The Dark Knight Rises You Have My Permission To Lounge - Part 4

[I Am The Knight]

Driven to madness.

 

[titansupes]

Well... ****.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Excuses.

 

[The Shape]

It's interesting that a report this would come out now and not earlier, before the reviews hit. I wonder why that is.

 

[shauner111]

It's bad timing.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Because the writer has seen what happened to Drew Mcweeny when he made comments about all not being merry about BvS before it came out and got harassed by DC fanboys for it?

 

[BatLobster]

Well, some of these quotes seem to taken from WB employees at the premiere, which was just Monday.

It's clear that some people at WB saw the backlash coming, just like some did for BvS.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Some guy on social media made a interesting point. When Green Lantern came out critically mauled and financially stillborn, I didn't remember any DC fans crying conspiracy, bias, and lack of intelligence (except Dnno1) as reasons why it failed.

What's spurring it now? Is the appearance and throwing around of buzzwords like 'mature' and 'serious' bringing out the manbabies from the gutters?

 

[shauner111]

Maybe they'll learn their lesson this time and not jump in to cut the movie up for a stupid edit. Let the director present their cut and go for it. At this point they have nothing to lose.

They're probably either scratching their head or realizing that it has nothing to do with how many jokes you put in. It's not about tone or whatever, it's about studio interference, bad editing, and messy filmmaking.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Some guy on social media made a interesting point. When Green Lantern came out critically mauled and financially stillborn, I didn't remember any DC fans crying conspiracy, bias, and lack of intelligence (except Dnno1) as reasons why it failed.

What's spurring it now? Is the appearance and throwing around of buzzwords like 'mature' and 'serious' bringing out the manbabies from the gutters?

Yeah, Hal was immature in that movie.
DCEU has a mature Superman, brooding, and a philosophical director at the helm, who is the biggest fan of DC Comics.

And I'm the biggest Image Comics fan out there, cause I read 18 issues of Spawn, their volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Turtles crossover with Savage Dragon, first issue of The Walking Dead, and I saw a few episodes from some of the 90s cartoons based on their characters.

 

[The Shape]

I forget who, but after BVS and the "adjustments" WB/DC were going to make, someone in this thread said they thought it was a good thing WB was taking a more hands-on approach with more control over their movies.

Yeah, I guess not.

 

[The Shape]

Because the writer has seen what happened to Drew Mcweeny when he made comments about all not being merry about BvS before it came out and got harassed by DC fanboys for it?

The Hollywood Reporter is an actual trade publication, and certainly more trusted and respected (and potentially less biased) in the industry than a guy like McWeeney.

This report would have gained more traction, been more shocking, and become a bigger deal if it had come out earlier. Now, it kind of just seems like they're piling it on after this wave of negative reviews.

 

[BatLobster]

I think so far, they've just been in a no-win situation. They want to be filmmaker driven, but the fact that they have so much riding on all of these films as a whole ensures that they really can't be. And clearly, so far they haven't really had a true "visionary" director that can take something from concept to execution with a full confidence in what the movie needs to be: be it a 3 hour movie or a 2 1/2 hour movie in the case of BvS, or a dark movie or a more lighthearted one in the case of SS.

I think the problem in both cases is WB mucking with the creative process late in the game. We'll see how things go with JL, where they seem to be very involved with the direction of the movie from the start.

The Hollywood Reporter is an actual trade publication, and certainly more trusted and respected (and potentially less biased) in the industry than a guy like McWeeney.

This report would have gained more traction, been more shocking, and become a bigger deal if it had come out earlier. Now, it kind of just seems like they're piling it on after this wave of negative reviews.

It doesn't seem like this is something they've been sitting on this for weeks though. Like I said, there are key quotes there that came straight from the Monday NYC premiere.

Besides, what difference does it make when it came out? If they did release something like this weeks ago, people would've most assuredly called them out for trying to spin the narrative before the movie even had a chance.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

The Hollywood Reporter is an actual trade publication, and certainly more trusted and respected (and potentially less biased) in the industry than a guy like McWeeney.

This report would have gained more traction, been more shocking, and become a bigger deal if it had come out earlier. Now, it kind of just seems like they're piling it on after this wave of negative reviews.

It really wouldn't have mattered. They would've gotten called out regardless. And I don't think it would've been all that shocking. We already knew of the extensive reshoots and the tonally capricious trailers.

 

[The Shape]

I really can't imagine that the Hollywood Reporter would be considered about getting "called out" by obsessive fanboys.

 

[BatLobster]

What exactly is the point you're trying to make here Shape? Are you saying it's just a clickbait piece just because they ran it after the reviews hit? I mean there are some pretty eye-opening quotes in there, I don't think the report is without substance.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

If they were going for clicks wouldn't it have been better to do it before the critical response was out? Doing it now just feels like cathartic punctuation. Not some earth shattering news.

 

[The Shape]

I'm not really trying to make a point, nor am I crying foul or trying to discredit the report. But I am somewhat questioning it, partly because of what's included in it and the suspicious timing of the piece.

As far as the "key quotes" you say came from the premiere, this is the only actual quote by an unnamed executive -- "Better late than never." That was one Warner Bros. executive's reaction to the excitement at Suicide Squad's splashy Aug. 1 premiere in New York. -- which doesn't really tell anything and could mean any number of things. Then there's this bit -- "Even on the day of the premiere, one insider fretted about whether Suicide Squad would mirror BvS' huge opening and weak legs." -- which doesn't specify if this is meant to be an actual quote from someone at the premiere, or just something the "insider" was pondering on the same day. It's also a fairly natural concern to have following BvS.

The meat of the report discusses events from 2014 and onwards, specifically referring to screenings and things that took place months ago back in May and June. There's no crucial quote or piece of information that come from the premiere, which is partially why I'm pondering about the timing of the piece. Wouldn't this have technically been more of a smoking gun if it had come out even a week or two ago, let alone earlier? There had previously been the reports of the reshoots and the suggestion that they were to make the movie funnier, but never any real reports of such supposed turmoil and conflict within the production.

The report also makes a point of using the fact that Ayer dropped his agent and then hired him back the next to suggest that it was related to his Suicide Squad experience, despite the fact that there's no evidence of that, it could have been completely unrelated or related to something else, and things like that happen all the time when it comes to people swapping between the big boys like CAA and WME.

There's also Ayer tweeting last night that he loves the movie, believes in it, and it was the best experience of his life. While I would never expect Ayer to have a Josh Trank-level breakdown about a negative filmmaking experience, I would at least expect him to stay silent on the matter if he really had been put through the ringer like that and was unhappy with this level of studio interference. Ayer doesn't strike me as the type of director who would be such a studio suck-up and cover-up artist if he truly felt that he and/or his movie had been "wronged" or compromised in such a way.

But who knows, really. As far as this report goes, I guess it just seems like there is much less substance to it than there appeared to be upon first glance. I typically trust HR and rarely question what they report on, but the fact that it came out today -- a day after negative reviews hit and a day before release -- makes it seem more click-baity, as if they now want to try to seal the narrative "fate" surrounding the film.

I'm still excited to see it for myself. Def gonna blaze up and have a few drinks before, though.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

There's also Ayer tweeting last night that he loves the movie, believes in it, and it was the best experience of his life. While I would never expect Ayer to have a Josh Trank-level breakdown about a negative filmmaking experience, I would at least expect him to stay silent on the matter if he really had been put through the ringer like that and was unhappy with this level of studio interference. Ayer doesn't strike me as the type of director who would be such a studio suck-up and cover-up artist if he truly felt that he and/or his movie had been "wronged" or compromised in such a way.

Or maybe he's just a hell of alot smarter than Trank. You never bad-mouth or distance yourself from a movie while you're promoting it.

If this bombs (which it won't) and time is given for the dust to settle, thats when you open your mouth.

 

[BatLobster]

I see what you're saying Shape. You do have to read these articles carefully sometimes.

At the same time, as long as what they reported about WB working with two tonally different cuts, and bringing in that trailer company to recut the film is true...to me, it just screams of panicked studio interference.

Then you have people who tweeted over the moon reactions after seeing an early cut months ago, and then had to scale back their enthusiasm after seeing the final cut a couple of days ago. I feel like the writing is sort of on the wall here that the studio made some big changes that were bound to have a big impact on the movie. Whether or not that's a good or a bad thing, we'll all have to judge for ourselves but I think this narrative surrounding the film was inevitable regardless of whether THR put out this article or not. I already saw multiple reviews call our certain sequences as feeling very clearly crammed in as part of the reshoots, and note choppy editing.

As for Ayer, I really have no idea...my gut feeling is he did kind of have to surrender his baby, but he also probably did have such a genuinely good time making the film and working with the cast that he was able to be okay with making some compromises. I think he's a professional that knows how to play ball in the industry and knows WB has a lot riding on these films. And I'm sure he'd like to get another shot at directing one of these films, so it's in his best interest all-around to be a cheerleader for the film now.

And yeah, like Pfeiffer-Pfan says, once the dust settles then maybe he'll have more to say.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

One day they are gonna write a book about the catastrophe that is the DC filmverse. And I am gonna download it off Amazon.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

For the past 20 years, WB/DC has not had a significant/bonafide superhero hit outside of Nolan.

Speaking both commercially and critically, since 1996, they've all been given a negative or mixed reception:

Batman & Robin (1997)
Steel (1997)
Catwoman (2004)
Constantine (2005)
V for Vendetta (2005)
Superman Returns (2006)
Watchmen (2009)
Jonah Hex (2010)
Green Lantern (2011)

Man of Steel (2013)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Suicide Squad (2016) ??

They aren't very good at this game, are they? How can they get The Dark Knight Trilogy so right and everything else so wrong?

 

[Tacit Ronin]

One word: Christopher Jonathon James Nolan.

 

[Man in the Suit]

Yep, and his brother Jonah is brilliant.

 

[BatLobster]

To be fair, I think V for Vendetta is pretty well-regarded. I've seen it rank pretty well in some of the all time CBM lists.

But overall yeah, WB has been having a rough go outside of Nolan for the past couple of decades.