DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...

[Greywind]

12 hours ago, Bazza said:

 

Dano was good in Love & Mercy. 

Also in The Girl Next Door.

[Bazza]

I’ve seen that film, don’t remember him in it. 

[Lord Liaden]

11 hours ago, slikmar said:

Wouldn't it be sad if DCU were the ones to create a viable "Doctor Doom" type villain.

Aside from ruling a country, Black Adam is so radically different from Doom, I'm not worried about comparisons.

[Ternaugh]

Have you ever watched a crappy retelling of an origin story?

 

You Will.

 

And AT&T will bring it to you.

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

I’ve seen that film, don’t remember him in it. 

 

Klitz

[zslane]

\

 

If you are making a Batman movie and this is what your Riddler looks like, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Everyone in Hollywood has a major hard-on for "re-imagining" iconic characters from fiction. 99% of the time these efforts are miserable failures, and all the so-called creative energy that was spent on them would have been better spent creating an entirely new characters.

 

DC still doesn't know what it wants to do. They are rudderless in terms of overall creative direction. Their repeated attempt(s) to get people excited for their piecemeal approach towards cobbling together some semblance of a shared cinematic universe is downright embarrassing at this point. They really should just give up while they are so, so very far behind.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I'm skeptical of Black Adam. I'm not a big fan of movies that try to make me identify with the bad guy (and yes...Black Adam definitely qualifies). Will be seeing all of these films anyways.

 

[Spence]

58 minutes ago, zslane said:

They really should just give up while they are so, so very far behind.

Or maybe hire a production team that actually likes the genre and have them just make movies based on the original works with no attempt to "make it edgy".

[Matt the Bruins]

23 hours ago, death tribble said:

Dano did strike me as a one note actor after There Will be Blood and Cowboys vs Aliens. However I then saw his turn in War and Peace so this should be ok.

He was outstanding as a teen actor in L.I.E., held his own in numerous scenes with Brian Cox, and pretty good conveying deep emotions despite his character being an uncommunicative teen in Little Miss Sunshine. I haven't seen his more recent work, but the foundation of talent is there.

[ScottishFox]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

DC still doesn't know what it wants to do. They are rudderless in terms of overall creative direction. Their repeated attempt(s) to get people excited for their piecemeal approach towards cobbling together some semblance of a shared cinematic universe is downright embarrassing at this point.

 

In fairness to DC what the MCU accomplished over a 10 year arc was something so amazing I can't believe they pulled it off.  I'm watching the movies from the beginning again and there are significant bits that get incorporated all the way to the end.

 

MCU has set a stupidly high bar.  One I don't expect to get surpassed in my lifetime.

[Spence]

1 minute ago, ScottishFox said:

 

In fairness to DC what the MCU accomplished over a 10 year arc was something so amazing I can't believe they pulled it off.  I'm watching the movies from the beginning again and there are significant bits that get incorporated all the way to the end.

 

MCU has set a stupidly high bar.  One I don't expect to get surpassed in my lifetime.

 

No disagreement here.

 

But it may be they (Marvel) realized the necessary ingredients.

 

People who actually like and enjoy the source material. 

 

Understanding that everything doesn't need to be grim dark gritty.

 

An honest good hero is OK.

 

Understanding that some things simply do not transition paper to the screen, but that doesn't mean you have to radically change the original concept.

 

Superhero movies are allowed to be fun.

 

 

[slikmar]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

 

No disagreement here.

 

But it may be they (Marvel) realized the necessary ingredients.

 

People who actually like and enjoy the source material. 

 

Understanding that everything doesn't need to be grim dark gritty.

 

An honest good hero is OK.

 

Understanding that some things simply do not transition paper to the screen, but that doesn't mean you have to radically change the original concept.

 

Superhero movies are allowed to be fun.

 

 

You forgot an important two :

It's ok for heroes to be HEROES.

 

Not every hero is the same. One of the things I think MCU did a fantastic job of was recognizing that Superheroes could be a mega genre with sub genres of war movie, space opera, heist film and spy film.

[zslane]

DC seems to think that their "hyper-realism" approach to superheroes is the critical distinction that sets them apart from the MCU; the one thing that prevents them from being accused of trying to mimic the MCU. And since they don't have what it takes (patience, vision, talent) to embark on the long-form narrative journey that Marvel did, they are doubling-down on their gritty, hyper-realism play instead. But it gets worse. They are also developing this mess of a Flash movie whereby they are dragging previous incarnations of Batman out from the dustbins of nostalgic pop culture and calling it a "multiverse". DC is just so bad at this.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, we have seen significant departures from the "hyper-realism" approach in more recent DC movies, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam!  I think they might be saving it for Bat-movies from now on, where it fits better. That would be fine with me.

[zslane]

I like the idea of a Batman movie dipping its stylistic toes into Noir Detective territory, but the idea of trying to be "realistic" is still ridiculous to me any time you're talking about a costumed crimefighter going up against outrageous, costumed criminals/villains.

[slikmar]

Well, to be fair, not sure its about patience as much as success. If the first Iron Man and the movies that followed hadn't all had at least some level of success, I think you would have seen Marvel change things up too. OF course, as I mentioned, part of what caused said successes was that each character/team who got a movie had 2ndary characters (Colson, Rhody eventually, Fury) tieing them to a greater narrative while the main movie around the starring character could be different for each one.

[unclevlad]

I think the only DC movie I've seen in 20-odd years, would be Dark Knight.  None of the rest offered any appeal.  I think a lot of it was, their "hyper-realism" came across as so much more forced;  it didn't flow from the story, at least from the previews.  Sha-zam of course went completely opposite;  they overplayed the childishness in the previews.  Which might be the executive summary:  they never made it a story element, they made it the entire story.

 

Of note:  I don't mind altering origin stories per se.  Anyone read Straczynski's Superman:  Year One?  The downside is, it's a LOT like Spidey's classic origin...not quite sure about being a hero, considering other options.  But even middle America of 1990-2000, isn't middle America of the 1930's.

[Old Man]

I used to think that DC's problem was Batman.  Specifically, that the successful Batman films have been dark neo-noirs centered on a street-level gadgeteer/martial artist with some psychological issues, so they try to make every other DC movie into a dark neo-noir, and predictably fail.

 

But now I think the problem is they have no Feige or Favreau.  There's no central visionary, just legions of middle management idiots (and, inexplicably, Zack Snyder) all trying to give their own input on a quarter billion dollar movie.   Let's face it, Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey ought to have worked as dark street level neo-noirs but were done in by unbelievably bad writing and rewriting.  The films that have worked are the ones where Patty Jenkins and James Wan were allowed to make their films relatively unmolested--and even they have some gaping plot holes.

 

(Speaking of bad writing, its worth a reminder that Iron Man I had no final script, and Feige didn't solidify control for a couple of years after that.)

[Lord Liaden]

Re the first Iron Man movie, I read reminiscences by Jeff Bridges that they were often rewriting the script for scenes the day they were shooting them, and actors frequently improvised. At first he found that upsetting, until he decided to treat the whole project like a student film.

 

It really is amazing it turned out as well as it did.

[Bazza]

Especially as Iron Man was literally make-or-break for the studio. The line of credit they owed the bank was not insignificant. Several film rights for the characters (or ownership) was used as collateral. 

[zslane]

Iron Man came out the same year that The Dark Knight came out. TDK was the second movie in its series, which meant that DC was already one whole movie ahead of Marvel in terms of potentially establishing a usable continuity/franchise for a shared universe. But DC simply didn't have the vision to walk that path. They sat around and watched Marvel spend the next five years building a cinematic universe one movie and one core character at a time. By 2013 when Snyder's Man of Steel came out, and DC saw what they thought was their ticket to a cinematic universe, they were hopelessly behind and desperate to catch up with Marvel. DC didn't have the patience to step back and build a cinematic universe one movie/character at a time. They didn't have the vision to put one together, nor the creative leadership to make it all happen. And I've seen nothing in the last ten years to suggest that anything has really changed in this regard over at DC.

[Greywind]

Not a fair comparison. Iron Man was stand-alone until it actually did well. Nolan's Batman was just that; Nolan's Batman. It was always and only intended to be a trilogy.

[slikmar]

Suicide Squad movies need to be Dirty Dozen or Magnificent Seven type movies, but with powers. The problem is, as has been mentioned, no one who heads the DCU seems to understand that.

1 minute ago, Greywind said:

Not a fair comparison. Iron Man was stand-alone until it actually did well. Nolan's Batman was just that; Nolan's Batman. It was always and only intended to be a trilogy.

Agreed except for one thing. By throwing Coulson in and having Fury show up, they were hinting at a larger world.

[Greywind]

If they want us to care about the characters they have to establish the characters first. Only characters that stood out in Suicide Squad was Harley and Deadshot.

[zslane]

32 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Not a fair comparison. Iron Man was stand-alone until it actually did well. Nolan's Batman was just that; Nolan's Batman. It was always and only intended to be a trilogy.

 

I feel like that is a false dichotomy. DC could have used Nolan's Gotham City as the basis for a shared universe even without Nolan directing beyond his three Batman films. It would have required a producer like Feige at the helm over at Warner Brothers with the vision to do that and with the mojo to secure Bale as Batman going forward, but they didn't.