Spoilers Now that we've gotten Batman v Superman, what are your thoughts on the DCEU?

[Christopher]

It's pretty well established in dialogue and in a couple of scenes that Superman has been acting as Superman over the past couple of years.

Sure, it was asserted as a fact, but that's a far cry from actually being the focus of the story and characterization. That's one of Snyder's faults as a filmmaker -- he just puts things in because they're obligatory rather than actually having them arise organically within the narrative or have any emotional grounding for the characters or the audience. (Like how there was no story reason whatsoever for the World Engine to land in Metropolis and no effort was made to establish any connection between Clark and Metropolis before the climax happened.) One of the most common phrases I hear about his films is that things are not "earned" -- they're just tossed in. Snyder is good at making pretty pictures, but lousy at weaving them together into a healthy narrative. He's like those comic-book artists who think that being artists qualifies them to be writers, but whose solo comics are incoherent messes that egregiously mishandle the characters.

 

[Kor]

My opinion is that they should have laid the groundwork for the DCEU way back with Nolan's Batman trilogy. Instead, we got the rather disappointing "The Dark Knight Rises," which took Bruce/Batman in a weird, closed-ended direction that had nothing to do with the comics. That's what happens when auteur directors run amuck.

So then we got a Superman that was "Nolanized" in tone, but we had to have yet another brand new Batman, because the book was closed on Nolan's version of Batman and he couldn't fit in this continuity!

FWIW, I think the MCU is a bit too light in tone, while, conversely, the DCEU is a bit heavier than it needs to be. IMO, the X-Men movies strike just the right balance.

Kor

 

[theenglish]

Sure, it was asserted as a fact, but that's a far cry from actually being the focus of the story and characterization. That's one of Snyder's faults as a filmmaker -- he just puts things in because they're obligatory rather than actually having them arise organically within the narrative or have any emotional grounding for the characters or the audience. (Like how there was no story reason whatsoever for the World Engine to land in Metropolis and no effort was made to establish any connection between Clark and Metropolis before the climax happened.) One of the most common phrases I hear about his films is that things are not "earned" -- they're just tossed in. Snyder is good at making pretty pictures, but lousy at weaving them together into a healthy narrative. He's like those comic-book artists who think that being artists qualifies them to be writers, but whose solo comics are incoherent messes that egregiously mishandle the characters.

I understand what you're saying and I agree with it, but that was clearly not the focus of the story. Establishing Superman as having earned his "hero" status over the intervening two years could have been a separate film in itself (and I would have liked to have seen that film) so we just need to accept that this has happened and move on.

 

[Christopher]

My opinion is that they should have laid the groundwork for the DCEU way back with Nolan's Batman trilogy. Instead, we got the rather disappointing "The Dark Knight Rises," which took Bruce/Batman in a weird, closed-ended direction that had nothing to do with the comics. That's what happens when auteur directors run amuck.

I don't think Nolan's "grounded" universe really had room for the fantasy of characters like Superman and Wonder Woman and Aquaman and the Flash. It would've been kind of a jarring change. The Arrowverse managed to pull off a transition from a grounded beginning to a more fanciful universe, but it still felt like a weird shift in tone.

WB did intend for Green Lantern to be the beginning of a shared universe, but the film's disappointing performance scuttled those plans.

 

[JD]

Thing is, on the Justice League, Cyborg will never be anything more than a sidekick. Sure, he's valuable and stuff, but c'mon, he's a Teen Titan.

Besides, I think there are other black heroes DC could have gone for. Like John Stewart, Black Lightning, Michael Holt, Vixen, hell, they made J'onn J'onzz' human identity black in SV, Justice League: Doom, Supergirl, and the New 52. And that's even excluding the Milestone characters, since DC might not have the rights to use those in the movies (even though Icon was a member of the JL on Young Justice, and Static was shown to be a future member of the JL on Justice League Unlimited).

Is Martian Manhunter's human identity white in the pre-New 52 DCU? Every version of the character I've seen in the TV shows had a black human identity, so I had just assumed he was presented that way in the comics too.

They should use John Stewart. I'd drop Aquaman and Flash from the JL and cancel their movies and replace them with Green Lantern and Zatanna (they can cast an asian woman), another woman wouldn't hurt and a magic user would have a completely different power set, establishing magic as real in the DCEU would also help them down the line because it's one of Superman's major weaknesses. I'd keep Cyborg because of the technology theme.
.

Enchantress is in Suicide Squad, so we're already being introduced to magic through her. It's also going to have Katana and she will be wielding Soultaker, but I'm not really sure if that is considered magic.

 

[Christopher]

Is Martian Manhunter's human identity white in the pre-New 52 DCU? Every version of the character I've seen in the TV shows had a black human identity, so I had just assumed he was presented that way in the comics too.

Since the Martian Manhunter was introduced in 1955, his human identity of Detective John Jones was as white as every other comics hero at the time, yes. The first actor to play him in live action was David Ogden Stiers in the failed 1997 Justice League pilot, though I don't know if he appeared in human form. The first black actor to play J'onn was Carl Lumbly as a voice role in the DC Animated Universe's Justice League, and even though that version of J'onn didn't maintain a regular human cover identity, it was after JL that we began to see J'onn's human disguise portrayed as black -- first in Smallville with Phil Morris, then in Young Justice (where Kevin Michael Richardson voiced him), and now with David Harewood in Supergirl. Maybe in some of the animated DVD movies too, I'm not sure. (In The Batman, J'onn was voiced by an African-American actor -- Dorian Harewood, no relation -- but his John Jones disguise was still rendered as white.)

I guess Lumbly's J'onn was so definitive that it pretty much set a precedent in people's minds that the character should be played by deep-voiced black actors. To date, not counting video games and LEGO videos, about 2/3 of the actors who've played J'onn have been black -- Lumbly, Morris, Richardson, Jonathan Adams in Crisis on Two Earths, and the two Harewoods, versus Stiers, Miguel Ferrer in JL: The New Frontier, and Nicholas Guest in The Brave and the Bold.

Come to think of it, I'm just a couple of degrees of separation from at least two of those actors. Dorian Harewood went to my university -- specifically to the same music/theater school attended by my father and one of my college friends -- and Miguel Ferrer is the nephew of a friend of my father's (former Cincinnati newsman Nick Clooney, aka George Clooney's father). And I once walked past Phil Morris at New York Comic-Con, but I don't think that counts.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Is Martian Manhunter's human identity white in the pre-New 52 DCU? Every version of the character I've seen in the TV shows had a black human identity, so I had just assumed he was presented that way in the comics too.

... hell, they made J'onn J'onzz' human identity black in SV, Justice League: Doom, Supergirl, and the New 52.

 

[Commander Richard]

How do you like this painting of Superman?

Well, it's not a painting. It's a photograph of a real person. A woman in fact.

Click on the spoiler tag below to find out what this is all about. No actual spoilers for anything, I just wanted to hide the post.

Spoiler: The Superman Picture

Her name is Kay Pike and she's a Calgary-based artist. She uses body paint to transform herself into various characters. In March, she painted herself into Superman.

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Read the article here.

 

[Kor]

I don't think Nolan's "grounded" universe really had room for the fantasy of characters like Superman and Wonder Woman and Aquaman and the Flash. It would've been kind of a jarring change. The Arrowverse managed to pull off a transition from a grounded beginning to a more fanciful universe, but it still felt like a weird shift in tone.

WB did intend for Green Lantern to be the beginning of a shared universe, but the film's disappointing performance scuttled those plans.

Nolan's approach does come across as more grounded (I think tone has a lot to do with it), but I think there is still a lot of pretty far-fetched stuff, such as an ancient ninja cult that destroys whole civilizations.

I don't think it would have been too much of a stretch to eventually introduce super-beings into the same universe.

Similarly, the first "Iron Man" seemed pretty grounded, even with the highly advanced technology. Then, a few movies later, he's in a story with gods and aliens everywhere.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

Nolan's approach does come across as more grounded (I think tone has a lot to do with it), but I think there is still a lot of pretty far-fetched stuff, such as an ancient ninja cult that destroys whole civilizations.

I was thinking more along the lines of a microwave weapon that can instantly vaporize any water for hundreds of meters around -- even with lots of earth and metal pipes in the way -- and yet has absolutely no effect on the water in human bodies. Also, throw in a nuclear fusion reactor that can somehow be turned into a bomb (really no way to do that short of using a nuclear fission bomb as a detonator) and that conveniently has a countdown ticker on its surface as if it were designed to be a bomb all along.

Similarly, the first "Iron Man" seemed pretty grounded, even with the highly advanced technology. Then, a few movies later, he's in a story with gods and aliens everywhere.

But The Incredible Hulk came out only 6 weeks after Iron Man. So obviously the MCU was never intended to stay "grounded" for long.

Both the MCU and the Arrowverse started out "grounded" in order to ease the general audience into their universes before springing the weirdness on them. But it's pretty clear that their respective makers were willing to go in a more fanciful direction all along. Nolan, on the other hand, got even more grounded in his second movie. I don't think the universe he designed was meant to allow for superpowers, and I think it would've been too great a departure to add them.

And Warner Bros. and DC clearly felt the same, since they pinned their shared-universe hopes on Green Lantern, a film that came out a year before The Dark Knight Rises. It was never their intent to spin their multi-hero franchise out of Nolan's films.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The opening of the movie went out of its way to show that Superman has dedicated himself to acts of saving people and helping humanity during the intervening years since Man of Steel.

The opening of the movie I saw went out of its way to show us Batman's origin...again.

 

[Commander Richard]

I'm one who thinks that Man of Steel could have worked perfectly well in Nolan's universe. Sure you have a flying man with laser eyes but the whole tone and feel of the world in Man of Steel was quite naturalistic.

 

[Turtletrekker]

If aliens showed up at our doorstep tomorrow, would we object by saying, "but this world isn't designed for aliens"?

 

[Christopher]

I'm one who thinks that Man of Steel could have worked perfectly well in Nolan's universe. Sure you have a flying man with laser eyes but the whole tone and feel of the world in Man of Steel was quite naturalistic.

Except for the stupidly exaggerated destruction in the climax, with skyscrapers collapsing like houses of cards at the slightest impact. That was so cartoony, gratuitous, and absurd that it pulled me right out of the movie, on top of everything else that was unbearable about that sequence. Zack Snyder tends toward exaggeration and hyperstylization, not naturalism. MoS was as close to naturalism as I've seen him get, but still, his style and Nolan's are pretty much diametrically opposed. After all, Nolan actually knows how to assemble a competent, coherent narrative driven by character, while Snyder just carelessly slaps together unearned story beats to set up the pretty pictures and interminable action set pieces that are the only things he's actually interested in.

 

[dahj]

Wonder Woman gets pushed up to June 2nd, and two new dates are set for untitled DCEU movies in 2018 and 2019.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/warner-bros-pushes-jungle-book-881353
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/warner-bros-pushes-jungle-book-881353

What are your hopes for the two untitled films?
The most likely candidates are Batman and Superman standalones, Justice League Dark, Lobo and possibly Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman sequels.

 

[EnderAKH]

Wonder Woman gets pushed up to June 2nd, and two new dates are set for untitled DCEU movies in 2018 and 2019.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/warner-bros-pushes-jungle-book-881353

What are your hopes for the two untitled films?
The most likely candidates are Batman and Superman standalones, Justice League Dark, Lobo and possibly Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman sequels.

That they are almost entirely unlike Batman v Superman.

 

[Ovation]

Wonder Woman gets pushed up to June 2nd, and two new dates are set for untitled DCEU movies in 2018 and 2019.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/warner-bros-pushes-jungle-book-881353

What are your hopes for the two untitled films?
The most likely candidates are Batman and Superman standalones, Justice League Dark, Lobo and possibly Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman sequels.

I'd like another Superman stand-alone--same cast, different director (I've enjoyed MoS and BvS, but I'm also interested in how someone else would tackle the character). I'd also like another WW stand-alone. I think more female lead hero movies are a good thing.

 

[Skywalker]

Smart of them to bump WW up a bit. Bad Boys III and Captain Underpants are much easier competition to release against than Transformers 5.

I would not be surprised to find out that one of those two new DCEU releases is a solo Batfleck movie. I do hope we get another solo Superman movie (maybe with George Miller directing?) but I feel like WB is gunshy about him now.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I have a feeling one of those is a Batfleck movie. After the mostly positive reaction to Ben Affleck's performance I think it's pretty much inevitable that he's going to get his own movie somewhere along the line.

 

[dahj]

^^
Batflick and Suicide Squad 2 seem to be the odds-on favourites.