a conscious choice, but because they were forced to.  I'm happy Wonder Woman was so good and Aquaman has done well and I have high hopes for Shazam.  They also don't have to keep going back to the trinity of Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman constantly either, although I'm mainly talking about the first two. 

[Anathema-]

aka what they should have been doing in the first place

 

What they wanted was to be a prestige shop, keep the ball rolling from the Nolan years, but they picked a director for visual style without seriously considering his storytelling voice and it didn't give them the result they really wanted (near-universal acclaim and the dollars that come with it). I don't mean to diminish Snyder's talent for visual storytelling, indeed the best part of the whole damn series is purely visual, but they're just a pretty version of an ugly story and that just didn't jive with me. 

 

I think DC is in a good place right now. They're finally achieving the successes they were hunting, even if it's as a result of only begrudgingly hewing closer to the MARVEL formula. For my part I don't care about how they get there, I care about having a good time at the movies and they're finally giving me that. More importantly they're instilling trust in their audience (me) that their next film is maybe a little more worth the chance, rather than a little less than worth it; a key component for making billion dollar films. 

 

I also really liked AQUAMAN and WONDER WOMAN and I want to see more. If they give it to me I'll go see it. AQUAMAN was he first film I saw in the theater in a long time and it was really worth it. Just by being a "pretty good" film it got a lot of points from me. I mean, I said I want to see more, what higher praise could a film like this have?

[Greatoneshere]

Man of Steel is pretty much on par with Wonder Woman and Aquaman, so really we're just talking about the shittiness of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad. Justice League is a weird amalgamation that wasn't good or bad, just mostly light, fluffy fun entertainment so I consider it an outlier.

 

Warner and DC can certainly recover and they've clearly indicated they are better at solo films (Man of Steel, Wonder Woman, Aquaman) than ensemble superhero films (Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Justice League). 

[Kal-El814]

21 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Man of Steel is pretty much on par with Wonder Woman and Aquaman

I mean...  no.  

[Greatoneshere]

1 minute ago, Kal-El814 said:

I mean...  no.  

 

Are we really going to sit and watch Man of Steel and Aquaman side by side and say that Aquaman is some clearly better film than Man of Steel was? I'm pretty sure I could pick apart both equally, Aquaman is just as messy a movie as Man of Steel is and they both offer entertainment, just of a different sort from each other. 

[TwinIon]

I'm personally not convinced that DC's failures are a matter of ensemble films vs solo outings. I think it's mostly a matter of having the wrong people steering the ship, and having poorly written movies being given to directors who can't overcome those issues.

 

I know not everyone loves Watchmen, but that's as much an ensemble movie as Justice League, and it was able to establish an alternate universe and a ton of characters. It's hard to do all of that, and to succeed you need a really solid foundation. I think the primary reason Watchmen succeeded at all is that it basically used a well written graphic novel as the script. Give Zack Snyder a bad script, and you're going to end up with a pretty lousy movie.

 

I didn't love Aquaman or Wonder Woman, and would argue that neither has a particularly good script, but I also think that both Wan and Jenkins were able to (at least slightly) elevate the material they were given.

 

So while I don't think that going straight to the team up movies is what doomed DC, I do think that those team up movies are harder to get right. You need a good script, and hopefully a Kevin Feige shepherding the process along, or you're most likely going to fail.

[Kal-El814]

Watchmen succeeded?

 

I’m... kind of kidding? A little? It had successful moments but I don’t think the movie makes a ton of sense as filmed. I have some of the same issues with it as I do with Man of Steel, which is that they both cash in on audience knowledge of the material in favor of building character. With MoS I don’t think it worked well, but it’s Superman, so at least it’s understandable. With Watchmen... some scenes and character behavior make no fucking sense if you don’t know the comic.

 

2 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

Are we really going to sit and watch Man of Steel and Aquaman side by side and say that Aquaman is some clearly better film than Man of Steel was? I'm pretty sure I could pick apart both equally, Aquaman is just as messy a movie as Man of Steel is and they both offer entertainment, just of a different sort from each other. 

Yes? They both have issues, sure. But Aquaman is at least consistent and generally cohesive when it comes to the characters. Superman in MoS is different from scene to scene based on nothing but what that specific moment needs, and different from what the film itself literally says aloud that he should be.

[Greatoneshere]

7 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yes? They both have issues, sure. But Aquaman is at least consistent and generally cohesive when it comes to the characters. Superman in MoS is different from scene to scene based on nothing but what that specific moment needs, and different from what the film itself literally says aloud that he should be.

 

Well we'll agree to disagree because I don't think Man of Steel is any messier / worse than Aquaman as a film, their problems are just different (I do agree Superman's character is inconsistently written, and that is one of Man of Steel's flaws for sure). But for some reason Aquaman gets a pass for its messiness (Wonder Woman too, arguably, which has a worse third act than Man of Steel) but Man of Steel doesn't, is my point. You may have liked Man of Steel less, but its flaws are no worse than Aquaman's or Wonder Woman's, just different (in my opinion). People just get hung up on a violent Superman that kills Zod, the silly Indian Ocean machinery fight scene, and Pa Kent's death scene. But much of the rest of the movie is quite good. I can certainly think of at least three scenes/things I didn't like in Aquaman or Wonder Woman as well. 

 

It's certainly a much better film than Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad, which was my original point. 

 

Watchmen makes plenty of sense as a film on its own as I've shown the film to people who haven't read the book, it just needs to be Watchmen: Director's Cut.