Future of DC Films (DCEU)

[T8OO]

You should definitely know what I mean. And you think captain America a guy with a super soldier serum who dresses up as the American flag and has a big a on his head isn’t sillier than Superman? The only thing silly about Superman really is the alter ego part. Everything else you named is pretty standard superhero stuff. Most of them all fly

Obviously not.

 

[ironwez20]

Obviously not.

Well that ain’t my problem then

 

[Garlador]

The "too silly for audiences" horse bolted from the barn when the general audience was able to get onboard with a movie where one of the main characters was a talking CGI raccoon with a machine gun. If audiences were allergic to a lighthearted tone, the MCU wouldn't have spent a decade running circles around the DCEU. A light tone and a dark tone are just different ways of telling a story; there's no hard and fast rule about what audiences will or won't accept.

Exactly. Captain America isn’t even the silliest character in the MCU. I have tickets to see the guy who shrinks and talks to ants in his THIRD movie later this week!

DC is weird, and wonderful, but trying to ground it all saps the fun and mystique out of it. It becomes the nitpicky “who inflated the Batmobile’s tires?” question. You have to suspend your disbelief for any of it to work. Batman as a comic character is timeless and entertaining, but if you approach him from a real-world approach, he falls apart. Superman falls apart if you try and take an alien that looks like an average American dude who can fly and has heat vision and ice breath and X-ray vision and super-knitting powers (canon) and the ability to fire tinier versions of himself out of his fingers (also canon) and then ground him.

I recall the late 90s WB head honcho who mandated if Superman had another movie, he wasn’t allowed to fly, he had to wear black because the classic costume was “too gay”, and it had to be dark, with a Superman that had “the eyes of a killer”. And he had to fight a giant spider.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for to just do a Superman movie reflecting the character from the comics authentically. It’s been decades since we got that.

 

[snoop101]

Diversity of content. Everything Snyder did was a deconstruction and it didn’t work. How do we know it didn’t work? Because nobody working under it gave enough of a **** to want to work with it.

Snyder’s preoccupied with air bubbles and Shakespearean drama (something that worked wonders for Thor) when he introduces Aquaman in his Justice League. James Wan gives us a technicolored underwater dreamscape that’s make Jim Cameron wet his jockeys and it’s rife with giant armored Sea Horses, Octopus Drummers, and Gladiator Fights atop subaquatic volcanoes.


Snyder wants a tortured Wonder Woman who gives up on humanity and laments the horrors of war. We get little glimpses of her weird motley crew of warriors like a Samurai, a Scot, a Zulu, and a Native American while she poses in front of them with a bunch of German soldiers’ severed heads. Jenkins gives us, perhaps, the first contemporary counterpoint to Reeve’s Superman since 1978. A film chock to the brim with optimism despite being set amidst the backdrop of total annihilation in which a charismatic, powerful lead makes entire audiences fall in love with her.

Shazam remained only tangentially attached to Snyder’s DC Extended Universe and it was…utterly fantastic. It was like if Amblin made a Superhero Movie. You had action and adventure and humor and coming-of-age angst and one or two scenes that could traumatize children and it blended together to make for one hell of an engaging Superhero movie.


And then you had Suicide Squad.

Are you noticing a pattern? All the best received movies to come out of the DCEU succeeded in spite of Snyder and his vision, not because of him.

The fact is that the DC Universe is not the Marvel Universe. Marvel’s got the world outside your window. You’ve got Asgard and Wakanda and The Negative Zone, but for the most part, it’s just New York. Thousands of heroes roaming around the five boroughs without, somehow, constantly being on top of one and other. It’s part of why I believe Disney can’t solve their theme park problem. Because how do you build a Marvel land? A miniature NYC in Orlando? What is this? A Las Vegas Mini-Golf Course? If people want to see New York, they’ll just go to New York.

But DC has an entire universe at its disposal. Gotham is a gothic Lovecraftian hellscape that varies within every page; a place where you wouldn’t think twice upon seeing a horned figure lurking atop a roof because you’d just mistake him for another Gargoyle amidst the architecture. Metropolis is…Tomorrowland. A glistening city on the hill that thematically punctuates the aspirational value of Superman by offering him a home as pure and virtuous as its protector. Central City and Keystone are electric. Bustling city streets loaded with traffic and pedestrians offer an equally-fast paced landscape for The Flash to traverse as he dukes it out with his colorful Rogues.

And it’s not just geography. DC has always leaned more fully into the off-kilter than Marvel in terms of informing their brands’ identity. Adam Strange and his jet pack fly through the pulpy, sci-fi city of Rann battling Pikts before catching a Zeta Beam back home to earth. Lobo chases down some dirty bastitch to a seedy bar in the furthest reaches of space before chaining him to the back of his hog and dragging him back to his employer, dead or alive. Jonah Hex battles his demons as he’s laid bare before the (Weird) Wild West and Sgt. Rock and Easy Company make their last stand against Nazis in the European Theater.

That’s why I’m excited by Gunn’s line-up. He gets it. Take something like Booster Gold. When he came out in the ‘80s, Booster was so incredibly ahead of his time, but now? Booster Gold is the hero of today. A self-promoting super hack who stole a Legion flight ring and a Time Machine to come back and make himself rich and famous. In the age of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, when you can’t open up social media without seeing High School Kids with Broccoli Haircuts giving new Air Jordans to Hobos for likes on Instagram, it could make for an utterly hilarious and scathing satire of consumerism, influencers, and the artifice of performative altruism.

Not to mention, it could set the stage for a Justice League International superhero workplace comedy.

He's got Paradise Lost. A story chartering Themyscira and the Amazon's history from bondage and enslavement to the female utopia that exists within the Contemporary DCU. A show he described as Game of Thrones in the DC Universe, which honestly sounds like something that Snyder would've been right at home introducing introducing into his universe.

Lanterns puts John Stewart and Hal Jordan on the road discovering a dark mystery, "True Detective" style in Gunn's words, but look at the story and the character selection and you see a golden opportunity to tell a meaningful story about class, race, and social issues through the lens of two very distinctive characters with two distinctive worldviews and experiences. It also seems like it could potentially, conceptually evoke Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' seminal "Hard Travelin' Heroes" run on Green Arrow/Green Lantern.

Swamp Thing is introducing the dark and supernatural horror side of things to audiences; an entire sub-genre of the DC Universe that opens all sorts of doors to everything from The House of Mystery to John Constantine to The Demon Etrigan and The Justice League Dark.

Even his take on Batman with The Brave and The Bold, based on what little we know, implies an understanding of the character and his cinematic history that few others have managed to grasp. Introducing Damian not only lends itself to introducing Ra's Al Ghul and Talia, but, in doing so, it gives the audience the potential to see something they’ve never seen before: the Globe Trotting, Swashbuckling Batman of the Adams/O’Neill era. A Batman who finds himself sword fighting, shirtless in the desert atop a bubbling Lazarus Pit and, more than that, it introduces the idea of something we’ve not seen….ever: A Batman who comes face to face with supernatural and extraordinary threats. No longer do we have to settle for a guy in a clay mask murdering people and stealing their identities and calling himself “Clayface,” we might, dare I say, get to see Batman fight a giant clay monster for once.

That’s why I can’t understand all the people lamenting the new line-up or saying this is going to be the Next Marvel. I’d argue he’s improving on Marvel’s method because, in addition to creating something for everybody, he also seems to be setting the stage for a DC Universe that doesn’t fall into the same traps as Feige. I look at a show like She-Hulk (and really most of Phase 4) and part of why I feel it failed to land with so much of its audience was because it subverted expectations and challenged the ‘Marvel Method’ that’s been employed to the point where it was a bit jarring for them to accept something so different. Introducing stuff like Booster Gold on the ground floor prevents things like that.

So Snyder’s universe didn’t “succeed” and didn’t work because no one “wanted to work with it?” What does that even mean lmao, and what is your definition of success? He had some of the most successful DC movies to date. The DCEU arguably went completely off the rails when Snyder was no longer in charge. Wonder Woman 84, birds of prey, shazam, and the suicide squad were all pretty terrible for the most part.

You also said that Snyder wanted a tortured Wonder Woman? I think that was initially his plan but you do realize that he wrote the story for the very same Wonder Woman movie you’re praising, right?

You thought Shazam was fantastic? C’mon man. It was OKAY at best. The writing was pretty weak, as was the ending with the shazam family. I guess the humor in it was great if you’re 12 years old or younger.

I’m glad you and six other people think James Gunn gets it. People certainly thought so when his version of suicide squad made 12 dollars at the box office. There’s a reason he tackles these b-list heroes and villains, it helps disguise the fact that he truly doesn’t understand what to do or how to write these characters without his weird dick joke fetish and edgy teen toilet humor. That type of s*** isn’t going to work with big name characters like Superman. Just think, the current head of the DC universe also delivered one of their biggest flops, kind of ironic.

 

[hbhf]

Exactly. Captain America isn’t even the silliest character in the MCU. I have tickets to see the guy who shrinks and talks to ants in his THIRD movie later this week!

DC is weird, and wonderful, but trying to ground it all saps the fun and mystique out of it. It becomes the nitpicky “who inflated the Batmobile’s tires?” question. You have to suspend your disbelief for any of it to work. Batman as a comic character is timeless and entertaining, but if you approach him from a real-world approach, he falls apart. Superman falls apart if you try and take an alien that looks like an average American dude who can fly and has heat vision and ice breath and X-ray vision and super-knitting powers (canon) and the ability to fire tinier versions of himself out of his fingers (also canon) and then ground him.

I recall the late 90s WB head honcho who mandated if Superman had another movie, he wasn’t allowed to fly, he had to wear black because the classic costume was “too gay”, and it had to be dark, with a Superman that had “the eyes of a killer”. And he had to fight a giant spider.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for to just do a Superman movie reflecting the character from the comics authentically. It’s been decades since we got that.

I don't even think Superman needs to be one thing or another. I'm not a fan of Snyder's Superman but I acknowledge there are many who are. I just think it's funny to see this continual idea that there's only one way to handle these characters when the DCEU wasn't even the first time several of them have been brought to the big screen.

 

[T8OO]

So Snyder’s universe didn’t “succeed” and didn’t work because no one “wanted to work with it?” What does that even mean lmao, and what is your definition of success? He had some of the most successful DC movies to date. The DCEU arguably went completely off the rails when Snyder was no longer in charge. Wonder Woman 84, birds of prey, shazam, and the suicide squad were all pretty terrible for the most part.

You also said that Snyder wanted a tortured Wonder Woman? I think that was initially his plan but you do realize that he wrote the story for the very same Wonder Woman movie you’re praising, right?

You thought Shazam was fantastic? C’mon man. It was OKAY at best. The writing was pretty weak, as was the ending with the shazam family. I guess the humor in it was great if you’re 12 years old or younger.

I’m glad you and six other people think James Gunn gets it. People certainly thought so when his version of suicide squad made 12 dollars at the box office. There’s a reason he tackles these b-list heroes and villains, it helps disguise the fact that he truly doesn’t understand what to do or how to write these characters without his weird dick joke fetish and edgy teen toilet humor. That type of s*** isn’t going to work with big name characters like Superman. Just think, the current head of the DC universe also delivered one of their biggest flops, kind of ironic.

They thought they could bring in more than 800 million a movie without him but using what he came up with.
They wanted to work with it they just didn't know how to.

 

[batfan08]

Gotta disagree with you there. The classic "overgrown boy scout" version of Supes wouldn't "fly" with cynical modern audiences, Snyder had little choice but to ground him in today's paranoid, distrustful, tribal world.

Even Singer felt the need to give him a dark twist, and he was continuing the Donnerverse.

I will vehemently disagree with this and I’ll kindly direct you to one Zack Snyder as to why:

Snyder said: “If someone says to me ‘oh, Batman killed a guy’, I’m like ‘f**k…really? Wake the f**k up’.

“Once you’ve like lost your virginity to this ******* movie and then you come and say to me something about ‘oh, my superhero wouldn’t do that’, I’m like ‘are you serious?’ because I’m down the ******* road on that.

“It’s a cool point of view to be like: ‘My heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn’t ******* lie to America. My heroes didn’t embezzle money. My heroes didn’t commit any atrocities.’

“That’s cool, but you’re living in a ******* dream world, okay?”

The fact of the matter is that Snyder’s too close to the forest for the trees. He recognizes the ills that plague society, but he thinks they, too, should plague our superheroes. He doesn’t account for the aspirational value and I would argue that it’s attitudes like his that make Superman all the more valuable in today’s world. There’s a stoicism in the level of earnestness we associate with classic Superman that I feel would play very well in today’s world.

Look at social media. You have millions of people sharing cat videos and baby videos and cute things, you have fake videos of actors pretending to be homeless people getting makeovers and people genuinely believing in them. You could argue it’s because people are gullible and honestly? Most days I’d be inclined to agree with you, but I’d also argue that it’s because the world we’re living in is a bleak, depressing place. Every day there’s another mass shooting, every day there’s news that however many people were killed in the Ukraine or Gaza, a train derails in Ohio forcing an entire community out of their homes, natural disasters, corrupt politicians: we are endlessly bombarded with negativity and people choose to find the light wherever they can.

That’s Superman for me. He is the light. He’s devoid of any agenda save for one: to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost to himself and honestly? We need that now more than ever. The question should never, ever be “what would Superman be like in the real world?” The question should always be “what would the real world be like with Superman?”

 

[T8OO]

I will vehemently disagree with this and I’ll kindly direct you to one Zack Snyder as to why:



The fact of the matter is that Snyder’s too close to the forest for the trees. He recognizes the ills that plague society, but he thinks they, too, should plague our superheroes. He doesn’t account for the aspirational value and I would argue that it’s attitudes like his that make Superman all the more valuable in today’s world. There’s a stoicism in the level of earnestness we associate with classic Superman that I feel would play very well in today’s world.

Look at social media. You have millions of people sharing cat videos and baby videos and cute things, you have fake videos of actors pretending to be homeless people getting makeovers and people genuinely believing in them. You could argue it’s because people are gullible and honestly? Most days I’d be inclined to agree with you, but I’d also argue that it’s because the world we’re living in is a bleak, depressing place. Every day there’s another mass shooting, every day there’s news that however many people were killed in the Ukraine or Gaza, a train derails in Ohio forcing an entire community out of their homes, natural disasters, corrupt politicians: we are endlessly bombarded with negativity and people choose to find the light wherever they can.

That’s Superman for me. He is the light. He’s devoid of any agenda save for one: to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost to himself and honestly? We need that now more than ever. The question should never, ever be “what would Superman be like in the real world?” The question should always be “what would the real world be like with Superman?”

Speak for yourself.

 

[batfan08]

So Snyder’s universe didn’t “succeed” and didn’t work because no one “wanted to work with it?” What does that even mean lmao, and what is your definition of success? He had some of the most successful DC movies to date. The DCEU arguably went completely off the rails when Snyder was no longer in charge. Wonder Woman 84, birds of prey, shazam, and the suicide squad were all pretty terrible for the most part.

You also said that Snyder wanted a tortured Wonder Woman? I think that was initially his plan but you do realize that he wrote the story for the very same Wonder Woman movie you’re praising, right?

You thought Shazam was fantastic? C’mon man. It was OKAY at best. The writing was pretty weak, as was the ending with the shazam family. I guess the humor in it was great if you’re 12 years old or younger.

I’m glad you and six other people think James Gunn gets it. People certainly thought so when his version of suicide squad made 12 dollars at the box office. There’s a reason he tackles these b-list heroes and villains, it helps disguise the fact that he truly doesn’t understand what to do or how to write these characters without his weird dick joke fetish and edgy teen toilet humor. That type of s*** isn’t going to work with big name characters like Superman. Just think, the current head of the DC universe also delivered one of their biggest flops, kind of ironic.

For one thing, I’d say my metric for success is that every film you listed save for Wonder Woman 84 was better received by critics and audiences alike than anything Snyder produced.

As far as Snyder’s story by credit goes, it stands to reason that he would be involved, seeing as how they had to go off of her initial appearance in BvS to create the story, but how much of Wonder Woman was his vs. how much was Jason Fuchs and Allan Heinberg, the world may never know.

And yeah, I did think Shazam was great and that’s kind of the point. He’s literally a twelve year old kid that turns into a magical Superman. It’s a competently made, all-ages superhero movie.

Lastly, I feel that it’s endlessly reductive how people point to The Suicide Squad’s box office take as exemplary of its quality without also looking at the fact that we weren’t even fully out of the COVID-19 Pandemic, yet, in terms of people venturing out of their houses to go to movie theaters or how WB released the film Day 1 to stream on HBO Max. I’m not sure if HBO releases those numbers or not, but I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have the backing he does if only 12 people had streamed it.

 

[batfan08]

Speak for yourself.

I did.

 

[T8OO]

For one thing, I’d say my metric for success is that every film you listed save for Wonder Woman 84 was better received by critics and audiences alike than anything Snyder produced.

As far as Snyder’s story by credit goes, it stands to reason that he would be involved, seeing as how they had to go off of her initial appearance in BvS to create the story, but how much of Wonder Woman was his vs. how much was Jason Fuchs and Allan Heinberg, the world may never know.

And yeah, I did think Shazam was great and that’s kind of the point. He’s literally a twelve year old kid that turns into a magical Superman. It’s a competently made, all-ages superhero movie.

Lastly, I feel that it’s endlessly reductive how people point to The Suicide Squad’s box office take as exemplary of its quality without also looking at the fact that we weren’t even fully out of the COVID-19 Pandemic, yet, in terms of people venturing out of their houses to go to movie theaters or how WB released the film Day 1 to stream on HBO Max. I’m not sure if HBO releases those numbers or not, but I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have the backing he does if only 12 people had streamed it.

Zack Snyder's Justice League has the best audience scores out of every DCEU movie.

The Conjuring 3 was day and date and R-rated just like The Suicide Squad and that did better and made 2/3s of what a Conjuring movie makes. TSS was nowhere near that.

 

[snoop101]

Zack Snyder's Justice League has the best audience scores out of every DCEU movie.

The Conjuring 3 was day and date and R-rated just like The Suicide Squad and that did better and made 2/3s of what a Conjuring movie makes. TSS was nowhere near that.

Yep. Godzilla Vs Kong also did great at the box office around that time as well, and it was released on hbo max same day. Just like The suicide squad. I’m sick of the Covid excuse for everything.

 

[snoop101]

For one thing, I’d say my metric for success is that every film you listed save for Wonder Woman 84 was better received by critics and audiences alike than anything Snyder produced.

As far as Snyder’s story by credit goes, it stands to reason that he would be involved, seeing as how they had to go off of her initial appearance in BvS to create the story, but how much of Wonder Woman was his vs. how much was Jason Fuchs and Allan Heinberg, the world may never know.

And yeah, I did think Shazam was great and that’s kind of the point. He’s literally a twelve year old kid that turns into a magical Superman. It’s a competently made, all-ages superhero movie.

Lastly, I feel that it’s endlessly reductive how people point to The Suicide Squad’s box office take as exemplary of its quality without also looking at the fact that we weren’t even fully out of the COVID-19 Pandemic, yet, in terms of people venturing out of their houses to go to movie theaters or how WB released the film Day 1 to stream on HBO Max. I’m not sure if HBO releases those numbers or not, but I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have the backing he does if only 12 people had streamed it.

In the movie industry success is determined by Box office numbers first and foremost.

What sort of backing are you referring to? Go look on James gunns social media and tell me what sort of support he’s receiving. Dude is getting absolutely blasted by thousands and thousands of fans.

 

[jye4ever]

So Snyder’s universe didn’t “succeed” and didn’t work because no one “wanted to work with it?” What does that even mean lmao, and what is your definition of success? He had some of the most successful DC movies to date. The DCEU arguably went completely off the rails when Snyder was no longer in charge. Wonder Woman 84, birds of prey, shazam, and the suicide squad were all pretty terrible for the most part.

You also said that Snyder wanted a tortured Wonder Woman? I think that was initially his plan but you do realize that he wrote the story for the very same Wonder Woman movie you’re praising, right?

You thought Shazam was fantastic? C’mon man. It was OKAY at best. The writing was pretty weak, as was the ending with the shazam family. I guess the humor in it was great if you’re 12 years old or younger.

I’m glad you and six other people think James Gunn gets it. People certainly thought so when his version of suicide squad made 12 dollars at the box office. There’s a reason he tackles these b-list heroes and villains, it helps disguise the fact that he truly doesn’t understand what to do or how to write these characters without his weird dick joke fetish and edgy teen toilet humor. That type of s*** isn’t going to work with big name characters like Superman. Just think, the current head of the DC universe also delivered one of their biggest flops, kind of ironic.

Savage lol

Gunn’s SS is terrible the humor was super cringe.

I liked the 5 minutes with the starfish though lol

My man literally failed up into a CEO position

 

[snoop101]

Savage lol

Gunn’s SS is terrible the humor was super cringe.

I liked the 5 minutes with the starfish though lol

My man literally failed up into a CEO position

Mark my words, we’ll be seeing another Dc reboot in a few years lol.

Now rumor is that WB/Discovery might be sold. At this point I’ll be shocked if we see any of the proposed movies on Gunns “list.”

 

[Kebron]

Mark my words, we’ll be seeing another Dc reboot in a few years lol.

Would it really be any different then how the comics kept rebooting? Maybe they are following the source material after all.

 

[Kebron]

In the movie industry success is determined by Box office numbers first and foremost.

What sort of backing are you referring to? Go look on James gunns social media and tell me what sort of support he’s receiving. Dude is getting absolutely blasted by thousands and thousands of fans.

Then by going by that metric ZS Justice League was a failure.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=zach+...i57j0l8.10455j0j1&pglt=43&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=U531
Only 16.10 million at the box office.

 

[hbhf]

We went through the exact same thing with The Batman just a year ago lol.

 

[snoop101]

Then by going by that metric ZS Justice League was a failure.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=zach+...i57j0l8.10455j0j1&pglt=43&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=U531
Only 16.10 million at the box office.

Yeah It’s almost like WB butchered the original cut and released the edited half assed reshot version in theaters instead…oh wait.

 

[batfan08]

Yeah It’s almost like WB butchered the original cut and released the edited half assed reshot version in theaters instead…oh wait.

It’s almost as if Zack Snyder made two **** movies and couldn’t convince the studio to foot the bill for another $500 million vanity project.