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

[Christopher R Taylor]

I love the character Nightwing as Chuck Dixon wrote him but I'm skeptical they'll get a writer who handles the character that well.

[Bazza]

Warner Bros Discovery Exploring Overhaul of DC Entertainment (EXCLUSIVE)
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

[Ternaugh]

40 minutes ago, Bazza said:

Warner Bros Discovery Exploring Overhaul of DC Entertainment (EXCLUSIVE)
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Quote

Zaslav has pledged to find $3 billion in synergies in the newly merged company, a signal of how important cost cutting will be to Warners’ new owners.

 

The merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery has at least $3 billion in 'cost synergies,' a phrase that often means layoffs

[Christopher R Taylor]

It looks like they may be doing some much-needed house cleaning and taking on an executive who actually knows and loves the DC characters and universe.  But keeping Zach Snyder too 😕

[Lord Liaden]

I can't deny Snyder's talent for crafting striking visuals, but he's shown that to be on board with his stories you have to enjoy "dark" supers, grim, violent, and tormented. I can appreciate the dark stuff as an occasional change of pace or character building moment, but overall I much prefer supers who are hopeful, principled, and inspirational.

 

As for the house-cleaning and having their own edition of Kevin Feige in charge, we've heard all that before. I'll believe it when I see it on screen.

 

20 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

The merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery has at least $3 billion in 'cost synergies,' a phrase that often means layoffs

 

It's the kind of phrase coined for public consumption so they don't upset their audience too much, by people whose jobs are secure to describe jobs that aren't.

[unclevlad]

The Variety story also cites that the purchase has left the joint corporation highly leveraged...AKA, with lots of debt.  That also means layoffs are ineviable, and emphasizes the need to have as much churn as possible, so costs can be recouped through multiple channels.  MUCH of that revenue will simply be offsetting the acquisition costs.

 

To be sure, tho:  no one can say DC's had a consistent vision, and continuity has been weak to non-existent.  I'm sympathetic towards the actual workers who'll get terminated...but it's an acquisition.  It's a given.  It's highly leveraged, so it will be extensive.  The question is how they restructure, to create a product that works.  What they've had for the last 10 years or so, hasn't worked.

 

And yeah, I agree with LL:  I'll believe it when I see it.

[archer]

If they want a successful comic book universe for the movies, there's just one secret: quit telling origin stories (over and over) and instead start in the middle of a universe about superheroes having adventures. 

 

I'd recommend the new head of DC projects to watch the TV cartoon series "The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" from 2010-2012, particularly the first two episodes.

 

The world has 3 or 4 prisons for superpowered people. There's been a simultaneous escape engineered at all of them.

 

Heroes respond to all the sites, resulting in some teamups, some cases of mistaken identity, some villains immediately recaptured, and 75 superpowered villains being released back into the world.

 

Most villains are just seen as teased glimpses as they escape. Sometimes their powers are seen, sometimes not.

 

The first 2 episodes wrap with the heroes coming together to face one of the most powerful villains.

 

After, they realize that going it alone was okay while the threats were scattered. But some of the escapees have obviously joined together and there's just too many bad guys concentrated in a few areas for it to be safe to chase them solo. So the Avengers are born.

 

That's not a bad start when you don't have a $300 million theatrical budget plus five years of audience investment into the stories.

 

It teased fan favorite villains and left the viewer guessing as to which villains would be a major part of that part of the story. And it left unresolved who engineered the breakout, why, and how he found the prisons which were hidden. There was obvious sequels which the audience was invested in seeing.

 

Obviously you might not want to do exactly that. But if you did you could introduce a Justice League, the Teen Titans, and maybe another group like the Doom Patrol or the Freedom Fighters in a linked release of movies. 

 

And in the background of those movies, you could tease in TV reporting scenes that solo heroes (who are scheduled for upcoming movies) have responded to the emergency. Then when their movie comes up, do a flashback scene showing what they were doing on The Big Day.

 

Yeah, Marvel Comics had a big success with a multi-year slow rollout. But there's no reason you HAVE to do it like that if you make good movies which draw people into the situation. 

 

WWII movies rarely went into the socio-political underpinnings of the war in order to justify people fighting for one side over the other. They just showed people fighting the good fight and gave enough background for the characters to create some sympathy and to provide a viewpoint.

 

People know the origin stories for Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman already. But a Booster Gold origin story, for example, could be told in a couple of seconds by Skeets telling the crowd, "Booster's the hero from the future, come to save the day!" and a bit of chit-chat with other heroes who ask him if it's true.

[unclevlad]

I'd also suggest that streaming series are a better kickoff point, NOT theatrical releases.  OK, End Game and Infinity War went 3 hours, but those were closers.  3 hours is a LONG movie...and even at that, there isn't that much time to do broad-scale general intros.  In a series, devoting 3-4 hours may be OK, particularly if it's structured properly.  4 solid episodes of nothing but intro material is likely to be excessive, but there's stages here.  To keep with that prison breakout:

 

--each breakout...not all at the same time/in the same episode.  Perhaps the latter ones start introducing the master villain and why he's engineering these breakouts.

--team formation (can happen before or after the breakout)

--grab the grunts or most obvious...Juggernaut is usually pretty blatant, for example

--the more serious bad guys start declaiming the larger-scale plot

--maybe a midlevel villain team gets grabbed...and the connection among all these events becomes clear.  This can complete the introductory arc.

 

Trying to interweave is tricky.  The timeline for a movie is so different from that for a comic strip or, to a point, a streaming series, and is overall LESS predictable.  Agents of SHIELD was, I believe, Marvel's only conjunction along those lines, and AoS was largely separate.

[Scott Ruggels]

Watching  Midnight's Edge on YouTube, and they have had a lot of detailed information about the Warner's situation.  Anne Sarnoff has been asked to leave, Walter Hamada has also been asked to leave. The only executive that is remaining, so far, is Toby Emmerich.  This is going to halt any further development by  J.J. Abrams on the DCEU, so thankfully no Black Superman.  I would expect that release dates are being  shuffled. I also expecft that there is going to be a shrinkage of film budgets, and that the studio as a whole will be putting out films of limited scope, more like the 1970s.

[unclevlad]

10 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Watching  Midnight's Edge on YouTube, and they have had a lot of detailed information about the Warner's situation.  Anne Sarnoff has been asked to leave, Walter Hamada has also been asked to leave. The only executive that is remaining, so far, is Toby Emmerich.  This is going to halt any further development by  J.J. Abrams on the DCEU, so thankfully no Black Superman.  I would expect that release dates are being  shuffled. I also expecft that there is going to be a shrinkage of film budgets, and that the studio as a whole will be putting out films of limited scope, more like the 1970s.

 

I can't see that working.  Current audiences expect spectacle.  Yeah, OK, balance it with plot and characters...but there has to be spectacle.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There are a lot of smaller stories you can tell with superheroes that still have spectacle, its just a matter of telling them well.

[Scott Ruggels]

9 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

I can't see that working.  Current audiences expect spectacle.  Yeah, OK, balance it with plot and characters...but there has to be spectacle.

Spectacle, is going to be mostly CG, but the existence of my mother and her friends indicate an appetite out there for "brain food" movies that have little to no spectacle.  In any case  small budgets  do goose creativity. I watch a lot of super low budget SF films, on the CG Bros channel on YouTube. There is some spectacle there, but it's not a lot of world saving plots.  Mostly it's about the quality of the idea, and/or the writing. I can see a rise of independent produced  Crime Thrillers, small unit war movies, westerns, and psychological art house fare.  Superheroes , if they continue, will have some budget constraints.

[archer]

@unclevlad

 

Well, I wasn't thinking about interweaving a lot.

 

Say they're all happening on the same day. 

 

There's some Nick Fury or Amanda Waller figure appearing in all three movies doing the "what the hell is happening" routine, along with the "Get the Joint Chiefs on the phone" and "There's heroes on the scene? Who are they? Well, find the hell out!"

 

I don't really know the superprisons in the DC Universe but say there's

 

Belle Reve Correctional Center which is the ARGUS semi-black site

Arkham Asylum

Blackgate

Iron Heights

Slabside

Jump City

Stryker's Island

 

Pick three of those for the stories you want to tell. 

 

The three movies action all start on the same Breakout Day. Each prison is responded to by a different set of heroes who don't interact with the heroes in the other movies since they're busy at different prisons in different cities. Whether each movie in-world time lasts hours or days will vary.

 

In each movie, each hero becomes aware of the problem and makes their way to the nearest prison break.

 

In one movie, for example, Beast Boy lands next to a bystander or guard and asks them what's going on. The guy points off down the street saying that several people in costumes just ran down that way. In the distance you can see people in costumes, broken windows, flipped cars, downed power lines, etc. They appear to be arguing about how fast to flee versus how much destruction they're going to do along the way. People who are fans of the comics ought to be able to pick out who several of them are by the costumes.

 

As Beast Boy turns back to the guy, he's blindsided by Solomon Grundy and the fight's on. As he's struggling with Grundy, other costumed villains continue to stream by, with the occasional one taking a potshot at him and distracting Grundy.

 

Robin, Cyborg, Speedy, Raven, and Kid Flash appear individually as the fights go along.

 

Starfire shows up. No one recognizes her because she's newly arrived on Earth and one of the heroes engages her thinking she's a villain. Robin eventually figures out she's not on the list and she's recruited to their side.

 

That group of heroes never make it inside the prison. They end up chasing some villain or villains who Robin considers to be particularly dangerous then get repeatedly sidetracked by responding to police reports of various levels of desperation. They put down those villains as they pop up but some get reported as escaped again because the heroes can't guard them until the prison authorities who can contain them arrive.

 

They end up catching up with Robin's target at the end of the movie and foiling the scheme the guy had started before going to jail. But they don't end up catching him.

 

The movie ends up with the "team" having a mixed record because they weren't organized and were overwhelmed by events. Several of the heroes are frustrated. Robin vows to train them to work together if they'll stick with him.

 

Feel good end to the movie but they'll have to deal with the public and police fallout of their less than stellar record of keeping villains under wraps. And they'll have to watch out for Robin's target if he wants to return.

 

====

 

In the Justice League movie, in contrast, they manage to get to the prison before most of the inmates hit the streets. The fighting is a cat-and-mouse game of working their way through all the various sections of the prison finding villains who are hiding, teaming up, breaking through walls, trying to find their gear, etc.

 

Ends up most of the villains have been sent out as part of a delaying tactic by a mastermind villain who is trying to release the kraken (or Mongol, Mordru, or the uber-powerful villain of your choice).

 

The Justice League ends up with a better public reputation because they can immediately throw their captured escapees into a cell.

 

====

 

In the Freedom Fighters movie, the prison in near Washington DC. Some of the villains get into their heads that they want to go to the Pentagon and seize control of the US's nuclear weapons.

 

So they rampage through DC while only having a vague idea of where the Pentagon is.

 

The heroes have to wrangle villains, protect national monuments, protect a few politicians, etc.

 

And have a final showdown in the heart of the Pentagon where the villains find out that the nuclear weapons aren't controlled by the Pentagon.

 

The team gets good press though having had to deal with the not-so-bright end of the villain spectrum. The team picks up political support and somewhere along the way gains a clue as to who might have engineered the event.

 

====

 

I don't know, just spit-balling. The movies all start on the same day. But in different cities, prisons, heroes, villains, etc. They're more tied together by timing than with any character interaction.

[Scott Ruggels]

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

[Bazza]

I posted that above. 

[Scott Ruggels]

21 hours ago, Bazza said:

I posted that above. 

ah, sorry

[Bazza]

No worries. 

[Scott Ruggels]

There has been an interesting piece of analysis of fight scenes in DC movies, and how fight scenes on the air are just padding and tend not to decide a lot. 
 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah, fight scenes aren't good if they are only filler or are just something to be exciting.  Fights have to do the same thing as the rest of the story, and have to serve the story, while moving it forward (and this is true in games as well).  Fights should help show the characters, develop that character's story and person, advance the plot, and especially this: it should demonstrate problem solving.

The fight should show ways the character deals with crisis, both emotionally and technically (I need to block with my shield, but if I do that i expose my flank, how do I handle that?).  Ideally a fight leaves the viewers understanding the characters involved better and resolving the plot a little more, not just broken buildings and "wow that was amazing looking."  I haven't seen a lot of the DC movies, so I cannot say if they do this or not, but it seems like the best ones do at least.

 

As for his main point about flight, eh, I guess so?  But the reason there doesn't ever seem to be any stakes is because the characters he describes fighting are basically invulnerable.  Its not that flying removes the tension, its that Shazam (Captain Marvel) is essentially impossible to actually hurt.  I cannot comment on Sivana because they totally rewrote the character for the movie.  Superman and Zod, ditto.  The Thor/Loki/Hela sequence wasn't better because of the consequences, it was designed so that Hela can get where she needs to without them stopping her.  It was a plot device.

 

Flight doesn't cause the problems he describes.  Lack of real consequences does.  Yes, you can throw superman through eleven buildings, but he just brushes the dust off his cape and flies back. The key problem with flying is that having people fight in real time in the air is confusing and vertigo-inducing.  Its like the Transformer movies, with dozens of gigantic, nearly-identical robot things battling in weird angles, and nobody knows what the hell is going on.  I mean, I guess if you are going for a War of the Worlds "humans on the ground confused and frightened" approach, that works, but if you're trying to tell a story with what the characters do meaning anything... it cannot work.

 

Watch the Sivana/Shazam fight clips shown in that video.  What are they doing?  Most of the time your eyes are just trying to keep up with what is going on, and the cape does not help matters by obscuring and confusing actions by the characters.  Ultimately, none of their moves or punches matter, because they're difficult to track and don't really do anything to their foe anyway.  You have to have each move clear and precise, which the Superman movies did much better, despite how pointless they were.  What Zod and Superman do works, because you can tell what is going on and who is doing what. 

 

What didn't work in their case was that Superman should care better what he's doing to the city, and Zod should not be nearly as capable fighting in the air, and WANT to go to the ground, where he's got decades of experience over Supes.

 

Its a storytelling issue: they didn't write for the characters or to show problem solving, or to advance the plot, they showed spectacle and wow look how strong they are, which we already know.

[slikmar]

Finally saw The Batman. Agreed with the reviews above, was much better then expected. I am hoping that a future movie will explore him being Bruce Wayne and repairing the damage done to the Wayne reputation. I am hoping they will shift the Bruce character away from the mopey goth look he had, even in a suit when he went out to the funeral. I do think he did well as Batman. And I really enjoyed the opening stuff, with petty crooks looking up at the bat signal, then looking into the shadows and running. It tells you the director gets what Batman is supposed to be about.

Edit: wanted to add one other thing. I am so glad they showed him with the chest plate batarang late. the symbol on his chest bugged me the whole time since it looked like it had slots for things to hook into. seeing that the slots were what held it on the breastplate worked for me.

[Joe Walsh]

Just finished The Batman, and I am so disappointed.

 

The movie was a series of slowly acted and spoken scenes punctuated by unremarkable action sequences.

A sophomoric effort, especially the catwoman relationship that came out of nowhere and went nowhere.

 

Oh, well. A new Batman will be along in a few years.

[Twilight]

On 4/22/2022 at 2:59 PM, slikmar said:

Finally saw The Batman. Agreed with the reviews above, was much better then expected. I am hoping that a future movie will explore him being Bruce Wayne and repairing the damage done to the Wayne reputation. I am hoping they will shift the Bruce character away from the mopey goth look he had, even in a suit when he went out to the funeral. I do think he did well as Batman. And I really enjoyed the opening stuff, with petty crooks looking up at the bat signal, then looking into the shadows and running. It tells you the director gets what Batman is supposed to be about.

Edit: wanted to add one other thing. I am so glad they showed him with the chest plate batarang late. the symbol on his chest bugged me the whole time since it looked like it had slots for things to hook into. seeing that the slots were what held it on the breastplate worked for me.

I personally would've preferred if Batman had deduced Riddler's plan and thwarted it but aside from that I enjoyed the movie way more then I thought I would.  The action sequences were top notch, all the actors did excellent work with their roles and I particularly enjoyed Colin Farrel as the Penguin.  It wasn't a perfect movie sure, it dragged by the end after all and Riddler barely resembled the character from the comics but none of that was a deal breaker.  I do wish they'd ease up on the dark and dreariness for the next movie though.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 4/22/2022 at 11:59 AM, slikmar said:

Finally saw The Batman. Agreed with the reviews above, was much better then expected. I am hoping that a future movie will explore him being Bruce Wayne and repairing the damage done to the Wayne reputation. I am hoping they will shift the Bruce character away from the mopey goth look he had, even in a suit when he went out to the funeral. I do think he did well as Batman. And I really enjoyed the opening stuff, with petty crooks looking up at the bat signal, then looking into the shadows and running. It tells you the director gets what Batman is supposed to be about.

Edit: wanted to add one other thing. I am so glad they showed him with the chest plate batarang late. the symbol on his chest bugged me the whole time since it looked like it had slots for things to hook into. seeing that the slots were what held it on the breastplate worked for me.

 

17 hours ago, GM Joe said:

Just finished The Batman, and I am so disappointed.

 

The movie was a series of slowly acted and spoken scenes punctuated by unremarkable action sequences.

A sophomoric effort, especially the catwoman relationship that came out of nowhere and went nowhere.

 

Oh, well. A new Batman will be along in a few years.

  Wow, talk about a day and night comparison.

 

I am somewhere in the middle, it was for the most part, a competent film, but also IMO a bit too dark in the cinematography. I thought the story was adequate, and I loved the characterization of Gotham City, of what I could see of it.  I initially was wary of this film due to the news coming from the set, but the film exceeded my low expectations by quite a bit and I thought the acting was well done. IT seems to also have made its money back. Not a bad film.

[Lord Liaden]

It's hard for me to care TBH. I don't much like the character, and the seemingly interminable reinterpretations of him have become boring to me. As you might imagine, I won't be seeing this movie regardless. But I don't object to anyone else enjoying it. 

[BoloOfEarth]

How about this version, LL?

 

On 4/24/2022 at 9:52 AM, Cygnia said:

 

 

I'm with you on the endless reimaginings of The Batman, but I would totally watch this one!