DC Cinematic Universe ( The James Gunn era)

[Grendelsbayne]

Seems like they were damned either way. They spend a ton and the films underperform, it’s their fault. If they take a strict stance on the budget, and Snyder would say that they didn’t support his vision.

Possibility exists that Snyder simply wasn’t the right person to lead DC, on the big screen.

The point is even if he wasn't the right person, they still carry responsibility. They hired him, they gave him carte blanche, they let him film an entire movie even after they already didn't believe in him anymore and their plan of 'fixing' his movie in post was always insane on the face of it. And then they rushed the movie out with bad cgi to pad their wallets with bonuses.

And it's also not at all wrong to say that plenty of bad decisions continued to be made for the last 5 years of the DCEU after Snyder was already gone.

 

[Tosk]

Possibility exists that Snyder simply wasn’t the right person to lead DC, on the big screen.

Bite your goddamn tongue!

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I guess that probably was big part of why Marvel stuck to their guns, they'd already had multiple $1,000,000,000+ movies, while DC struggled to get that kind of money right out of the gate.

Partly, maybe. But also, Marvel Studios makes nothing but MCU movies, while other studios make a range of things beyond superhero movies. So another studio can scrap its superhero movies and still have other non-superhero projects to fill the void, whereas all Marvel can do is reshuffle its MCU plans. It gives Marvel more incentive to stay the course and make subtler adjustments.

 

[Mudd]

Here it comes...

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[DarrenTR1970]

Oh great. Now a damn Lego trailer is making me teary eyed.

 

[Set Harth]

Just imagine if you had stepped on them!

 

[JD]

The budgets were also in large part WB's decision. And MOS (and BvS) earned well over twice it's budget.

Snyder making bad choices in the films doesn't absolve WB of all responsibility for all of their own terrible decisions.

And that starts at the very latest with treating MoS like it was some kind of financial flop because of their stupid expectations that it would be the Dark Knight for Superman, when it was obviously far more similar to Batman Begins in terms of position and potential.

It's also entirely their responsibility that they responded to BvS' underperformance by completely butchering SS in the editing room despite SS having nothing to do with BvS. And it is by far most of all their responsibility that they let Snyder film JL even after they'd already lost confidence in him, but also refused to release the movie he actually filmed and instead once again turned to editing room butchering to try to turn the film into something completely different from what it was designed to be. And then rushed the film into theaters before the CGI work was even finished because they wouldn't get their bonuses if it didn't come out on time.

Firing Snyder after BvS would've made sense and probably been the best financial move. Firing him after JL would've made sense and almost certainly still been a better financial move than what they actually did.

DC had three choices with Justice League, wait til Zack Snyder was ready and let him come back and finish it, let Joss Whedon start over from scratch, or mash up Whedon's work and Snyders, and WB chose the worst option.

Partly, maybe. But also, Marvel Studios makes nothing but MCU movies, while other studios make a range of things beyond superhero movies. So another studio can scrap its superhero movies and still have other non-superhero projects to fill the void, whereas all Marvel can do is reshuffle its MCU plans. It gives Marvel more incentive to stay the course and make subtler adjustments.

I thought DC was it's own separate studio that only made DC movies?

 

[Samurai8472]

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[Christopher]

DC had three choices with Justice League, wait til Zack Snyder was ready and let him come back and finish it, let Joss Whedon start over from scratch, or mash up Whedon's work and Snyders, and WB chose the worst option.

It had nothing to do with Snyder being "ready." As I've pointed out before, WB had already brought in Whedon to rework the movie well before Snyder had to step away to deal with his family tragedy. They were not happy with the material he was delivering and insisted on major changes, which they brought in Whedon to write with the assumption that Whedon and Snyder would collaborate to finish the film. But they didn't like what Snyder was doing -- they hadn't been happy with his work since BvS -- and they were phasing him out as much as possible given that he was still under contract to finish JL. This was all reported and known about at the time, but in the years since, the Snyder partisans have advanced a revisionist history claiming that Snyder was only forced to leave because of his tragedy, rather than because WB disliked his work and was pushing him out even before then.

So "let him come back and finish it" was never on the table, since Whedon was already changing it before Snyder even left. And while I agree that a pure Whedon JL made from scratch would have been a better movie than the hybrid we got, it's unlikely that they would ever have seriously considered throwing everything out and letting the vast amounts of money they'd already spent go completely to waste. So neither of the first two "choices" you list was ever a realistic possibility.

I thought DC was it's own separate studio that only made DC movies?

No, it's a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment that specializes in DC movies. I think it's more of an imprint than an independent company. Granted, Marvel Studios is part of Disney these days, but it was originally a self-contained studio that got absorbed by Disney, while DC Studios was a subdivision created out of the existing WB studio.

 

[JD]

Oh, OK I see now, on both of those.

 

[Set Harth]

This was all reported and known about at the time, but in the years since, the Snyder partisans have advanced a revisionist history claiming that Snyder was only forced to leave because of his tragedy

I thought that was the narrative put out by the corporation, not "Snyder partisans" -- who are elsewhere alleged to believe that Snyder was persecuted by the studio.

 

[Mudd]

DC had three choices with Justice League, wait til Zack Snyder was ready and let him come back and finish it, let Joss Whedon start over from scratch, or mash up Whedon's work and Snyders, and WB chose the worst option.

Having a new director just remake the movie was not an option. The cost would have been ridiculous. The sunk costs don't disappear when you start over.

Warners didn't want Snyder back. They had no confidence in the movie he was making.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Having a new director just remake the movie was not an option. The cost would have been ridiculous. The sink costs don't disappear when you start over.

Warners didn't want Snyder back. They had no confidence in the movie he was making.

Which is why they should've fired him before filming began (when they clearly had already faith in him after BvS was released). Their frankenstein approach was simply idiotic.

 

[Mudd]

Which is why they should've fired him before filming began (when they clearly had already faith in him after BvS was released)...

Which, if true, puts the lie to claims that they didn't give him every chance to redeem himself...

 

[Tosk]

Which is why they should've fired him before filming began (when they clearly had already faith in him after BvS was released). Their frankenstein approach was simply idiotic.

JL started filming just a few weeks after BvS came out. It would have been insane to make such a sweeping decision so quickly. Not that they didn't make other ones as time wore on.

Personally, I think they were right to panic and alter course after BvS came out. They just didn't make the right creative choices and ended up steering into the iceberg instead of away from it.

 

[Christopher]

Personally, I think they were right to panic and alter course after BvS came out. They just didn't make the right creative choices and ended up steering into the iceberg instead of away from it.

Their biggest mistake was right at the start -- entrusting their Superman reboot to a director who had no respect or understanding for Superman and what he stood for, and who believed that Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were the only possible templates for superhero storytelling. There were some things Snyder did quite well -- like creating an entirely new and fresh version of Krypton rather than just copying the 1970s crystal look like everyone else does -- but a lot of it was just ill-conceived.

Although maybe that's as much on the studio as on Snyder, as studio execs tend to think the key to success is to copy the last successful thing rather than take a chance on innovation, and the Nolan Batman movies were the most successful superhero movies WB had done in a long time, so they figured their Superman reboot had to be equally dark and gritty. Maybe that's why they picked Snyder in the first place.

Still, they made some good choices, like letting the Wonder Woman movie happen (although its sequel was bizarrely ill-conceived). And I think they made the right choice from Aquaman onward to stop trying to build a serialized narrative and just focus on diverse standalones with the shared universe being just a backdrop and context. I think a lot of the later movies worked well, despite their poor box-office performance.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Yeah, their choice to hire Zack Snyder to set the tone of the DC cinematic universe seemed to be equal parts doing what worked for The Dark Knight trilogy, and doing the opposite of what Marvel was doing. They weren't going to be immature and goofy, they were making grown-up movies for adults that took the setting seriously!

The sad thing is, I think Snyder's style actually was a really good fit for Batman, and his Arkham Asylum-style fight scene at the end of Batman v Superman is probably the best the character has ever had. Unfortunately Snyder just didn't want to make a story about the character on the page, because the idea of a Batman that hates guns and won't kill people doesn't resonate with him. He thinks it's naive and childish... and WB hired him anyway.

 

[Set Harth]

Over the years The Dark Knight Returns cast a long shadow of influence over Batman movies even including the first one. Dawn of Justice, of course, became something like a direct adaptation of part 4 of the comic ( mashed up with Death of Superman ), but the comic's influence was all over the Nolan trilogy as well.

 

[Christopher]

The sad thing is, I think Snyder's style actually was a really good fit for Batman

I'm not sure I agree, since he thinks the only Batman is the Dark Knight Returns Batman, and that was not intended to be a default template for the character, but an exaggerated extreme in an alternate dystopian future. (Although many Batman comics writers made the same mistake for decades after TDKR came out.)

 

[Set Harth]

his Arkham Asylum-style fight scene at the end of Batman v Superman is probably the best the character has ever had.

yes

Which, if true, puts the lie to claims that they didn't give him every chance to redeem himself...

Here, "redeem yourself" meant "The competition's eating our lunch, so make our product indistinguishable from their product, or else. Sell your soul." If he couldn't do that I don't blame him.