f13.net

So this now has an official trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cxixDgHUYw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cxixDgHUYw)

So it needs a thread of its own. I'm still not sold on the color palette. The CGI specifically looks bad in the scenes like where Batman swings in and attacks the parademons. The blues and blacks are way too saturated and contrasty with the over the top oranges. However, I dig how they are portraying Aquaman and Wonder Woman and I even like Flash. Totally unsure about Cyborg though.

There's something about these new DCEU movies that leave me cold. I like WW (even though I'm not sure Gadot can act) but no one else interests me. Affleck acts like he's already tired of being Batman.

Every single thing in that trailer is heavily saturated blue or orange except for Cyborg's eye and the 0.1 seconds of green field.  I was tired of that nonsense several years ago, DC has shown me nothing in their recent films to get excited about, so I'm going to be waiting a good while after release on this one before I even consider seeing it.

Do we really need to give this trailer any more views or attention? It's the sequel to two shitty movies. There's a 39 page thread devoted to BvS and I don't recall a whole lot of positive reactions in there. Can't we just agree to ignore this shit until it goes away?

You have my axe vote.

Ugh.

How is DC so good at putting out trailers that make me less interested in their movies? It'd help if they'd stop making such crappy movies, but making good trailers for bad movies isn't exactly new.

The teaser trailer made me cautiously optimistic. The official trailer shows heroes acting dumb and a lot of bland CGI. Batfleck just seems tired of the whole movie thing.

I'll watch it. I'm fed up with Batman and Superman but still interested in the rest.

Seriously, old tired kind-of-burned-out Batman was fine in BvS (it was what made Affleck actually kind of a good Bruce Wayne, to my surprise) but in this trailer, it feels really annoying.

I'm guessing that the blue/grey palette is for scenes either of Apokalips or parts of Earth that are being turned Apokaliptian (given the parademons all over the trailer) but that's also fucking boring as shit considering that it's what Snyder thinks ordinary days on planet Earth should look like.

Cyborg looks cheap. Flash effects are good-looking though.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/77902 (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/77902)

Whedon takes the DC steering wheel at the last minute for shitty reasons.

Lest anyone not click the link, said shitty reason is Zack Snyder's daughter, Autumn, committed suicide in March.

Much as I've grown to dislike Snyder's work recently, that is some seriously shitty stuff to have to be dealing with at any time.

Really hard. Poor guy. I feel bad that he clearly is flinching waiting for people to say, "It's your fault because you're working on all these films"--he said as much in his only public statement, that he knows there will be assholes saying things because they hate him so much. We need to get to a place of more collective sanity about our relationship to cultural producers.

Separating professional from personal is actually easy.  This guys films suck balls.  This guys trauma at the moment cannot be described or pitied enough.

He's not going to worry about the guilt others heap on him.  I would imagine he's putting himself through more than enough.

 :heartbreak:

On the other hand, Whedon.  So.  Swings and roundabouts.

I'm guessing this is post-principal photography but might still have the odd reshoot and most of the editing to do?

I'm trying to think of any major film that changed hands at this stage?

Well, Snyder showed a cut to folks prior to deciding to ask Whedon to write the new scenes - which have yet to be filmed - so this was post first attempt at principal, but clearly someone thought the first attempt was bad enough to need a very different take.  

I will be intrigued to see what Whedon does to humanize the script merely by adding a few scenes and tweaking a few lines of dialogue.  He has long noted the diificulty with making DC heroes work (2009 article):  http://www.slashfilm.com/joss-whedons-theory-on-why-dc-comic-book-movies-usually-suck (http://www.slashfilm.com/joss-whedons-theory-on-why-dc-comic-book-movies-usually-suck)  I am curious what you get when you mix Whedon's approach with these bigger than life heroes.

Can't someone suck bruce timms dick already so we can get quality dc movies...

I don't think he has the penis needing a pucker to make that happen.  However, I'd love to see it.

I kind of wonder if DC could have worked better with (please don't kill me) a more Transformers approach to the franchise? DC have shown they are not good at handling their heroes so concentrating on making the heroes not the focus but the backdrop. Build on the spectacle but get the human drama from... well humans.

I personally wouldn't like but then I don't like any of these movies anyway. Transformers is a big franchise and clearly the action spectacle thing works. It would allow DC creators to skip past the problems of humanising their protagonists or concentrating on stupid bullshit ethical questions which don't fit the spirit of things.

Fuck now I'm thinking a Michael Bay's Superman might have been less bad a film than Man of Steel.

No, it would be the same film.

The WW movie's strong suit is its character arc and emotional beats, so I think that's a good demonstration that there was a better way from the beginning.

Know what else it has?

A hero who wants to be a hero instead of a whiny emo nothing.

It shames me to admit this, but I hadn't even considered this aspect until I read this polygon article.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/17/15821584/wonder-woman-justice-league


This is exactly what's wrong with the DCU to this point. We've been framing it as, "They're embarrassed with the properties," but it's more than that. They won't let the heroes be heroes. It's some postmodern bullshit all aimed at saying there's no such thing as heroes.

Then along comes Wonder Woman. She's heroic as fuck and doesn't give a shit about the selfish angle promoted by Snyder's vision. She's going to do this because it's right and she has the power to do so.

The movie kicks Snyder's vision in the balls, dares it to get up and the box office has rewarded DC for it.

With JL already wrapping-up I now know they're fucked. At best you'll get a Suicide Squad-level hamfisted fix to the script, but I doubt it. Half the promotions have already shown us the major points of the movie are trying to convince heroes to be heroic. That's the entirety of Bruce's arc that we know of. This is a problem.

They built the film, showed the rough cut to folks, decided it didn't work and went back to fix it was changes.  The guy they brought in, Whedon, is known for figuring out how to handle tough characters and humanizing them.  I have no idea if this movie will be bad, ok or good - but I am confident it will be a lot better than what Snyder, by himself, would have made. 

And, after Wonder Woman, I might just see this one in the theater, too.  After SS, I decided to pass on the theater for all DCEU movies, but the press for WW led me back to the big screen and I'm glad it did.  Not a perfect movie, but one that really exceeded my expectations and one I enjoyed.

Not fucking up 1 origin story doesn't make their assemble cast movie any less shit.

Yeah, I'm with Captain Trollsalot.  I still think JL will be utter shite.

Yeah, I don't get saying "Wonder Woman gave DC another chance with me."   Especially when you read all the fighting Patty Jenkins had to do to make the film HER way instead of Snyder's.  As this article; ( Link (https://moviepilot.com/p/zack-snyder-vs-patty-jenkins-wonder-woman-batman-v-superman/4289105))  mentions, WW was world-weary in JL. Implying she was done with humanity entirely. Another Snyderesque non-hero. 

This is not the WW we saw in Jenkins' version, but it will be the one we get in JL. It's going to be all the bad of BvS and SS rolled into yet another movie. There's no way it can be good, not even with Whedon being brought-in for fixes. Which - remember - has only happened because Snyder's daughter died. Even with massive rewrites the best you can hope for is some of the same disjointed WTF-ery of Suicide Squad which also went under massive reshoots to fix 'tonality' after first viewings.

No, keep your money. JL will be on video and TV fast enough for you to not have to see it in the theater. Don't reward the dross of Snyder's vision.

The Counter Argument:

Around the end of last year they see the rough cut of WW.  They see what worked, and what did not work.  Then, the JL initial cut is complete and they see everything that HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS CRAP. 

Snyder's absence gives them a chance to bring in someone that has made good hero films and that understands what worked with WW.  They give him time and money to do substantial reshoots - but not on the action heavy special effects because they do not have enough time to rework those shots.  All he, Whedon, gets to do is rework the character shots.  That is his strong suit. 

That story takes JL from hopeless to having a chance.  If the reviews are good, I'll see it in the theater.  If they pan it, I'll pass.  At this point, I would not be surprised by either.

Except that Warner Bros was shocked at the success of WW. And they had no clue until right before release that it was a good film.

Yep. They didn't see squat and realize what worked and what didn't. In the WW thread there was that article about how the Editor and Director had to fight to keep the Trench scene in the movie at all, and it was one of the best scenes in the movie. Nothing about that says, "DC saw the rough cut and changed it's mind."

Hell, even the promotions were more subdued than BvS. Fewer tie-ins, fewer ads. You don't do that with a movie you believe in.

The fight over the trench scene took place when? Before the final cut. Before the music was added. Before the effects were done.

Being cynical is fine. We're supposed to make it usefully cynical (look up). WW can give you a sliver of hope for DC and JL.

There's a lot of middle ground between cynicism and blind fanaticism.  There is zero evidence to suspect that the JL movie will have had either the time or inclination to improve on the dc universe since BvS.

For fuck's sake they are wholly introducing three new characters in flash,cyborg and aquaman PLUS an entirely new bad guy in addition two juggling three other superherpes.(this was a typo but im keeping it).  Bringing in Whedon isn't going to help much especially since avengers two was itself a bloated mess of characters it just shows that even he isn't able to pull together an ensemble well.

I wonder at why your autocorrect went to superherpes...

Saying I have higher hopes for JL than I did 2 months ago is not saying I have high hopes. I think DC is a harder nut to crack than Marvel and the skeleton of the film was built on rot. If it doesn't suck, it will be because it was redemption post April. All I'm saying is that the things I've heard in the last few weeks have taken me from certainty it will suck to a belief it might not suck.  If Wonder Woman sucked and Whedon hadn't touched JL, I would not have seen it in theaters regardless of the reviews. Now, I wait and see.

If Whedon does some magic and makes a film that works, a film he can point at Marvel and say, "See what I can do if you get out of my way and don't force me to cut vital scenes," then some of you uselessly cynical folks can eat crow.  If it sucks, all I said is that there is at least some hope... Not a promise it would be good.

Yeah, but you're wrong.  There is no hope.  Superman and Batman have already been done, cast, characterised and shown.  And they Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccccccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Now, if you happen to think Batman or Superman were in any way redeeming, good or interesting, then, yeah, maybe I see where you MIGHT be coming from.  But they were literal brain herpes, both films sucked the fucking Marrow of the Earth and neither were heroic nor interesting.  So, Wonder Woman got a few good scenes, fair enough, but at the core your Heroic team isn't fucking Heroic.  They're utter, utter fucking arseholes.

So, there's that.

We'll see. Actors take direction. Whether the changes will take it all the way up to an ok film... time will tell.

One thing to consider: Whedon knew what he was taking on. He was critical of DC characters for film. He saw the first cut. He knew the acting pool. He knows his rep is on the line. Knowing all of this, he decided to step into the chair. He would not do that unless there was hope in his eyes unless the money was obscene.  Marvel offered him a truck for Avengers 3 and he turned that down.

I'm not talking about fucking actors.  I'm talking about Shotgun Batman and Clark from Accounting who just don't give a fuck.

These are the new characters and I am entirely uninterested in them.  I truly expect, after the excrement of the first two, for Aquaman to be allergic to water, Barry to have dislocated knees and Cyborg to be based on Windows XP.

Fuck this continuity, is what I'm saying.

But let's just wait and see how it goes, eh ?  Or not, because despite posting, I ain't watching this drivel, so I guess I'm the very epitome of a shitposter in this thread.  Dammit.  I hate it when that happens.

Wonder Woman doesn't give me hope that JL will be good. After all, it's still at heart a Synder movie and he is dreadful. However, I will go see it because I've always wanted a Justice League movie. Fuck, I LIKED Suicide Squad and that was actually a worse movie than BVS if you dissect it as a film (even as a superhero movie). Clearly my tastes when it comes to superhero movies is suspect.  :why_so_serious:

fify

Suicide Squad was a repeated kick in the baws.  Awful.

I'd actually like to see that as an animated 15 minute short...

Regardless, Whedon probably can't touch the big budget effects combats.  However, the character driven scenes are where he can take the characters that were horrible in prior movies, can take the characters that were developed by Synder in this movie, and all the other elements that we all knew WERE NOT GOING TO WORK IN THE SLIGHTEST in a Snyder JL pic - and give us what we want.  

I would not cast Affleck, but he can do a better Batman than we saw in BvS (with better direction).  Will it be the Batman I always wanted?  No.  I have no hope that Affleck will give us the Batman we want.  However, do I think he can be a serviceable Batman that perhaps isn't the strength of the film, but may not be a detriment?  Yeah, I think Whedon might be able to make that happen.  Affleck is clearly begging for help as he does not want to ruin Batman like he did Daredevil.  We can turn that negative into a non-negative.

Supes is hardly in the film.  He seems to be a third act addition.  He went through major trauma and they can totally change him as a result.  I think Whedon will have a good take on Supes and will at least be able to set Supes on the right path by the END of the movie.  My suspicion is that he comes in as a villain in there somewhere when he rises from the grave for a big budget fight that won't be cut, so I think we'll be stuck with some %@#$ that Whedon will just have to accept and move beyond after we cringe a few times.

Flash, Cyborg, etc... I'm betting will be a bit disjointed in the action/non-action transitions as we see more Snyder idiocy in the action and more character depth outside combat.  I think Whedon will improve on what Snyder will have done.  Aquaman - fish out of water.  Cyborg - didn't want his heroic future heaped upon him.  Flash - cocky and embraces his abilities.  All of those seem like Whedon template characters.  

As for Suicide Squad - 90% crap.  10% amazeballs.  Harley Quinn was pretty darn perfect.

I am not going to write it off, yet.  After what Whedon did with the Hulk, while being bound by Marvel's directions as to how the combat would take place, gives me hope.

  

What's with the Affleck hate?  Besides Wonder Woman, Batfleck was the only home run hit in that movie.

This. There was plenty wrong with Batman vs. Superman but Affleck as Batman was not one of those things.

I disagree. And, if you recall, Affleck also was highly critical of his own role in the finished film.

I do not recall that and I submit that Affleck was probably too drunk when he was watching it to know the difference.  :why_so_serious:

I mean, there's a lot of shit you can throw at BVS to criticize it that are valid points, and on that list of shit, Affleck is WAY near the bottom, just above Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.

Guys, for me, the criticism is not about 'Affleck'.  He did fine with what he was given.  It's about what he was given.  The Batman/Wayne they made him play was both fucking awful and entirely tonally deaf.

He's a Batman that shoots guns and brands thugs so they die.  They tried to take Dark Knight Returns (indeed, some of the scenes are direct lifts) and it was unearned and shoddy.

I have no problem with Affleck.  I have no problem with Clooney.  I even have no problem with Kilmer.  But Jesus Wept, I do have a problem with an awful Batman on screen.

And that's not even touching Cowardly Clark and his Retarded Father.

These things are truth. For a character with such a long cinematic history, Batman has been written badly very very often. Clooney, Kilmer and Affleck are all good actors who did the best they could with really shitty scripts and poor direction.

OK - put the evaluation of Affleck aside. 

Look at Wonder Woman.

In BvS, people nodded and said, "Not Bad".  They did not rave about her the same way we are after WW had her own movie and was handled correctly.  I went from thinking, "Yeah, she was ok.  She doesn't really feel like the WW I'd imagined, but better than the rest of the DCEU," after seeing BvS.  After seeing WW, I was impressed.  "This isn't the WW I imagined, but it is a great WW.  Like Downey did for Tony Stark, Gadot made her own Wonder Woman that is charismatic and built for film.  It wasn't a perfect film, but she is a great WW."

Whedon handled each hero well in Avengers.  Widow and the Russians.  Widow and Banner in India.  Fury and Cap in the boxing ring.  Stark and Cap discussing ideology.  Banner and Stark in the lab.   

Those are the type of scenes that Whedon is going to change. 

I don't think we get a 'Puny God', Hulk Smash Thor, or any other signature Whedon moment in the big combat scenes as it is too late to rework them, but I do expect Whedon to give us better glue to hold the combat together.

And to be honest, although a bit flat, the fights in Man of Steel and BvS were typical summer blockbuster spectacles.  I expect the fights in JL to be similar - not really adding to the story, but a fine spectacle to watch.

You are seriously projecting. I like Whedon, but I don't think he's going to have that much of an effect on this movie.

Yeah, but that was nothing to do with story or character or anything.  It was Gal Gadot for fucks sake.  Even typing her name I'm thinking 'Not Bad'.   :why_so_serious:

(and, yes, I've taken your advice and I'm looking at her.  Damn.  I mean.  Truly.  Damn.)


EDITED TO ADD :  People SHAT on Widow for her 'can't have kids scene'.  Where were you ?  He's not a Messiah dude.

Whedon directed avengers 2, i rest my case.

And he quit Marvel when they forced him to gut the movie, including the Widow kids scene.

I get it. You all say 0%  chance JL can be a film worth seeing in theaters. Noted.

Bear in mind, I'll still be seeing the movie in theaters. I just don't think it's going to be very good.

Comic-Con Sneak Peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_6yBZKj-eo

I think the 4-minute trailer from SDCC was much better. I still don't think it's going to be great but I think it might not be as Synder-iffic as it first appeared.

Apropros of the earlier conversation, I feel very certain that the whole "everybody but Flash disappears" bit at the end is a Whedon-written and directed bit.

That's really the difference--Snyder doesn't *believe* in Easter Eggs of any kind, or in making deep and knowing use of the particular tropes associated with various characters. He loves to recreate actual scenes and visual elements from other stories, but he doesn't know the narrative grammar of his source material. Whedon does; sometimes that is an annoying thing about him, but it's a far better starting place for making comic-book movies than just wanting the storyboards to look like the comic panels. If you think about movies that have been more influenced by the visual look of comics rather than their narrative engines or characters, almost all of them are shitty, sometimes surpassingly shitty.

Unlike Wonder Women, I don't expect to go see the movie. -

Superman was an icon of hope ?

When ?

When in any of the Synder Movies was he this ?  He was a rampaging fuck cunt that blew shit up.

Fuck this movie.

They did build a statue to him... and he died saving them. Snyder didn't do it well, but he intended for people to be split on Supes.

He didn't do it all well--he more or less crammed a teeny bit into BvS intended to just state that some people love Superman. For no reason, really, because he doesn't have a long history of doing good deeds *and* he doesn't have the classic sunny Boy Scout Superman personality, but instead mostly just scowls like he's about to take a super-shit.

Yeah, they keep saying that like they've earned it, but he wasn't. He was a brooding messiah figure at best.

It's based entirely, ENTIRELY, on 2-3 bullshit scenes wedged into BvsS. Scenes you can see outlined here as Sins because I've been binge watching Cinema Sins at work as I avoid personal problems. The Flood Scene, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5tSpgU96WY

I'll assume that since I'm bumping this for the 40% RT (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/justice_league_2017/) score and the lack of any commentary on this thread since July that I should probably wait for this to show up in the Redbox.  :grin:

Aw, I was going to post about the initial 40% on RT.

Given that I'm pretty sure movies like this are screened to as friendly an audience as possible, I expect it to go down into the mid 20s once reviews are more general.

I may end up going to see this because Wonder Woman was that good, and the children are interested in seeing this as a result.

Silly pre-adult persons.  You will learn sorrow on that day.  Probably.

Geeks of Doom said it was flawed but good. That reminds me I need to book my ticket.

People said the same with BvS so take that for what it's worth.

Reviews are positive, but not outstanding.  Reportedly: It takes some steps back with some characters, and takes huge steps forward with others.  Overall, though, reviews seem to indicate this is a good move forward for the DCEU, but not up to Marvel standards.

Anyone want to review it for us?

The ringers review was NOT positive.

This was a success, IMO, specifically in spite of all its structural flaws. Warners really really got lucky with this one because their attempts to rush a franchise into being should not work at all. The characters have camaraderie and chemistry that they shouldn't have, mostly because all of the actors are really good at playing the roles that were written for them. One may disagree with their characterizations of Barry Allen (as he's the one that's farthest from any interpretation of the character seen in comics to date - he's more like Impulse than most Barry Allen Flash versions), but the rest of them were pretty close to some version of the character that's appeared in the comics and were well done. Aquaman was the star of the show because Jason Mamoa is just that awesome. I was surprised that the runtime is right at 2 hours, which meant that it is really rushed but at the same time, I don't feel like the story suffered too bad for it. It's a thin story and I'd be interested to see the longer director's cut to see what they managed to trim.

I'm still not a fan of their over saturated color palette, but in this one, it really only bothers me in the action sequences. It gives them a feeling of even more unreality than BvS, a feeling of very shiny, very CGI'ed action. However, that's kind of a minor quibble. I think Marvel does set piece action like this better as I think they use much more practical effects and they don't fuck with the colors so blatantly. One good note on this film is that the action sequences are kind of the least important part of this. The character interaction really is the best part.


Stay through the entire credits.

Movie was entertaining, mostly carried by how good a job the actors did with what they had to work with. The action was serviceable but definitely a step or two below any Marvel attempt. The cameos were cool. They killed Doutzen Kroes though so i give it a 0/10.

This movie just highlights  I preferred Suicide Squad over this because of it, though I did enjoy Justice League and think DC might be turning a corner with this and Wonder Woman.

You are a madman.  :ye_gods:

It also does a good job of highlighting everything I hate about their current iteration of Batman.  

Bad. BvS bad. The few things that they got right were things they should have had right all along and all of the problems that they've carried from prior films continue to annoy the heck out of me. They don't even understand their characters. If I were them, I would accelerate into a Crisis on infinite Earths storyline and use that to jettison everyone except Superman and Wonder Woman. Then I'd replace the entire creative team except Jenkins.

Prior films?  Or Richard Pryor films?

Or was there someone else named Pryor involved with the films.

So confused right now.

I haven't even really felt the desire to see this. That's saying something. It's not even hate or anger, it's just, "Oh, meh, I'm busy and I'm tired and it just isn't interesting."

Crappy voice text and tired eyes. Apologies.

Don't bother. I had hopes after WW and Whedon coming on board to doctor the film that it would be a decent film. It was bad. There were perhaps 4 or 5 moments I enjoyed over the two hours.

I disagree with what you said.

As for the portrayal of Batman, it's not necessarily my choice, but it does have precedence in the comics. This is essentially Zak Snyder's film version of the Batman from Dark Knight Returns, big tank and all.

The movie was better than it deserved to be, mainly because the actors played their characters well, and Whedon got some of the Snyder grimstank off of it. It's not as good as the Marvel movies, true, but it is not as bad as jgsugden makes it out to be, and it's worlds better than BVS.

Felt pretty middle-of-the-road to me overall.  Not as bad as I was worried it would be.  The thing that kept battering my suspension of disbelief was

Coworker mentioned that with the money Warner was throwing at this thing, and the probable expected difference in budget and potential earnings between League and the movie Cavill had grown the mustache for, Warner should have just commanded him to shave the fucking thing hand had their hair and wig department make Cavill the most realistic fake mustache they could for the remainder of his shoot on the other movie.  The fake mustache would likely have been WAY more convincing and less noticeable in his other movie than the fucking hatchet job they did trying to remove it with CGI for league, not to mention that between the two options, the fake mustache would have been a hell of a lot cheaper.

We watched this on cable last night.

I think it was worse than BvS, really. We actually gave up 3/4 of the way in. It felt like a bad videogame, not an actual story. Steppenwolf was utterly unmenacing and uninvolving. The opening is idiotic--the world is in mourning for a guy they barely knew whose major achievement was contributing to the destruction of a major city? Post-WWs own movie, the idea that she's been in hiding for a century feels really wrong--she doesn't feel like the character who was so engaging in her own film. I actually kind of like Affleck's version of the character but he also doesn't really make sense in this cobbled-together patchwork of a universe. Cyborg is not a character here, he's a plot device. Flash and Aquaman are funny and engaging but in very disjointed ways.

Just bad. What a waste of characters, money, you name it.

Mark Millar has just been blathering about how DC can never make a good movie because their superheroes aren't interesting for films, they don't have real personalities. That's a dumb position. These characters can work--but their need someone like Kevin Feige as the master of ceremonies, someone who gets the characters and has real affection for them. They really should just push out the James Wan Aquaman movie and then just scrap the rest and start over--keep making Wonder Woman movies with that production team and then rebuild everything else up.

The problem with DC's movies aren't the characters, it's the writers they put in charge of those characters (Zak Snyder) and the execs who have no patience for anything that isn't an immediate commercial hit. Just in the 5 years since Man of Steel was a modest success at the box office, they've changed direction on the entire range of DC movies multiple times, mostly because they just clearly do not have a coherent plan or the patience to let their current plan play out past the last weekend's take.

I was honest to god surprised that it was as bad as it was.

I liked it and was surprised it wasn't worse. They managed to piece together a coherent film that mostly held together despite clear structural issues (thanks to Warner's inability to keep a plan together), divergent tonal shifts (two directors) and the legacy narrative bits it had to deal with from the Snyder movies.

I'm just going to go ahead and shove my two cents in here :  Sure, writers and people who give a shit helps, but DC heroes are not very interesting.  Especially the JL big forerunners.  They're supposed to be 'as Gods' and, frankly, Gods are boring as SHIT.

Give me the Marvel Fallible any day.

It all comes down to the people in charge. Thor is a shit character, a literal god, and they made Ragnarok some sort of slapstick horseshit. Which is great and watchable. Comic book characters are pretty universally miserable, DC just suffers more because they used up their entire power vocabulary with Superman.

I saw this last week on HBO and even with my expectations at rock-bottom.  Fuck, this was bad.  A complete snooze fest as I nodded off about hour into it.   

And why did some of the characters have fake CGI faces?  WTH was up with that?
 

Superman was under contract to do another movie, in which he had a mustache.  Rather than buy out his contract, or negotiate for a delay, they decided to CGI-ify away the 'stache.

As said already, fake mustaches aren't a new thing, I suspect you can get some pretty convincing ones cheaper than a single CGI manipulated frame.

Not that the mustache would have saved this movie. It had more problems than you can count. They even reduced Wonder Woman from a hero in her own movie to a vessel for sexual innuendo, coworker harassment, and individual body parts to be gazed at by the camera (ass cheeks mostly.) Not that I complain about the last part, her body is the best thing about the movie, but still. That must have hurt after a film that was lauded for its female empowerment.

I didn't know about the moustache, but it is a better story than the one they filmed.

On the personality/god thing. They don't have to have no personality and they don't have to be gods. These films are made by professional film makers who are supposed to be capable of creating a character with a personality and selling that character in <120 minutes. It is literally their job.

Fuck sake Lois and Clark managed it.

Marvel can animate each individual hair on a god damn raccoon and DC can't manage to wipe off a mustache.

Marvel can make you believe in a talking raccoon as a legitimate character in the first place.

To be fair, I doubt Marvel could do it with Zac Snyder directing.

I just couldn't get past the baby mouthed Superman. I bowed out before they even showed anything else. It's just so jarring that a major motion picture company to leave that garbage in.

I mean, shit, have Superman grow a scraggly beard to go with the stache while he's dead and then have him be Hobo Superman for the rest of the film until he redons the suit at the very end, why not? Anything but what they did.

The other movie that he needed the mustache for was Mission Impossible. Fake mustaches don't really cut it quite as well when they need to stay firmly on during stunts and fight scenes.

I don't really care about the Scientologist Supremes beards, so why should I care about the mustaches in his movies.  :rimshot:

I … don't … Snyder Cut For Real (https://tvline.com/2020/05/20/justice-league-zack-snyder-cut-released-hbo-max/)
… ok.

I bet there are few cool scenes but its still a big pile of steaming grimdark crap.

Give or take a few cool scenes.

Oh dear. This can only end in tears.

Like, I want to see what happens when Snyder has literally no filter, but....

--Dave

I'm actually curious - what if (shockingly) this turns out to be good?  Better than the version we saw by a lot.  Do they then say, "Just kidding - this is the official version"?  Do they build off of it?

That's like saying "What if QAnon is real and completely right about everything?" The shitty things about BvS and Justice League have Snyder's long-established bad judgment all over them.

The extended cut of Batman v Superman would seem to argue against this even being a possibility. It will be longer, grimmer and more blue-toned.

You guys did note the word shockingly, right?  We all expect this effort to fall far short of the incredibly low bar of being better than the theatrical version. 

Still, there are some things this version could do that the theatrical one did not - it could carry through elements from BvS and give them a payoff.  It might even course correct for some of those mistakes instead of ignoring them.  I'll be curious to see how enthusiastic Affleck and Cavill are to record new material (voice?  or even suit up for something?) for it.  And it is interesting that as plans for this progressed, Cavill started to show more interest in returning to the role.

However,  if I were DC, I'd be doing an entire reboot under our noses.  I'd reboot Smallville on HBOMAX with the secret plan that it was setting the rules, stage and background for a new cinematic DC universe.  It'd spend 40 to 80 hours over 3 to 5 years slowly introducing and normalizing the features of the DC universe so that they could then jump to films with the minimal background in the film that we usually get and the full background for the nerds in the shows. 

Clark Kent as a high school kid for a season, then him spending a couple seasons in college going into journalism (giving them an excuse to visit Gotham, Star City, encounter/discover ageless characters like Wonder Woman, etc...) and then end it with him getting a job at the Daily Planet in a season finale that goes into a big summer film two months later that gives us a new Superman. If you started that effort now, you could get set up for it to pay off in films at just the right time for people to overlook the current trainwrecks.  It'd suck to lose the Wonder Woman franchise, but you could do two more films before they had to reboot there.

That will not happen. We know that will not happen. They had that sort of opportunity tailor-made before Justice League even began filming. They could have used the successful launches of both the Arrow and Flash TV shows to set the stage for a Justice League movie. Instead, they decided that they didn't want their movies sullied by all this TV show stuff so they forced the TV shows to kill off characters that were going to be in the movies so there wouldn't be any consumer confusion (Deadshot being the specific example of this). WB has shown a particular lack of foresight and myopia where using TV series is concerned.

Is it dumb? Fuck yes. The cast of their TV properties have all done pretty well with the characters they've used especially considering the budget constraints and in some cases bad writing. As badly as Marvel failed on their integration with the TV shows and the MCU, WB has done infinitely worse, and there is no indication they have even the slightest interest or ability in rectifying that situation.

WB has a long history of being stupid on this particular point--that somehow it creates confusion if you let multiple versions of the same character be around at the same time in different media or adaptations. They did that shit all the way back to the Dini/Timm Batman cartoon, and it's never made any real sense.

You're assuming they can't learn from their mistakes. 

Which... yeah.  Correct.

As I said, if *I*were running these DC properties, that would be my plan.

On a side note: In the Arrowverse we now have cast Superman, Batman (in appearance at least), Flash, Martian Man Hunter, Hawkman, Firestorm, and potentially Green Lantern.  We've also nearly And they set up a Hall of Justice.  I am betting that 2022 or 2023 we get a crossover even that features the origin of the Justice League, and has it with Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.

I kind of feel like the Arrowverse is going to wind down in the next 2-3 years. They've sort of squandered some of the goodwill by struggling to keep forward momentum in their best shows, the cheapness of the look is starting to take a toll, and now they've got the headache of having to recast Batwoman.

I think they'll keep it alive a lot longer.

* Legends, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and The Arrow/Canaries show likely will not have long lives.  I would not be surprised if all 4 exit in 2020 to 2021 (I know they will not return until 2021 - but we may get an announcement that the shows will be entering their final season at some point).
* Flash will continue - and I think it will have a Supernatural length run.
* Superman and Lois will become a flagship for them.
* Batwoman will continue for a few seasons if they find a good replacement - if not it may fold, but...
* I expect that they'll secure the ability to do a Batman show once they do end Batwoman.
* I also expect we'll get an actual team show with better characters than Legends.  Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, etc...
* I also expect them to cross over into the Stargirl series if it is a hit.

The should just cancel Batwoman. It's a total loss. It's way too grimdark to follow the successful formula the other DC shows have.

I saw the Stargirl pilot and it left me feeling pretty meh. Other DC shows I watch hooked me from the very beginning.

I just watched it.  It has a different esthetic and build.  They may need some time to find their footing.  It wasn't horrible, so they hve me for at least 5 episodes.

I haven't watched Stargirl yet, but based on the current slate, I don't expect them to wind down the Arrowverse anytime soon. I give the Flash about 2 more seasons minimum before they end it. They are still doing another Legends season and while I love that show for how silly it is, holy shit is it silly.

They've already established the Justice League in the Hall of Justice, and Supergirl has that team doing a version of the Watchtower. They have plenty of room to run this thing into the ground.

I was surprised to see Superman & Lois appear in the "Coming Soon" on the CW Roku app. I have heard nothing about it, but I dig the actor/character take they've done on Superman so far.

Superman and Lois sounds like it has the most potential of any of the new spinoffs.

Superman and Lois is about Superman and Lois raising 2 super kids in Metropolis. I don't expect it to start out as straight Superman stories, but the evolution to that will likely be short.  If you recall that Diggle was moving to Metropolis at the end of the Arrow and found a green glowing something in something that crashed from space, they set him up to be part of the show (whether that was a GL ring to pay off on all those hints or Kryptonite).

As for Stargirl - it takes place in a different universe.  It is a universe with most of the trappings of Old Earth 2.  Basically, gorgeous 'teen' (young looking twenty year old actress) in tight clothes doing gymnastic fighting while fondling a giant rod.  So, yeah.  It will definitely have an audience.  The budget for the show looks bigger than other Berlanti shows first episodes, I think.  The pilot had some decent action, but the main character was not compelling to me.  

I think that Stripey has the potential to be the show's Jar Jar Binks.

How so?  Just a universally annoying character?  Or did you find him offensive somehow? 

I mean, "accidentally" giving your hot teen stepdaughter your rod and then realizing she got in trouble isn't exactly a father of the year story.

Nah he's just annoying. So far at least. I'll probably give it a season and see where it goes. Maybe Starman was just a dick for treating him the way he did.

This sounds super pervy when taken out of context.

Really.  You don't say.   

We can't tell Momma about our little secret. 
Invite some of your friends to join us. 
I gave my friends some of those special toys you told me not to tell anyone about.
Ooops, you got in trouble... time for a little medical procedure.
 

The stuff about Whedon recently is super-depressing, by the way. Including that *after* getting his "I do strong female characters" armor badly dented, he *insisted* on a scene where the Flash lands on Wonder Woman in the missionary position to the point that Gal Gadot apparently told him "get a body double, because I won't do it".

As far as I can tell from the ads, the Snyder Cut adds:

Vulko!
BAD CGI DARKSEID!!! FUCK YEAH!!! AUTEUR TIME BABY!
Meme Joker Played By Worst Joker Actor!
Steppenwolf Looks Less Like He Is Coated In Dirt and More Like He Is a Cheap Action Figure Bathed in Solder.

I expect it to be utter pretentious incoherent shit. However, I do plan on getting my 2nd vaccine shot and then watching this shit while my arm falls off.

So this is also 4:3 aspect ratio? And two hours longer than the widely-panned original?

Is DC just fucking trolling now?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/18/22337756/snyder-cut-aspect-ratio-justice-league-hbo-max-warning

That article explains it is because Snyder primarily intended the movie to be seen on IMAX. Ok, sure, sure. [back away slowly]

I can't wait to hear the conspiracy theory howling from the loons who wanted this about why it doesn't instantly eclipse every MCU movie in terms of critical praise and audience attention.

Most of the twitter reviews I've seen have been positive. Seeing as how I consider 300 the best Snyder movie I've seen, I'll wait a bit before I see it for myself.

300 is indeed his best movie, and it's pretty bad.

DC movies reflect the comics pretty well. A bunch of crap, with a few spots of good Batman.

Marvel continues to show why they've always been the best!

I watched half, I thought this was going to be released in parts and not all at once. I don't honestly remember enough about the original to tell if this is an overall improvement but the parts I did remember like Steppenwolf vs the amazons are much better in this one.

Four fucking hours?

I'm an hour and can only watch it in bursts. No fucking way I'm putting 4 contiguous hours into this.

It's shit, btw. A lot of the CGI is goddamn terrible, even in comparison to the theatrical release. The 4:3 aspect ratio is distracting and terrible. The only thing that seems like it might be good is the expanded Cyborg storyline involving his dad. The Wonder Woman fighting the terrorists bit at the beginning is worse in just about every way.

I won't even watch old Star Trek when it is 4:3, and I kinda like Star Trek.  WTF.

Oh good. I thought there might be something wrong with me when I turned it off halfway through and watched an episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine instead. He's found a way to make super heroes boring and he smeared grim-dark sauce all over Victor. Honestly, Wonder Woman and the Flash were the only two who made it out alive.

The acting in this is pretty fucking terrible. Some of the characters just feel wrong ie Ezra Miller as Flash, Batfleck, Alfred, etc. It just feels like a bad, lazy copy of previous work. Music is almost distractingly awful.

I don't know. This just doesn't seem very good. I stopped watching sometime after the Gal Gadot infodump.

I still do not understand why people employ Zac Snyder.

There are other filmmakers I dislike but I understand why they get hired. Hi there JJ Abrams! But why do people keep hiring Zac Snyder? His films are bad, expensive, and they make unnecessary drama but no money. I don't get it.

I think one part of it when it comes to DC is that Snyder plus his partners were able to argue to Warner Brothers executives who hated comics and thought comics were for kids that they had a 'take' on comics that would make them art--Goyer's connection to Nolan and the Blade films gave him credibility in particular. So they were able to say to WB people, "look, we get it, you think this stuff is shit and you can't stand it, but we're gonna give you money AND prestige because we're going to continue Snyder's record of adapting the really artistic comics like Dark Knight Returns, just like Watchmen and 300, and just look at the box office, people AND critics love that high-toned stuff." The WB people didn't like and didn't care about comics, so that all sounded perfectly fine to them. So when BvS significantly underperformed expectations, they were like "hey what" and when the MCU was suddenly making asstons of money even when it was Ant-Man or whatever, they did what suits always do: "guys, do it like those guys". Then they panicked more because they realized Goyer and Snyder couldn't do it like those guys and then Snyder was taken out of the whole thing by a family tragedy, so they said "quick quick who do we call? oh, Joss Whedon? that sounds good". In the meantime they were also like whoa people liked Wonder Woman and that was kind of fun shit who knew.

They must have made some money* otherwise he wouldn't have gone from Man of Steel to Batman v Superman and finally Justice League (which he didn't finish, originally).

* off the books, of course, on the books all Hollywood movies don't make money

Edit: to

Man of Steel more than doubled it's budget in money made; BvS did even better, while Justice League did worse. I can see the argument for the Snyder Cut, that without him at the helm it under-performed. I'm not saying it's the correct take, but it makes sense from a Hollywood perspective.

That said, I've only seen Man of Steel (which I thought was decent) but I liked 300 and Sucker Punch so my judgment is clearly suspect compared to the f13 hivemind.

Watchmen was a decent adaption of the Comic, and actually improved on it in some respects. I still watch it now and again. Snyder seems to do ok when he has a story to work with and people nail his feet to the ground, much like Lucas. Giving him creative freedom seems to be disastrous.

The fantasy action bits of Sucker Punch were great. That Dragon fighting the Bomber was bad-ass. Anything outside those scenes was WTF.

God, I finally made it through this. What an arduous journey.

It's not good, by any stretch of the imagination. It's certainly not "worth" going through 4 goddamn hours to get to the new stuff that is actually better than the theatrical version. That said, the final set piece is a huge improvement over the theatrical release. It makes more sense and flows better, not to mention the fact that Flash actually has a much better role (they never even go into the "I've never fought anyone" thing). However, once it's done, there's another 20+ minutes, some of which has a tenuous grip on being necessary.

Synder never needs to be given this much leeway, because with both this and BVS, he's shown that having more stuff filmed doesn't necessarily mean he can give us more interesting story. It's not. It's 3 hours of fiddle farting around with like 2 set pieces before we ever even see Superman. It's a lot of pretentiousness and self-importance, and grimdark moping.

Which is better, theatrical or this? Neither. They both have their moments and both are overall bad movies.

It's better than the theatrical in that it's coherent and doesn't spend half an hour making "Superman makes everyone else redundant" jokes. It's too long by at least an hour, and that includes all the alternate reality bullshit.

--Dave

I agree with this. The "Knightmare" scene at the end was just :uhrr:; it didn't need to be there. If they were just looking for a fancy way to intro the Martian Manhunter, they could have just cut to Bruce waking up without the nightmare and walked out to meet him. Also, kinda shitty way to intro MM, but whatever at this point.

I actually enjoyed spending more time trying to build origins for the team members that didn't already have stand-alone movies. The first movie was a mess in that regard, and all this shows is that WB has no interest in investing in a proper DC cinematic universe; they can't get beyond "but we have comic franchise? why it no print monies?".

The sad thing is that they have not been wrong, their DC universe crap might not be making MCU levels money but it's still raking in hundreds of millions per movie.

Haven't watched it, but from what I've read it sounded like part of the reason for some of the stuff at the end (which I believe was filmed just for this cut) was to have a scene with Batman and Leto Joker together.

That post-apocalypse scene was completely unnecessary in that it seemed to exist for no reason whatsoever than to show Leto's Joker riffing with Batman (with everyone else in the scene being window dressing) and whatever reason Superman seemed to be on Darkseid's side. Introing Martian Manhunter was fine, except for how many questions his inclusion caused.


Knowing Synder's plan was to make 7 goddamn JL movies (with this one being the 3rd after Man of Steel and BVS), I know that he was dropping seeds for future movies. Going Darkseid as the villain in the 3rd film smacks of the same kind of "we can't wait to world build" problems that caused such problems in BVS. Better to have made Luthor the villain in this movie with Deathstroke and other "Legion of Doom" type villains, then lead up to Darkseid but that requires some kind of patience.

He was trying to (ineptly) reproduce the new origin for the Justice League in the New 52, which I strongly suspect was in turn an inept execution of an origin that Snyder and Johns had scribbled onto napkins in conversations leading up to the New 52--a lot of the New 52 in retrospect looks to me like an attempt to align the DC Universe behind a Snyder-friendly aesthetic (it launches two years or so before Man of Steel, so I think Snyder must have already been signed and plans were underway for Man of Steel in 2013; New 52 comics appear in 2011 as Thor and Captain America appear and the Avengers film is on the horizon.

In the comic, the New 52 Justice League don't know each other, don't like each other much at first meeting, and the only thing that brings them together is an attack from Apokolips, which establishes the need to have a JL. It's all very heavy metal and loud and unsubtle and full of scowls and grimdarkery.

I have a theory that the reason the Snyder Cut got made was so that the studios would have a failure to point to for a reason to fire him for someone else.

The reason it got made was to sell more HBO Max subscriptions.

They already had underperformance to point to--I mean, Man of Steel and BvS did fine but not MCU money hats fine. I don't think they had any remaining need to cut ties with Snyder. I think they said, "sure, why not? these maniacs who want it will all subscribe to HBO Max, and it's not that expensive to make".

Plus: they were probably also a teeny bit guilty about the circumstances under which Snyder quit during postproduction. Well, probably not, it's studio executives. But who knows, maybe there were some potential legal consequences that this helps to avoid.

Edit: jeezus, they spent 70 million on this. So much for not that expensive.

Money Laundering.  :awesome_for_real:

It is indeed money laundering.

https://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-money

Wait... they spent 70 MILLION on a goddamn overlong direct-to-streaming director's cut for a movie that wasn't even that popular or well-received to begin with?

... the fuck?

I'm sure money laundering definitely has something to do with it, but goddamn it's amazing how Warner Bros. (or ATT or whoever owns them this week) just seems to get off on throwing good money after bad.

The sad thing is.. the Snyder cut is proving to be popular, from what I've seen online. It might have also been the cause of a fairly decently sized chunk of subscriber growth for HBO Max.

I do not understand it, nor shall I try to.

HBO Max is significantly more expensive than something like Disney+ so WB doesn’t need nearly as many new subscribers to cover the costs. E.g. let’s assume half that budget is not laundered money (money being paid back to WB), and the monthly cost of HBO Max is $14.99 and the average subscription length is 3 months.That would mean they would need ~800,000 new subscribers to pay the real costs ($35,000,000 / ($14.99 *3)).

To be fair, HBO Max does have a surprising amount of content, from classic movies to foreign films, animated stuff, etc. It's not the entire WB catalog, but it's probably pretty goddamn close and that's before you even add the HBO content. Not whoring for them, but it's decent and the app isn't terrible.

DC fans are an outspoken minority of neck beards, who may or may not comprise a silent majority of nerds who feel the marvel movies are too mainstream. Or something that convoluted.  Had a guy once told me that BvS was actually good because the Batman in BvS despite being called Bruce Wayne is really Thomas Wayne from Flash Point, which means that everyone saying Batman was acting out of character is wrong and Zack Synder is doing the lords work. These are the people who are loving the synders cut.

It’s a shame that WB release maybe one good movie a year on average. I think out of any major studio, they have the worst output.

They do have some good older releases on there - I watched Point Break (the original) for the first time in my life the other night. They also have a few decent Bergman/Fellini/Cocteau/Kurosawa flicks in their arsenal.

Yeah there are a good amount of classic movies on there. I think it's mostly been the past 10-15 years or so where WB has averaged maybe one good movie a year.

I generally liked it except for the bullshit at the end. Much more coherent (if overstuffed in some places) story arc and the villain actually made a modicum of sense (in comic book terms) in this version.  Still too much slow-mo.  Cut that back and trim it here and there and its a very solid 3 hour movie.

Steppenwolf definitely makes more sense and with the shiny armor he doesn't look as stupid.

The stuff with Cyborg is now really quite good. Flash is a better character in Snyder's version.

The opening bit with Diana and the bomb guys actually detracts from the film now--they seem to have made it as an action sequence they could show off with the character that no one hated.

The other thing that kind of kills the momentum dead for me in either version is "Superman is dead, everyone loves Superman, wait Superman is alive again only pissed, wait now it's not clear he's coming in time", etc. In both versions, Superman kind of kills narrative momentum. But this version gets rid of the dumb Whedon joking about how Superman is EZ Mode and doesn't even need his sidekicks. In some ways this film would have been better if Superman rushed in by himself first and got his ass kicked and needed the other five to save him. Also the Martian Manhunter stuff is just terrible.

Supes is used much better here and the fact that he actually doesn't "save the day" (the Flash does) worked for me. Got an actual LOL out of me when he shows up at the last second and the axe just goes "bong" on his shoulder.

Yeah, once we're past the whole "Death of Superman" mini-arc, Superman is used genuinely well--definitely better than in the Whedon.

So what's going to happen going forward? The Snyder fans seem to think he's going to be put back in charge of the whole DCEU. That's not actually going to happen is it? I'll grant that I enjoyed the more fleshed out background stories but telling them turned the movie into a 4 hour slow motion grind fest. And what's with the Cyborg actor? As far as I can tell he's doing his best to get himself recast unless they give in to Snyder...

Nothing, Batman is getting rebooted, Aquaman and Wonder Woman are going to keep pretending the DCU still exists, I believe Superman is getting rebooted also?

WB doesn't seem to really have a strategy per se, even now, so who knows. If someone had emerged as the strong creative driver of DCU films going forward who was an alternative to Snyder, we'd know it by now. So my guess is that WB execs will just continue to back DCU pitches that come to them via more or less ad hoc logics. They've lost Cavill as Superman and likely Affleck as Batman. The upcoming Batman is being described as a standalone, but I suppose if it does really well they'd just start to look to Pattison to be Batman in any further films (he might not want to be, mind you). There still seems to be a Flash film in the offing but who knows. Aquaman might get a sequel and Wonder Woman might get a sequel, but also who knows.

I wouldn't be that surprised to see them fall all over Gunn after Suicide Squad 2 comes out if that's a big hit, but I am really certain he would have no interest in driving a whole franchise--you can in any event see from the trailer that his visual aesthetic and narrative preferences are essentially incompatible with Snyder's. The only way the two of them could be making DC movies in the future is that if every film stands or falls on its own merits and there is no franchise mentality.

If they decide they really do want to imitate the MCU (probably about a decade too late for that) and have a tightly interwoven IP strategy for DC material, they're going to have to start all over and do it right this time. I'm not even sure that's possible, let alone advisable. Nobody wants another origin movie for Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman or Aquaman, so you'd have to make films about them that just assumes the origin has been covered (a la Tom Holland Spider-Man) and you'd have to decide how to build an actually-connected universe.

I mean, look at Suicide Squad 2: I see Javelin, Crazy-Quilt, Peacemaker, Bloodsport, Savant, Weasel, Rick Flag, the Thinker (I think that's who Capaldi is?) and some others and man there is no way any of those guys fit into the Snyderverse--they're colorful 3rd rank villains who would absolutely not fit into the career of Affleck's secretive, almost urban-folklorish Batman; Wonder Woman has never really operated in public in the Snyderverse; Superman appeared only a year ago; Aquaman also. Aquaman seems sort of astonished at fighting Black Manta--like what is this weird shit? a dude with a costume and laser beams?--not "oh yeah another super villain". You can just barely, BARELY imagine Deathstroke having fought Affleck's Batman in the past--he's a secretive mercenary. And just barely the Joker, who seems in the Snyderverse to just be a gang leader. But all those other guys? Can't be the same universe. It would be like the MCU having the Fantastic Four from the Josh Trank movie show up and say "Oh yeah we've been here since before Iron Man AGGG look at us experiencing grimdark body horror while Rocket Racoon cracks a joke".

The right 'strategy' for WB and DC right now is to stop giving shits about continuity and make good movies. Give directors and writers freedom to do whatever and let people capable of good movies have a go.

They don't even need the MCU's hit rate to be successful. They just need to avoid driving the superman and batman brands into the fucking dirt.

Batman must be one of the easiest superhero IPs imaginable to make money with. Yet people are talking as if WB might actually fail.

It wouldn't be good to give that role to a director unless they plan on not directing since it's a lot of work to do what Kevin Feige does. It's better to give it to a producer-type like a Jerry Bruckheimer (but who is also a comic-book nerd) who knows how to produce movies with different directors but still have the film "feel" like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, which is essentially what Kevin Feige has done with the MCU.

It does somewhat boggle my mind the overall quality and consistency the DC Animated universe has and the burning pile of trash the live action stuff has managed.

Same could be said about most of the newer Star Wars stuff.

Ah well. I guess I'll just wait and see if they get it right within my lifetime. All I know is that I don't want to see Superman "defending" Metropolis against Zod by knocking over skyscrapers and causing god knows how many civilian casualties ever again.

Plainly they're better off just saying "we have lots and lots o' superheroes, guys, make a pitch, we're open for business. We could have three Batman movies in a row with really different takes, it's cool. We are the anti-franchise". It would be the smartest imaginable thing they could do and curiously consistent with the actual history of the DCU.

I've never been into comic books or superheroes. DC and Marvel were all the same to me until they started defining themselves as TV and movie brands. I had no awareness of the original movie, nor of the Snyder/Whedon controversy, nor that the Snyder cut was coming up. I've watched a lot of Marvel movies, but I'm sick of them. I don't think they're particularly good. However, I loved the Netflix Marvel series. I love sci-fi.

A four-hour, 4:3 recut of an action movie intrigues me, in a kind of "what the fuck" way. I've got access to it. Should I watch this thing?

I haven't seen the Synder Cut myself but if you've seen his previous two "SynderVerse" DC movies and didn't hate them then you should probably watch this one too.

Haven't seen them.

It's hard to tell whether you'd like any of them; about half the dislike for them is about Snyder's visual style and narrative management (he has trouble telling a story efficiently unless he's working tightly from someone else's story), and about half is about tonality and characterization that many fans of the characters intensely dislike. People who don't know comics either love or hate the former; the second issue is (mostly) about how different people feel about comics, though there are people who just find the dark tones and moods of his movies kind of unfun regardless of what they're about. It's worth at least watching a bit of Justice League to see how you feel about it, probably--there are people who absolutely love his stuff and there are those who at least find it watchable and diverting.

You could just stop if you don't like it, don't get HBO max just for this but no reason not to check it out if you already have it.

Heh, they are going to do the opposite. They just cancelled DuVernay's New Gods and Wan's The Trench.

Seriously? What a mess.

They are transparently jealous of the MCU's success and always have been. Everything they have done has been an attempt to replicate that success, even though they have not laid any of the groundwork. Going from Man of Steel right into Batman vs Superman (which also introduced Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor and Doomsday) is the classic example of trying to run before you can walk. On paper it looks like DC had 4 movies before JL compared to Marvel's 5 before Avengers, but Suicide Squad barely counts (since none of them featured in JL at all) and BvS is already a crossover movie. Having MoS, Wonder Woman, a second Superman movie and a standalone Batman movie before Batman vs Superman would have felt like a complete Tier of movies; from there, you do Aquaman, Wonder Woman 2, and maybe Flash before Justice League and you've finally started to build investment in a universe.

Well, right, but you also have to decide on some shared ground rules even if you have films that are ranging widely in mood or style. It's not just a matter of how many films, but how the films do some shared world-building. If you look at the MCU, basically Iron Man + Thor + Captain America establish: *why do people start dressing up in colorful spandex and fighting in public? *are there superpowers in this universe? Ok, where do they come from? *what creates interactions between these characters? *how does each film change the universe's status quo?

BvS was the unforgiveable fuck-up in the DCU sequence. If it had been "a relatively new secretive urban vigilante is alarmed by the emergence of Superman and begins to research rumors of other metahumans; he confronts Superman but discovers the real enemy is Lex Luthor", that could have worked. But once it was "Batman's been around for 20 years and oh yeah is determined to kill Superman because Superman is dangerous oh yeah here come those panels from Miller's Dark Knight Returns yeeeeeahhhh" the whole thing fell apart--it was kind of like DC scrambling to figure out what its continuity actually was after Crisis on Infinite Earths (do these characters know each other? for how long? what stories still happened and are remembered? what stories never happened? ok, let's reinvent that character! but wait most of the others are still the same, so do they know the new one?). You pull the wrong jenga stick out of the tower and the whole thing falls down.

If they actually do decide to continue the Snyderverse they're never going to be able to fix that problem. They're pointing towards an Injustice League film, but where are the characters for that going to come from? Zuckerberg Luthor only has one go-round with Superman, it's hardly a lifetime grudge (Superman is barely even aware of Luthor, really). The Joker and Deathstroke are being shoehorned into what we've been told is a secretive, hidden, rumored career of the Batman. I guess they'd do Black Manta for Aquaman, we've seen him in one film and he does have a pretty lasting villain motivation now. Wonder Woman has no continuing enemies and doesn't seem even all that motivated up until the JL film to be a superhero per se, she just occasionally goes around malls and beats up muggers or terrorists for the occasional kicks. I guess you could say "oh wait somehow the Cheetah got Cheetah-ed again". Flash doesn't have enemies yet. Now we're told Martian Manhunter's been around for decades too but come on. Cyborg doesn't have enemies. And like I said, there is absolutely no way that Gunn's Suicide Squad characters make even the remotest sense in the Snyderverse as it has been established.

I agree with all of that.

That actually seems to have been the strategy they've taken since Wonder Woman's success with things going forward. The movies that are tied to Justice League will kind of sort of acknowledge that there's a bigger universe out there, but nothing more than passing mentions. They are treating any comic pitch now as a standalone, focusing on trying to make good films instead of one universe franchise. But this is WB, and it's now owned by AT&T, and one thing both those companies have in common is the inability to freak out and change their strategy mid-stream if they think it won't make enough money. The relative success of the Snyder Cut (there does actually seem to be some positive buzz about it, mostly because there are some parts that are improved even if the whole is still a bad movie) has got the talk of returning to the Snyderverse an option.

The Snydercut wasn't a *bad* movie, except for being still going 30 minutes after it ended. It just lacked a foundation. Infinity War/Endgame (neither holds together alone) was longer. But it built on 30 hours of spade work, and JL Snydercut had, on a generous take, 5 hours worth.

An origin movie for Flash and Cyborg, some more Martian Manhunter cameos, some actual fucking worldbuilding, we'd have had a Thing. This was not an earned Thing.

--Dave

That's all it comes down to: Snyder had some comics panels and stories in his head, he didn't have the patience to build an actual saga in the deepest oldest sense of that word. And his partners hated comic books or just wanted the money man. So no world-work, no long-form narrative, no slow (or medium) burns. Just "Batman Hates Superman Kills Superman Whoops Wishes He Hadn't Wonder Woman Been Around Hey Batman Actually Your Dreams Are About Ancient Evil Ok Sorry Wish I Hadn't Let's Get Aquaman and Flash and Shit Oh Hey Plot-Important Black Robot Guy Let's Fight Demons Oh Fuck We Need Superman McGuffin Says Here's Superman But He's Fighty and Bitey Let's Fight Demons Here's Superman Batman Likes You Now Duh-da-Dah Justice League! Now Martian Manhunter and Also We Totally Planned on Lex Luthor and Injustice League Stuff Really We Did. Wait I Ran Out of Comics Panels.

Saga is a real meaningful concept here--you follow a character or maybe some characters through thick and thin and the best ones eventually build to some explosive shit. You do not do the explosive shit at the beginning or have in mind something that Njal has just got to be doing after 20 years of blood feud and trolls and shit that you decide to skip to.

Sure, but I think people overstate the quality of the world building in the MCU by comparison.

Mostly they just have better writers and directors. And better source material.

The first Avengers film was the best one, and the world building that came before it was pretty trivial. Three origin movies and a couple of post credits scenes with Sam Jackson. And Avengers 1 works fine if you haven't seen any of them.

The first MCU end credits thing that I know of was on the Edward Norton 2008 Incredible Hulk Movie, and that was with Stark.

Of course that was one of the few MCU movies I have actually seen so I'm not the demographic to know this stuff.

I read around a bit on why the fuck people keep hiring Zac Snyder, and surprisingly often the answer that comes up is 'because he isn't a dick and people like working with him'.

You know what, I'm going with that. If WB want to bury a money pit because the architect is a nice guy, well it means the world makes more sense than if it is for any other reason that has been suggested.

If that's the reason, I have to say fair enough. Just give the guy a storyboard or an already written story and he is fine. Watchmen proved that.

You are ascribing a level of empathy to Warner Bros that feels unwarranted. A more likely explanation is that they couldn't / can't find anybody else better.

Edit: they

Shush.

Stop spoiling my happy moment of the world making a little sense in one small but wholesome way.

I don't think it's any of the above--which is not to rule out the thought that Snyder may be a pretty chill guy that actors or producers are happy to work with.

I think it takes basically remembering the sequence of things here:

WB owns comic-book characters. Once upon a time, more valuable comic-book characters than Marvel (Batman and Superman). Superman makes ok money in 1978, not Star Wars money, and it's kind of a weird deal, but hey. Batman movies make a lot of money when made by Tim Burton, and then less money when made by Joel Schumacher. Oh well, says WB, let it sit for a bit. They try another Superman movie in 2006 because man, those Spider-Man movies directed by Raimi made some good $$$, and well that doesn't go so well. Let it sit for a bit. But on the other hand at the same time they make a Batman movie made by an arty director that the critics really like and it does really really well AND the critics like it. And then they make the sequel to that and holy balls they make lots and lots of money and the critics love it and the dead actor wins an award and wow.

WB suits don't really know comics and they don't like them much but damn they do like how those Batman movies did. Well, Nolan doesn't want to make more, but there's this other guy Goyer who is kind of part of the project and he's willing to do more--and like the suits, he actually thinks comics are kind of dumb. Win-win! And in the meantime, WTF look at Marvel, they've made SIX comic book movies in between Batman Begins and Dark Knight Rises and they've made MEGA MONEY, especially with The Avengers. WB says: get us in the game, coach!

Goyer says We need a guy who is good at comic-book movies. Zac Snyder is good at comic-book movies! 300! Watchmen! And the critics sort of like him? And he kind of wants to make comic superheroes more adult and serious? WB guys say: that's our boy then, here is money, go go go. And voila! Man of Steel! Sign us a big deal! Let's catch up with Marvel! Bring us the money!

I think Snyder and Goyer were guys who looked like they had a plan, and WB were guys who needed guys who had a plan, and the guys who looked like they had a plan were able to get the WB guys to overcommit a lot of resources and ink a lot of deals. It wasn't under Wonder Woman that they began to wonder whether they needed more baskets and some eggs from other chickens.

No need to overcomplicate the basic tenet that DC Sucks and Marvel Rules.

DC formula: put your briefs on over your pants and slap your gender to the end of your name. Why would anyone expect a lot of of these folks?

The guy has done a number of movies I don't like and at least a couple I do but he has at least a general level of competence even at his worst. As far as "how many chances will Hollywood give this guy?" types go, Snyder is nowhere near one of the more egregious examples. Not even in the top 100.

I've been grumpy about Zac Snyder being given money to make movies ever since people who should know better convinced me to sit through 300.

So I might be guilty of not giving him a chance at this point.

But I sat through MoS with a reasonably open mind, and through BvS for reasons I forget - I was being held hostage possibly. And they were really bad. I mean really bad.

Latest reporting on the Ray Fisher vs. Joss Whedon and Geoff Johns thing: WB execs say on background that Fisher is Zac Snyder's pawn who is using him to force WB to give him back the DC Universe. Fisher is like "wow, talk about fucking demeaning, like I can't have my own ideas". So like who knows what is going on, really. But you certainly can see from the Snyder cut why Fisher in specific really hated Whedon's guts and likely vice-versa, because Cyborg's story is pretty much the backbone of Snyder's Justice League and he's a minor character in Whedon's version. But on the other hand you can see why Whedon might have wanted him cut aside from strong black character or whatever--because Cyborg's plot is impossible to make funny or upbeat plus it eats a lot of running time. (FWIW, it's how Cyborg's story is characterized in everything BUT the funny Teen Titans cartoon--he's always been a broody character who has a very complicated relationship with a father who both loves him and is the cause of his current condition. Snyderverse Cyborg is really close to Young Justice Cyborg is really close to Doom Patrol Cyborg. It's even a bit what he was in the anime-serious Teen Titans, though on the lighter side and without so much backstory.)

The whole article is worth a read if you are interested in such things:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/ray-fisher-opens-up-about-justice-league-joss-whedon-and-warners-i-dont-believe-some-of-these-people-are-fit-for-leadership

Pretty much every mainline marvel movie had an "after credit" scene.  They really didn't pick up with the "mid credit" and "after credit" thing until phase 2.               
- IM 1 had Fury           
- Hulk's Stark scene wasn't "end credit" I don't think though. I think it was the second last scene in the movie (pretty sure the last scene is Banner Meditating in the BC wilderness cabin).             
- Im 2 had something, cant remember what though.               
- Thor had the Fury Teseract tease with Loki manipulating the Scientist guy.                 
- Cap Am had Fury again telling Cap he has a "mission".           
- And of course Avengers had the schwarma scene + I think a direct Thanos Tease.

I don't doubt that Whedon was probably horrible for a lot of people to work for. I also have no doubt that it sucks to sign on for something like Justice League as one of your first roles only to have the part you signed up for completely change while in the middle of making the movie. That said, whatever larger complaint Fisher has gets kinda undercut by complaints about stuff like being asked to say "booyah" because the animated version of the character says it. A good chunk of the complaint here seems to be that Fisher attempted to have some creative input regarding Cyborg and was shut down, which isn't too surprising. I generally wouldn't expect the creative heads of a Hollywood blockbuster to take story notes from the least experienced lead actor on the set.

Whedon literally requested feedback then wouldn't let him or others comment. Whedon threatened to end Gadot's career.

I sort of get his "booyah" issue, although I'm surprised how sensitive he is to it, given how young he is.

I didn't really watch the Snyder Cut but everyone says he played a huge, emotion role in it. I can understand how he'd be upset at the thought of Whedon ditching that and turning him into Stepin Fetchit.

You're probably right, haven't seen the movie since 2008.  :why_so_serious:

Reading that piece, and everything else coming out about Whedon, I got the impression it wasn't so much the fact of the specific Booyah as the way Whedon apparently insists on a pointlessly aggressive way of communicating with everyone working for him.

I can only imagine what an ass a guy like that would be after being called in to fix something widely expected to be bad.

Is there some racist connotation for the word Booyah that I am unaware of here?

Wondering about that too. And how is what happened to Cyborg's role any worse than what happened with the Flash? The cries of racism aren't making much sense to me here.

I don't think there is anything specific about the word, it's just that it's a kind of silly catchphrase that really makes no sense in the context of how Cyborg is characterized in what had been filmed by the time Whedon came on board. I think it just became the focal point of Whedon's struggle with the existing cast--he was brought on board to "fix" a film they'd largely already made and it seems pretty clear that he came into that with an aggressive frame of mind that was predisposed to see everybody already involved with the film in antagonistic terms. Since Fisher was the person getting the worst cuts, I think he and Whedon just squared off over the word as a sort of focal point for their larger struggle.

I'm kind of reminded of an anthropological film called Nisa--it's focused on a single Kung!San woman in Namibia (the people who have sometimes been called "Bushmen"). About halfway through the film, it's transitioning from a fairly conventional "this is what life is like for Nisa, these are the ways of her people" to a film that's more and more breaking the fourth wall--she is talking more with the people behind the camera about the entire idea of the documentary and some of her discomfort with it, and we're hearing more and more of their dialogue with her (on purpose). Then suddenly the anthropologist working on the film and the crew happen to be around when the guy filming the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy comes around and wants to work with this same group in filming some of the early scenes in the film. There's this hilarious bit where a Kung!San father is supposed to hold up a young child who is greeting him when he comes back from the hunt. The father "gets it wrong" every single take--he does something other than what the director is telling him to do. The director, exasperated, keeps commenting that it just shows how backward these people are, they can't follow a simple direction. But when the film crew leaves, we get a clear picture that the guy they asked to play the father was very deliberately punking the director out of dislike for the whole thing (except for the part about getting paid).

I kind of think Fisher was just determined to let Whedon know he didn't like anything about what Whedon was doing once he realized that most of his work was going to end up on the cutting-room floor and as a result Whedon fixated on making the guy say "Booyah!" as a kind of symbolic sign of submission to Whedon's authority. You can sort of see that in the Hollywood Reporter story in that when they finally filmed the scene, Whedon quotes Shakespeare at Fisher and the quote is very precisely about exactly this point: that actors should obey their playwright.

Coulson + Mjolnir.

To be fair to Fisher, Cyborg and Flash's arcs were much better in the Snyder Cut (as in they actually had arcs), though I did like the chemistry the two actors had in the Whedon cut. Snyder's version cut down Aquaman's part pretty significantly, leaving him bereft of much characterization while the Whedon cut had him with a few more fun lines.

Yeah, Whedon clearly identified Momoa as the guy to bring the fun, and Flash as a secondary source of humor (hence falling on Wonder Woman's tits, etc.) Affleck too, who knows how to deliver sly lines if he gets the chance.  Plus Whedon brought in a bunch of meta-humor because that worked for him on Avengers ("puny god") but it doesn't really work in his cut.

Basically what Khaldun said. It's not just the phrase but the context. Ray himself said (in the article) he didn't mind the word on its own, he just didn't want his character to be like Jimmy Walker or Gary Coleman (I remember liking Good Times and Different Strokes as a child, but I can see how as an adult in the 21st century that's the last thing he'd want to do).  

From Fisher's perspective they wanted his character to be less tragic and more submissive/servile, say ridiculous things in an exaggerated tone/voice and smile more. The only thing left for Bingo is tap dancing.

It's dated now but Hollywood Shuffle had a parody of the kind of character I'm talking about. This clip shows a bit from the parody show that exists in that universe, as well as Robert's struggles to land an acting job:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l4PlS6E-QY&ab_channel=AllJD

Coulson appears throughout Iron Man 1, it was black widow who shows up for the first time in IM2.

We are talking about post credit scenes that set up the next movie, Iron Man 2's was Coulson and Mjolnir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ex_iqmYJA&ab_channel=AfterCreditsScenes