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

[Lord Liaden]

Warner Bros. had no vision of creating a multi-franchise shared movie universe, because no one in Western cinema had done anything like that before Marvel. (Toho Studios kind of did it with their kaiju movies, but one can forgive Hollywood studio execs for not considering that a relevant example.) It was a huge gamble, and only after Marvel proved it was not only doable, but potentially enormously profitable, did Warner start trying to play catch-up.

 

I do find it interesting, though, that DC has had much more success with animation and live-action television, arguably surpassing Marvel in those areas. Consistent with zslane's point, those franchises had a principal guiding figure at the helm, Bruce Timm and Greg Berlanti, respectively.

[Matt the Bruins]

I'll give you animation, but I think Marvel has far outdone DC's live action TV efforts with the likes of Agent Carter, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones. The DC shows on the CW can't maintain narrative coherence for a single episode, nevermind across multiple seasons and series.

[death tribble]

Except that Gotham, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash and Supergirl all made it to 5 series which only Agents of Shield has come anywhere near.

[Old Man]

Honestly I don’t even think the shared universe thing is a huge factor. Not nearly as big as the bad writing. Why is Superman an aloof killer? Why did Suicide Squad need two helicopter crash sequences?  Even Aquaman, the highest grossing DCEU film so far, had submarine-sized plot holes. It shouldn’t be this hard. 

[BoloOfEarth]

4 hours ago, Greywind said:

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.

 

QFT.  If I like the characters, I'll forgive a lot - shoddy effects, plot holes, etc.  The more I like them, the more I'll forgive.  Doesn't matter whether it's in a comic, a book, a TV series, or a movie.  The characters are what will bring me back for more. 

 

[Spence]

4 hours ago, Greywind said:

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.

And they were very poor characterizations.  Like most of the DC movies they pass up the source material and zero in on the craptacular pseudo writing by desperate hacks. If they had used the source material from the versions that actually catapulted the characters to fame they might have propped up their "universe" long enough to generate positive results. 

 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

23 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Except that Gotham, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash and Supergirl all made it to 5 series which only Agents of Shield has come anywhere near.

 

This doesn't really say much about the shows, though. The CW shows wouldn't have gone as long on other networks, based on their ratings. CW keeps very low rated shows around longer than any other network. Not to say I don't like the CW shows, because I like most of them, or elements of most of them. They just aren't pulling good enough ratings to last this long on a bigger network.

[Spence]

6 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

This doesn't really say much about the shows, though. The CW shows wouldn't have gone as long on other networks, based on their ratings. CW keeps very low rated shows around longer than any other network. Not to say I don't like the CW shows, because I like most of them, or elements of most of them. They just aren't pulling good enough ratings to last this long on a bigger network.

 

For the general population.  But CWs shows, DC plus all the rest do extremely well for their target audiences.

Everything they have is a Teen Melodrama/Soap. From that angle they are leading the TV pack.

[Pattern Ghost]

24 minutes ago, Spence said:

For the general population.  But CWs shows, DC plus all the rest do extremely well for their target audiences.

Everything they have is a Teen Melodrama/Soap. From that angle they are leading the TV pack.

 

I don't think CW leads the ratings pack in any category. I could be wrong, it's been a while since I've bothered to look at the numbers.

 

The point is, that CW has a lot higher tolerance for lower rated shows than other networks. And the Netflix situation with Disney is no indicator of the quality of the shows, they got yanked from Netflix to spite Disney.

 

All that said, the three seasons we got of Daredevil are far better than any other number of seasons of any of the DC live action shows.

[archer]

30 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

This doesn't really say much about the shows, though. The CW shows wouldn't have gone as long on other networks, based on their ratings. CW keeps very low rated shows around longer than any other network. Not to say I don't like the CW shows, because I like most of them, or elements of most of them. They just aren't pulling good enough ratings to last this long on a bigger network.

 

 

CW keeps around very low rated shows longer because they don't have anything standing ready to replace those shows which would arguably get better ratings.

 

It's been at least two years since I looked much at the CW ratings but back then, those "low-rated" DC superhero shows were among their best rated shows.

 

 

You could argue that any of those shows would draw a much bigger audience, week-in week-out, if it were shown on any network which started off from an inherently larger audience base.

[Pattern Ghost]

Just now, archer said:

You could argue that any of those shows would draw a much bigger audience, week-in week-out, if it were shown on any network which started off from an inherently larger audience base.

 

That's true enough. And I do like the Arrowverse in general. Just making the point that it's hard to make direct comparisons, and ultimately comes down to personal taste. I'm just happy to have a lot of choices in a genre I like.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I don't think CW leads the ratings pack in any category. I could be wrong, it's been a while since I've bothered to look at the numbers.

 

The point is, that CW has a lot higher tolerance for lower rated shows than other networks. And the Netflix situation with Disney is no indicator of the quality of the shows, they got yanked from Netflix to spite Disney.

 

All that said, the three seasons we got of Daredevil are far better than any other number of seasons of any of the DC live action shows.

 

Sorry about that, I was unclear. 

I didn't mean that the CW's teen melodramas have anywhere the ratings of other networks or that the DC TV shows were as good as the Marvel shows like Daredevil or Jessica Jones. 

 

What I mean is they don't need to. The CW needs teens to watch it.  And they do.  CW packs in enough teen angst melodrama fans across all its programming to easily meet its goals.  Supergirl is a prime example.  Pretty much a failure for its original network, but a success for CW.

 

You don't have to be the biggest, you just need to have as much as you can handle

 

 

 

 

[Greywind]

10 hours ago, slikmar said:

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

 

My understanding is that, by and large, Hollywood plants seeds in most movies for the possibility of sequels and spinoffs.

[csyphrett]

A rumor has started that the Powerpuff Girls are being pitched as disillusioned 20 years old tired of saving the day to the CW

CES  

[zslane]

20 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Warner Bros. had no vision of creating a multi-franchise shared movie universe, because no one in Western cinema had done anything like that before Marvel.

Sure, but someone had to try it first. It could have been DC instead of Marvel, having a potential jumping off point with the success of the Nolan movies. But it turns out that it was Marvel who had the right people with the talent and vision to see the possibilities, and the patience to let a long game unspool as Feige saw fit. DC had none of that, and still has none to this day.

[slikmar]

All I can say is "I Am Iron Man" vs "You can't risk your secret saving a bunch of kids on a bus". I think that showed the difference in the mentality of the 2 universes.

I will say, I still wish the post teaser from Spider-man far from home had ended with Mysterio saying his name is P... (white noise) and not give away his full name to everyone. would really have setup the spiderman dynamic we grew up with, where spiderman was hated (mostly due to Daily Bugle) but peter was basically an anonymous person.

[archer]

13 minutes ago, slikmar said:

All I can say is "I Am Iron Man" vs "You can't risk your secret saving a bunch of kids on a bus". I think that showed the difference in the mentality of the 2 universes.

 

To be somewhat fair, the second quote was from a recently un-retired sidekick speaking to his daughter who was an under-age superhero girl (who was risking not only her own identity but the identity of the sidekick's wife and other kid). And this happened just a few days after the superhero girl got her powers and hadn't yet gone through any training. And just a few days after the first time a supervillain tried to straight-up murder her. And while another supervillain was in the process of trying to straight-up murder her. And while the sidekick had every reason to suspect that there was a whole team of murderous supervillains who were actively after them both.

 

Then after warning the superhero girl off, the side-kick went to try to save the kids on the bus himself.

 

Watched the episode again just this morning.

 

What mentality are you thinking that the sidekick's statement was showing?

[Ternaugh]

2 hours ago, archer said:

 

To be somewhat fair, the second quote was from a recently un-retired sidekick speaking to his daughter who was an under-age superhero girl (who was risking not only her own identity but the identity of the sidekick's wife and other kid). And this happened just a few days after the superhero girl got her powers and hadn't yet gone through any training. And just a few days after the first time a supervillain tried to straight-up murder her. And while another supervillain was in the process of trying to straight-up murder her. And while the sidekick had every reason to suspect that there was a whole team of murderous supervillains who were actively after them both.

 

Then after warning the superhero girl off, the side-kick went to try to save the kids on the bus himself.

 

Watched the episode again just this morning.

 

What mentality are you thinking that the sidekick's statement was showing?

 

I believe that he meant the bus scene in Man of Steel. Pa Kent berates Clark for saving his classmates when their school bus blows a tire and goes off a bridge into the river below.

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

I believe that he meant the bus scene in Man of Steel. Pa Kent berates Clark for saving his classmates when their school bus blows a tire and goes off a bridge into the river below.

 

RDj, after having read stories about Stark, and been living with the character, developing him, vs Snyder and his deconstructionism of heroes that hadn't been fully constructed yet.

[Starlord]

8 hours ago, archer said:

 

To be somewhat fair, the second quote was from a recently un-retired sidekick speaking to his daughter who was an under-age superhero girl (who was risking not only her own identity but the identity of the sidekick's wife and other kid). And this happened just a few days after the superhero girl got her powers and hadn't yet gone through any training. And just a few days after the first time a supervillain tried to straight-up murder her. And while another supervillain was in the process of trying to straight-up murder her. And while the sidekick had every reason to suspect that there was a whole team of murderous supervillains who were actively after them both.

 

 

Actually, I think it's from the incredibly unimpressive Pa Kent in Man of Steel.

[Bazza]

After watching Batman vs Superman I observed that the setting has no universals; ergo heroism and justice are relative, subjective & individualistic. 

[Lord Liaden]

Then again, Captain America: Civil War went deeply into differing standards of heroism and justice.

[BarretWallace]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Then again, Captain America: Civil War went deeply into differing standards of heroism and justice.

True, but Captain America: Civil War did a much better job of it.  Tony and Cap had their differences early on but could put them aside to unite against Loki and the Chitauri invasion.  Their differences didn't go away, and in fact grew to the point where it pushed them apart in Civil War.  I was terribly frightened of splitting up the Avengers that way, but the way they did it felt natural (however painful).  Then when Thanos and his minions got twitchy, Cap and Tony (and their respective factions) found it in themselves to unite again.  One of my favorite lines:

"Do you trust me?"
"Yes."

In contrast, the Snyderverse showed me characters who were at odds and not heroic more because they were never truly united or heroic in the first place.  They also didn't resemble anything I recalled from the comics, especially "Superman" (which kinda hurt because I think Henry Cavill is talented outside a Snyder movie).  Argh...that all looks terribly incoherent, but maybe that's just a side effect of looking at Man of Steel and trying to call it a Superman movie.

 

[Hugh Neilson]

12 hours ago, slikmar said:

All I can say is "I Am Iron Man" vs "You can't risk your secret saving a bunch of kids on a bus". I think that showed the difference in the mentality of the 2 universes.

I will say, I still wish the post teaser from Spider-man far from home had ended with Mysterio saying his name is P... (white noise) and not give away his full name to everyone. would really have setup the spiderman dynamic we grew up with, where spiderman was hated (mostly due to Daily Bugle) but peter was basically an anonymous person.

 

Speaking of buses and Far from Home, it seems like Peter went through a great deal of effort to protect his own secret ID while preventing a busload full of kids from being hit by a missile he had (accidentally) targeted towards it.  Oh, and it was Tony Stark who designed the system that had no checks or balances to prevent someone, deliberately or accidentally, firing a missile at a bus full of kids, or even wiping out a major metropolis with all that firepower.

 

Yeah, Tony's the poster child for well-considered, perfectly planned and executed heroism.

[slikmar]

Marvel's universe, in a lot of ways, was all about Tony realizing his mistakes and being forced to take responsibility for them. Not sure any character "grew up" more then Tony.

 

And yes, my meaning was not a direct quote but more a comment on Pa Kent from Man of Steel berating Clark, which, incidentally led directly to Pa's death in the tornado due to Clark hesitating when Pa basically signaled don't save me. Not sure how we didn't get the Brightburn Superman from Snyder in these movies.