Where did DC/WB go wrong? - Part 2

[Mrs. Sawyer]

M
GOTG is completely overrated. Overly reliant on comedy and it's basically a parody.

You are aware that Guardians is a comedy, right?

 

[DrCosmic]

Toxic fanboy entitlement strikes again.

This is where the thread started with name calling.

I have noticed that many of the Snyder-fans get angry and hostile if you criticize Man of Steel/Snyderman vs Batman. With comments like "You didn't like MoS because you expected a campy Christopher Reeve movie!" Or "watch silly Marvel movies instead, hater!"

This is when the Marvel vs DC madness started. Everyone has good points, much of it is taste. The rivalry is a bit too hot for mine.

I say screw that noise. I'm going to live in the parallel world where DC was committed to their "Our characters are bigger than Marvel's" and gave all their big guns the TDKT treatment.

"People make an assumption that we're going to mirror Marvel's strategy, for example with Avengers. We do have a very different attitude about how you build a content slate," Nelson said. "And it isn't necessarily about connecting those properties together to build into a single thing. We think we've got great stories and characters that will lend themselves to great standalone experiences, and that's the way we're focusing on it."

The key to having a 'finer' product is not just scarcity, but clear qualitative advantage, not just a matter of taste (serious vs comedy) but refinement (a modern classic vs a cash in) which includes longevity and craftsmanship. Without superior craftsmanship you just have red vs blue, not red vs GOLD.

So you have Nolan's trilogy, basically, exactly how it played out. Except now, you have Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman Trilogy starting out 2008. Buffy x 1000, basically. Perhaps he recast from his own cadre of stars, Christina Hendricks as Diana, Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor... or maybe Angelina Jolie as Diana, since his version was based off of her to a point. He'd get pressure to cast as huge talent as The Dark Knight had been cast, and with such a character and such a company and his own talents, he likely could have pulled it off. A sequel out 2011/2012, with Avengers helmed by a director who's not a character juggling comic book writer, you have a very different movie world by 2014 where we may be looking at the conclusion of the Wonder Woman trilogy with discussion alongside Katniss about the age of the new female action hero.

Green Lantern still does what it generally does in 2011 except without any pressure to start a Marvel-styled mega franchise, it's free to be more like First Flight, a rockin space adventure starring an out of place earth guy being a fish out of water... basically Guardians of the Galaxy, just 3 years early. Not sure who they'd get for that, but JJ Abrams comes to mind if you could pull him from Star Trek. Duncan Jones hadn't been picked up yet. There's also the possibility that other high level auteurs would be interested based on the success of people like Nolan and Whedon getting such carte blanche and producing such amazing work.

You still have Arrow coming out 2012 shaking up the television world with what's possible with superheroes and advancing all of that. Agents of Shield, for good or ill, would not be what it is, or exist much at all without Whedon. In fact, Jeb and Maurissa might have started a much different superhero tv show in the DC area years earlier.

And you still do Man of Steel around 2013, you have a tremendous expectation and a tremendous prize ensuring the greatest creators will want to do their greatest work on it.

So you're rolling out Batman's trilogy from 2005-2012, the Wonder Woman trilogy from 2008-2014, the Green Lantern Trilogy from 2011-2017, The Superman Trilogy from 2013-2020, eight seasons of Arrow, ten seasons of Flash, six seasons of who-knows-what and at any point in there you can drop a huge LOTR/Hobbit/Deathly Hallows (cuz we know WB loves that ish) Crisis-inspired Justice League Trilogy event. Heck, you could do one every decade from then on. Bring back Bale and Jolie and whoever and whoever and the TV people and bring the sequel to that the very next year, if that.

But alas, WB decided to do something different. I guess we'll never know.

 

[Docker2.0]

MY OPINIONS

Avengers is truly great, but would've benefited from a more serious tone and more threatening enemies.

Captain America: TWS is pretty much the most overrated film on these boards. It's good, not great. TFA is a good film, just didn't nearly reach its potential.

GOTG is completely overrated. Overly reliant on comedy and it's basically a parody.

Thor movies are just mediocre romantic comedy/superhero films. They both have zero replayability. Second one is far worse, i couldn't even finish the movie, had to read the rest of the plot online.

Iron Man 1 is good, but 2 and 3 are watchable, mediocre films with zero replayability.

TIH is mediocre with zero replayability.

Most of their efforts have been very mediocre films that i have no interest in rewatching.

DC on the other hand, has multiple masterpieces. TDKT is near perfect, MOS is epic and awe inspiring (divisive opinion i know, but i never claimed this post is fact)

and Superman I and II are indisputable classics. The Burton Batman movies will forever be some of my all time favorite movies.

DC has their fair share of **** though. I'll admit that DC has done some **** movies. They definitely have. But DC's best films are way better than the best Marvel films. Marvel is generally pretty damn mediocre and overhyped. They have one great movie.

IMO DC has several great movies. and several awful movies.

I still prefer DC's lineup. I'll take TDKT, Burton's Batman films, Superman I and II and MOS over 1 great movie and a bunch of overhyped/mediocre movies any day.

Ok now you are coming off as a blind WB defender and Marvel basher. You prefer DC and that's cool. But just to bash Marvel movies and say DC has it together.........I just don't get that. You are kidding yourself if you think they do and even this "rush" of a JLA(yea I know, 3 years......still a rush)will be a mistake. Will it make money? Yes. BvS will do great at the box office but I'm not sure about JLA. It would do way better if they built these guys up though. It wouldn't surprise me if Aquaman is the real villian in this movie, just to try to introduce all the characters because fitting 7 or 8 characters into one film isn't a good idea.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

I'm not going to assume it's a rush job until I see it. I hope it's better than I expect, but I'm worried about WB putting all their eggs in Zack Snyder's basket. The good news is that he will have a better screenwriter to work with in Chris Terrio.

 

[Rorschach2012]

i'm not a blind DC defender. They just make better movies IMO.

DC has their fair share of HORRIBLE films, but their best are better than Marvel's best.

 

[jmc]

I understand this sentiment, and used to share the same thought about four or five years ago. However, this does show a lack of long term planning. Perhaps a normal lack of long term planning, but when we say where did DC/WB go wrong... that lack of planning is hurting them now. They relied on Harry Potter, a franchise with an end date and then afterwards they planned to... see what happens? No need to hit the ground running? That was a poor move, perhaps only in retrospect, but a poor move nonetheless. They underestimated the competition, both Disney and Marvel, and they've lost a great deal of market share because of it. If they weren't doing a suddenly aggressive push for superheroes, I could say they were playing the long game, but superheroes are their long term strategy, so... starting that later while relying on Hobbit-as-a-trilogy wasn't smart.

Again, who cares? Why is this such a big deal to some of you anymore?

 

[Rorschach2012]

The whole concept of a massive shared cinematic universe is ****ing genius and epic and awe inspiring, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired. But the epicness of the concept ended up overhyping the movies that are generally pretty average superhero fare. The Avengers is the one that really rises above the rest and transcends the genre.

 

[Docker2.0]

Again, who cares? Why is this such a big deal to some of you anymore?

That's the point of this thread. So people can talk about their opinions of why they can't or haven't.

 

[jmc]

My question to you is why does this thread even matter anymore?

 

[Flint Marko]

My question to you is why does this thread even matter anymore?

I don't think this threads existence needs to be justified, what with the active discussions taking place. To say this is now irrelevant because they have multiple movies in production is missing the point; if you think otherwise, fine, but you don't have to post here if you're going to do nothing but tell people to grow up.

 

[jmc]

What is the point of this thread then? What exactly is there for you to discuss anymore? You can't bash WB any longer for not doing anything, all it is now is retroactive bashing because people didn't get the films and tv shows when they wanted them.

 

[jmc]

No you haven't tried to be objective, you just want to bash WB because they didn't do what you wanted them to do. I'm not making excuses, if anything you're in denial because you don't want to accept the possibility that the reason WB didn't know what to do with it's properties was down to them not needing to do anything with them in the first place.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

No you haven't tried to be objective, you just want to bash WB because they didn't do what you wanted them to do. I'm not making excuses, if anything you're in denial because you don't want to accept the possibility that the reason WB didn't know what to do with it's properties was down to them not needing to do anything with them in the first place.

To which I say that's an excuse. Them not greenlighting their movies because they have other properties to greenlight is the same as them not having faith in their properties, especially when they spent money to look into these properties for development for years. WB thinks like a movie studio and doesn't think a like a comic book movie studio, to which I say has it advantages and disadvantage.

The Dark Knight is good, and for it's flaws, I liked (but is also mixed about) Man of Steel. I've also shown to be optimistic about WB's future by saying that Snyder can be good with a screenwriter. I've also disagreed about them needing to follow Marvel's model.

 

[mat-chow]

This thread is for those who sadly will NEVER, EVER be able to accept events as they have transpired. I'm a diehard DC guy. And as for the DC slate I say better late then never. As Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor once said- BRING IT OOON!!!!!!

Everyone has to breathe deep and let it go. Or don't, lol

 

[Shikamaru]

What is the point of this thread then? What exactly is there for you to discuss anymore? You can't bash WB any longer for not doing anything, all it is now is retroactive bashing because people didn't get the films and tv shows when they wanted them.

The thread title is somewhat inaccurate, since a better representation of fans' worries would be "Where is DC/WB going wrong?"

They had no interest in their properties till recently, fine. The problem is now they do and are repeating the same mistakes while making new ones. Despite them having the initiative to actually make the films, they've shown to still have the same lack of faith in their characters. Essentially, not much has changed. Everything they're doing points to their DCU being a rushed uninspiring shadow of what it could truly be. The problem is they want these films now, without the buildup and effort Marvel put in. Yes, we want more DC movies, but no point in making them if they're just making bad/mediocre material.

I, like many others on this site, were cautiously excited and optimistic over their potential future once TDKT ended. You'll find plenty of old posts in the MOS/JL boards displaying it, especially around the time the trailers were released, so clearly there's no static biased vendetta here towards the studio. What changed? Man of Steel's quality and their aggressively-rushing future plans.

 

[CaptainWagner]

MY OPINIONS

Avengers is truly great, but would've benefited from a more serious tone and more threatening enemies.

Captain America: TWS is pretty much the most overrated film on these boards. It's good, not great. TFA is a good film, just didn't nearly reach its potential.

GOTG is completely overrated. Overly reliant on comedy and it's basically a parody.

Thor movies are just mediocre romantic comedy/superhero films. They both have zero replayability. Second one is far worse, i couldn't even finish the movie, had to read the rest of the plot online.

Iron Man 1 is good, but 2 and 3 are watchable, mediocre films with zero replayability.

TIH is mediocre with zero replayability.

Most of their efforts have been very mediocre films that i have no interest in rewatching.

DC on the other hand, has multiple masterpieces. TDKT is near perfect, MOS is epic and awe inspiring (divisive opinion i know, but i never claimed this post is fact)

and Superman I and II are indisputable classics. The Burton Batman movies will forever be some of my all time favorite movies.

DC has their fair share of **** though. I'll admit that DC has done some **** movies. They definitely have. But DC's best films are way better than the best Marvel films. Marvel is generally pretty damn mediocre and overhyped. They have one great movie.

IMO DC has several great movies. and several awful movies.

I still prefer DC's lineup. I'll take TDKT, Burton's Batman films, Superman I and II and MOS over 1 great movie and a bunch of overhyped/mediocre movies any day.

I'm glad you labeled these as your opinions. Far too many people fail to do that around here.

Of couse, since this is all a matter of personal preference, it really can't be objectively debated as to which approach is best. Now, I think it can be said that different characters lend themselves to different tones. For example: GOTG (the comic) has a very outlandish, jokey feel that worked perfectly with the more comedic approach. Batman, meanwhile, is a much darker subject, which was well paired with Nolan's gritty style

Ultimately, I think that the MCU got off to such a great start because light-hearted heroes like that were new and unique compared to the grim world of the X-Men and Batman. Now it's an established brand and people like it and come back for more. But, as TWS shows, Marvel isn't afraid to take the more serious road.

In conclusion, there's a time and a place for all themes and styles. So far, I've been mostly happy with the modern offereings from both Marvel and DC/Warner Brothers, and look forward to what is coming from both studios.

 

[Rorschach2012]

i like the idea of the MCU better than i actually like the MCU. I only own a few movies from the MCU. Most of my favorite Marvel films aren't even MCU movies, i love the Raimi Spidey movies, the Bryan Singer X-Men films, First Class, and the first two Blade movies.

I think WB/DC has done pretty well, they've produced many of my favorite movies of all time. Their approach hasn't been perfect, and they should've gotten to other heroes sooner, but things could've been worse. I wish they would've gotten to other characters sooner, but now they're rapidly changing all that around, finally getting to all the characters we've been clamoring for.

 

[The Sage]

This thread is practically a hive for Marvel vs DC discussion and we all know the general feeling about that topic, so....