Your going to give up DC offerings because of one director not being able to finish his vision? Really? Are you a Snyder fan or a DC fan. Just asking. Burton didn’t finish his vision either and neither did many other DC directors. Not to mention many marvel people like the asm verse being ruined by studio meddling. Yet we still got great movies and content from DC. There can always be another director to do what Snyder did or maybe even better.
Yeah, totally fair question. This is kind of a matter for me personally of how the interest has developed. This is more than you want to know, but you asked.
I grew up reading DC comics as a young child with the DC characters very dear to me. But that was during the comics’ Silver Age which is super fantastical, light-hearted, colorful, comedic, outlandish, and whimsical. Those comics are literally childish because they were written for children.
When I grew older I felt that if I was to appreciate superheroes at all it would only be to seen them done justice in the most realistic and adult way possible. I did enjoy both 1978 Superman and 1989 Batman at the time they released but both still had obligatory camp elements that studio execs evidently felt were required because (the execs felt), after all, comic books are for children. It seems that the studio believed that to make the movies camp would allow adults to enjoy them in the first place, to make it psychologically permissible, etc. And to harken back to that innocent childhood love of comic books, as they themselves (and likely their own children as well) appreciated superhero comics as children—i.e., to capitalize on nostalgia for the childhood experience.
The camp aspect to that era of superhero films bothered me. It prevented me from being able to fully get into those movies. And as we know, as each Superman and Batman sequel was produced during the 80s and 90s they grew increasingly camp.
Fortunately the early 00s brought us X-Men and Spider-Man. Finally, the camp elements to superhero mythology had been mostly stripped away. And CGI technology had progressed to the point that superheroes could look real on screen. For example also at that time CGI had allowed for LotR to be beautifully rendered in film, which prior to that I never expected to see. Anyway, I finally began to feel like there was some hope for DC!
As luck would have it, though, when the Nolan trilogy released all my hobby time was entirely expended on a NWN persistent world project. I just never got around to watching it at the time. And it was partly because I had been disappointed by the earlier attempts at rendering Batman by Burton and Schumacher that I didn’t really care whether I watched it or not.
I finally watched the Nolan trilogy in 2014 when a friend loaned it to me along with Man of Steel. Also at that time I had just started Amazon Prime and got caught up on all the MCU films for free (which they were then—and literally for free because the first year I paid nothing for Amazon via a promotion).
Interestingly, the Nolan trilogy kind of left me cold. There were things to admire and appreciate about it, for sure. And, mind you, this just my subjective reaction: but Batman Begins for me was okay but just that, not great. TDKR I enjoyed the most because of Hardy’s quirky, oddball Bane performance. Plus the updated, modern day reimagining of Catwoman. But again, nothing about it blew me away or anything. And perhaps because TDK had been so massively hyped by that time, and Ledger’s performance in particular, it was doomed to not live up to all that praise. I appreciated what Ledger did, and felt the Oscar was deserved. But his performance didn’t particularly stoke or hype me. The crime thriller story itself didn’t really draw me in either.
Also, over time I grew to actually dislike Bale’s Batman—the modular, plastic looking suit, the egg shaped cowl, the gurgling Batvoice, the lackluster fight choreography, etc. As part of an evolution I’m glad the Nolan trilogy was made. It was a breakthrough part of an evolution toward a serious, grounded, adult Batman. But this trio of films didn‘t get it for me in terms of feeling an affinity with the characters. I only rewatched TDK once to see if I might like it better at a second viewing, and I enjoyed it even less.
MCU I loved right out of the gate. Not much to say there. And especially when it was all fresh it totally rocked.
Man of Steel was at first a total curiosity to me. It felt more like an alien invasion sci-fi genre film than a character study about Superman. I still could appreciate it fully that way, though. And I had HBO at the time and it was constantly on when I was channel surfing. So I was drawn to watch it again and again—liking it better and better each time. Like it got better for me with each view. That to me is highly unusual!
And at that time the first teaser trailer for BvS released. That thing is a work of art. My jaw dropped and I was absolutely floored. I was like here it finally is: a quirky, offbeat, existential arthouse film serious take on my two favorite superheroes from childhood. I am so in, lol! I didn’t know what deconstruction was then. But that trailer signaled it through and through.
When BvS released I was super hyped for it. When I went to see it I had never been impacted as much psychologically by a film, I don’t think. But it definitely challenged my assumptions and expectations about what a film of this type “should” be. I had mixed feelings about the Martha moment in particular, and suspected that there must be more going on with it conceptually than meets the eye. The film is deeply layered with ‘meta’ commentary about super hero mythology—and arguably attempting way too much for the casual GA viewer to digest at one sitting. So I decided the strangeness of “Martha” was something to study further and not succumb to a harsh knee jerk reaction about. I went back for the second viewing with a conscious decision to take the film in with no preconceptions, and to accept the film entirely on it’s own terms, for what it is as an artwork and not filtered though whatever ideas I might have beforehand. I absolutely loved it. I even got hit with a wave of emotion at Superman’s funeral, lol.
And then I went down the intellectual rabbit hole of revisiting Joseph Campbell’s the hero’s journey, and studying deconstruction in film, and learning about Watchmen, and watching interviews with Snyder about what he was trying to accomplish as an artist with the five film saga he planned, etc. This was all immensely satisfying to me. I felt like I had finally, at long last, found a way to truly enjoy these cherished superheroes again as an adult.
The other stuff I have seen from WB since the so-called Snyderverse hasn’t been giving me that. It’s nowhere near as good as the MCU did it for that more mainstream, populist, and less cerebral approach to the genre. And honestly, it only worked for the MCU until Endgame—and even by that point it was beginning to strain under the weight of over-repetition of its formulas.
I’m still waiting to see Ayer’s director’s cut of SS to make up my mind about it. BoP took a fairly big swing at trying to do something relatively offbeat, and continuing the baseball analogy at best managed a single that barely beat the ball to the bag. Perhaps due yet again to studio interference—that would hardly be surprising if so.
Reeves’ The Batman was interesting. I was able to appreciate it as a serious take we hadn‘t seen before. The neo-noir/horror/suspense thriller thing. But it still didn‘t hold a candle to what the Snyderverse has given me. It’s not even close for me.
I’m just not enthused at all about the approach taken by Wan with Aquaman, or Jenkins with Wonder Woman, Sandberg with Shazam, or what is apparently planned by Muschietti, Collet-Sera, Arbi and Fallah, et al.
I realize my tastes are not mainstream. And I do understand Hollywood’s need to cater to the GA. I‘m just hoping for what really stokes me, i.e., the Snyderverse, to continue in a sort of pocket plane of the DC multiverse. If I can get that I’ll view the other stuff with casual interest. If I don‘t get that I will likely lose interest entirely, yeah.
