It certainly has the best acronym.
Warner bros announce superhero films through 2020
- Thread starter JoeZhang
- Start date
Its absolutely fucking terrible, and I went into it in more depth in the Shazam Thread.
It would be interesting if he was playing G. Gordon Godfrey
I still say it would be a mistake to completely separate them. I just think they should concentrate on making the best individual movies possible and not go out of their way to do crossovers unless it specifically makes sense for that movie. I think Justice League would have resonated better had they at least waited until after Aquaman came out.
"Democracy in action. Hey, didn't the Greeks invent that?"
I dunno... A lot of people said that about JL, that it would've worked better to establish the individual heroes before teaming them up, but I thought its structure worked reasonably well. It kind of reminded me of the 2-hour pilot of a team-based TV series where all the main cast gets introduced all at once. Or since we'd met half the team in earlier movies, maybe more like a spinoff pilot.
And we've sort of seen a previous example of the pattern of starting off with a team movie and later doing solo spinoffs, with the X-Men series and the Wolverine movies (plus you could sort of make a case for Colossus being spun off as a supporting character in Deadpool).
I'm not saying that you can't do a movie where you introduce a whole bunch of team members at once but I think it tends to work better when you start by giving the individual characters a chance to shine in their separate movies. Then you have more immediate buy-in once you start putting them together. The Avengers movies still work fine on their own but they work better as a culmination of individual movies because then you have a cumulative effect of all of the fond, nostalgic feelings I have for the characters from their solo films. This results in me getting warm fuzzies even when minor supporting characters appear, even if they don't do much, like Ned's bit in Infinity War.
On the other hand, Marvel also introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man in a team-up movie before giving them solo movies. (And Black Widow, eventually.) So if anything, Marvel has proven that both approaches can work, solo-first and teamup-first.
Besides, the DCEU (or I guess "Worlds of DC" now) hasn't had much luck with individual characters' movies up to now aside from Wonder Woman, which is all the more reason to generalize about solo movies being automatically better. Anything can be made to work if it's done the right way and can be terrible if it's done the wrong way. All I'm saying is, even though people assumed for years that starting with a team movie was a bad idea, I feel that Justice League actually pulled it off better than expected.
After 5 other solo movies, even if they are in different continuities, I don't think Spider-Man needed any introduction. I figure the same thing with Batman, which is why I was fine with how they introduced Ben Affleck's Batman in Batman v. Superman.
Black Panther worked in Captain America: Civil War (and, as a character, worked better in that film than he did in Black Panther, IMO). But, there are still moments in Civil War that I think would have resonated better had they done the movies the other way around. Most notably that brief face off between Okoye & Black Widow, "Move or you will be moved."
Sure, there are going to be pluses and minuses to either approach. Which is why it's a good idea to try both rather than being dogmatic about always doing it the same way.
Except that was Ayo, not Okoye, and Ayo played a pretty small role in Black Panther.
I suspect a lot of the negativity to the DC cinematic universe is due to that Batman was portrayed as killing, for a lot of big Batman fans, DC fans, Marvel fans that is really wrong and offputting, seems too out of character if not a betrayal of the character and the values he and the storytelling generally should have.
I meant to post earlier so i forgot who said it.
I think it is POSSIBLE for movie to start with all the characters in ONE movie, and THEN start doing solo movies. Justice League showed that such a thing is easy to screw up, but because Marvel has already shown the general population how solo and team up movies can interact, the Marvel model is NOT NECESSARY (though certainly an option).
And for Marvel, it had its drawbacks. I know i purposely did nOT see Thor in tehaters because i thought it would be a bad movie...when i saw it on Redbox, and i saw i was wrong. Now, not the BEST movie, but worth seeing...and now Marvel ha a track record where i am willing to see any in the theater, and not just a month later on Tuesday.
With DC...being multiculutral, i like both..and see both as a movie version of the comics i loved from both. So my expectations would be similar (like how DC TV on CW is having that same positive vibe i get from Marvel movies).
And with DC, they could have made the movies like this (with my reasoning, and maybe what i would want to see)
1. Justice League - introduces the DC Film Universe. Ad would focus ON SUPERMAN (rather than avoid him like in real life) and Batman, but have their roles actually be more supporting. I would have a couple of the "minor" characters be more the center. In my world, it would have been like Blue Beetle & Booster Gold, some buddies who can help the audience understand what it's like to team up with legendary Superheroes. The reason why i would nOT have Supes & Bats in the lead is because they are just the hook to to see the whole team
Superman - "easy" choice , and you can do any kind of adventure... You could easily being filming so a trailer is available at Justice League
Wonder WOman- this would have been next because it would have been obvious once production got started that WW would be a breakout character (like in B v S), and so you could safely start on the solo movie when Justice League comes out
Breakout CHaracter 1 - Not sure who it could have been (maybe Aquaman or Flash)...but they would take a couple of weeks after Justice League premiere to see who emerges as the fan favorite, and then go to work to set that movie up (maybe by the time Blue Ray rolls around you have a director)
Justice League 2 - Allows you to "fix" a character that did NOT come off well and see if audiences respond now
Batman - Easy movie to make (in terms of getting people interested, and having a story ready)
Breakout character 2 - Someone also popular int he first movie, perhaps got a better role now
"Fix it" CHaracter - Whoever was the "worst" in terms of not connecting with Audiences... By now, with JL2, you can see if how they fixed the character worked. If not, at this point, a new JL member could premiere early.
I think it is POSSIBLE for movie to start with all the characters in ONE movie, and THEN start doing solo movies. Justice League showed that such a thing is easy to screw up, but because Marvel has already shown the general population how solo and team up movies can interact, the Marvel model is NOT NECESSARY (though certainly an option).
And for Marvel, it had its drawbacks. I know i purposely did nOT see Thor in tehaters because i thought it would be a bad movie...when i saw it on Redbox, and i saw i was wrong. Now, not the BEST movie, but worth seeing...and now Marvel ha a track record where i am willing to see any in the theater, and not just a month later on Tuesday.
With DC...being multiculutral, i like both..and see both as a movie version of the comics i loved from both. So my expectations would be similar (like how DC TV on CW is having that same positive vibe i get from Marvel movies).
And with DC, they could have made the movies like this (with my reasoning, and maybe what i would want to see)
1. Justice League - introduces the DC Film Universe. Ad would focus ON SUPERMAN (rather than avoid him like in real life) and Batman, but have their roles actually be more supporting. I would have a couple of the "minor" characters be more the center. In my world, it would have been like Blue Beetle & Booster Gold, some buddies who can help the audience understand what it's like to team up with legendary Superheroes. The reason why i would nOT have Supes & Bats in the lead is because they are just the hook to to see the whole team
Superman - "easy" choice , and you can do any kind of adventure... You could easily being filming so a trailer is available at Justice League
Wonder WOman- this would have been next because it would have been obvious once production got started that WW would be a breakout character (like in B v S), and so you could safely start on the solo movie when Justice League comes out
Breakout CHaracter 1 - Not sure who it could have been (maybe Aquaman or Flash)...but they would take a couple of weeks after Justice League premiere to see who emerges as the fan favorite, and then go to work to set that movie up (maybe by the time Blue Ray rolls around you have a director)
Justice League 2 - Allows you to "fix" a character that did NOT come off well and see if audiences respond now
Batman - Easy movie to make (in terms of getting people interested, and having a story ready)
Breakout character 2 - Someone also popular int he first movie, perhaps got a better role now
"Fix it" CHaracter - Whoever was the "worst" in terms of not connecting with Audiences... By now, with JL2, you can see if how they fixed the character worked. If not, at this point, a new JL member could premiere early.
No one cared about how Keaton killed people. He was a downright psycho compared to Affleck.
Most people have always associated Batman with darkness and violence. Even Bale's Batman, while preaching a strict no-killing rule, drove around firing missiles in the middle of Gotham's daily commute. And Affleck's Batman story is specifically intended to be an exception in his life - a fall from grace which he recovers from.
The original source of the negativity flows primarily from Superman killing (which is a whole different kettle of fish for the general audience), not anything even remotely connected to Batman. And the ongoing negativity, frankly, has far more to do with the simple quality of the movies than anything else.
Not "always," only for the first few years after 1939 and then from 1986 onward. He started to become lighter as soon as Robin was introduced in 1940, and that trend didn't begin to reverse until around 1970, in reaction to the Adam West series (which was actually quite a faithful interpretation of the formula and tone of the comics through most of the 1940s and early 1950s, although the TV show's Dynamic Duo were much stiffer and more serious than their wisecracking, bantering comics counterparts). When Frank Miller did the ultra-dark, ultra-violent The Dark Knight Returns in '86, it was a radical and shocking departure, an extreme to which Batman had never before been taken. But then everyone afterward tried to copy it, so it came to be seen as the default approach to Batman.
I understand that. I mean 'always in the modern general audience'. The modern view of the character for most has been primarily determined by the Burton and Nolan films, with whatever snippets they may have seen or heard of from various cartoons and video games, and almost all of those have been partly or wholly based on the darker versions of the character, even when they actually keep to the no-killing rule.
I guess I'm just too literal-minded to think of "always" as a word that can be used in that way. Or just too old, since I was a high school senior when The Dark Knight Returns came out, so the Batman I grew up with was the Batman played by Adam West and Olan Soule.