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Warner bros announce superhero films through 2020

http://deadline.com/2016/09/dc-comi...tness-time-warner-ceo-jeff-bewkes-1201823990/

DC Comics Superheros Will Have “More Lightness” Time Warner CEO Vows

Superheros from Time Warner’s DC Comics universe will have “more lightness in them” than people saw from this year’s financially successful — but critically panned — Batman Vs Superman and Suicide Squad, CEO Jeff Bewkes told an investor gathering today.

“We’re thinking about that,” he told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. Even though “this is the part where we say ‘pay no attention to the critics’,” Bewkes acknowledged that “we do think there’s a little room for improvement.”

Warner Bros has added some executives, including DC’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, “to oversee not just the movie applications we do” but also the eight DC-related TV shows and consumer products lines.

“We’re going to try to make sure we do this in a way that’s faithful to the opportunity and the tone of this,” Bewkes says.

That said, “these movies were very successful in the strategic aims and financial aims we had for them.” They helped to reinvigorate movie-goers’ interest in the characters. “So the strategy worked. The execution did deliver what we wanted….What you shouldn’t take away is that you should be worried about this. We’re actually more optimistic about it than we were….We’re right on course, or better.
 
DC Comics Superheros Will Have “More Lightness” Time Warner CEO Vows

Superheros from Time Warner’s DC Comics universe will have “more lightness in them” than people saw from this year’s financially successful — but critically panned — Batman Vs Superman and Suicide Squad, CEO Jeff Bewkes told an investor gathering today.

Sheesh, it's not about light vs. dark, it's about whether the storytelling is competent and the characters handled well. Having seen BvS now, I can say that it was awful for reasons that had nothing to do with darkness and everything to do with failures of plotting, structure, and characterization.

This is the problem with movie executives. They aren't creators, so they don't understand the difference between a well-told story and a badly told one. All they can grasp are the superficialities -- is it light or dark, is it serious or funny, does it have a male or female lead, surface elements like that. It's like seeing a well-made, well-tuned red car outrace a badly made and maintained blue car and concluding that the way to win races is to paint all their cars red.
 
Sheesh, it's not about light vs. dark, it's about whether the storytelling is competent and the characters handled well. Having seen BvS now, I can say that it was awful for reasons that had nothing to do with darkness and everything to do with failures of plotting, structure, and characterization.

This is the problem with movie executives. They aren't creators, so they don't understand the difference between a well-told story and a badly told one. All they can grasp are the superficialities -- is it light or dark, is it serious or funny, does it have a male or female lead, surface elements like that. It's like seeing a well-made, well-tuned red car outrace a badly made and maintained blue car and concluding that the way to win races is to paint all their cars red.
No argument from me. I've said it since March, that the biggest problem with BvS is that Snyder and Goyer are bad story tellers. It's uncanny how similar BvS and CACW were, and yet CW worked because the Russos told the story better. Snyder gets lost in the weeds of symbolism, allegory and SFX, and expects the audience to fill in the blanks on the important details.

I read the executives interview as WB going to improve their game, rather than appease their detractors. Which is a positive for people who like their products, but want to see them perform even better.
 
Sheesh, it's not about light vs. dark, it's about whether the storytelling is competent and the characters handled well. Having seen BvS now, I can say that it was awful for reasons that had nothing to do with darkness and everything to do with failures of plotting, structure, and characterization.

This is the problem with movie executives. They aren't creators, so they don't understand the difference between a well-told story and a badly told one. All they can grasp are the superficialities -- is it light or dark, is it serious or funny, does it have a male or female lead, surface elements like that. It's like seeing a well-made, well-tuned red car outrace a badly made and maintained blue car and concluding that the way to win races is to paint all their cars red.
That's a very good point. Today's executive would look at the success of Titanic and think it was because of the huge ship and period costumes rather than the love story between two very likeable characters.
 
That's a very good point. Today's executive would look at the success of Titanic and think it was because of the huge ship and period costumes rather than the love story between two very likeable characters.
Hahaha, they already tried to make the "next Titantic". In 2001's Pearl Harbor. And as you can imagine, Pearl Harbor never reached the success (financially or with audiences) that Titanic did.
 
Sheesh, it's not about light vs. dark, it's about whether the storytelling is competent and the characters handled well. Having seen BvS now, I can say that it was awful for reasons that had nothing to do with darkness and everything to do with failures of plotting, structure, and characterization.
I do think tone is part of the problem. Snyder piles on the grimdark and bombastic without relief. If he allowed pockets of lightness and relaxation into his movies, they'd be much more watchable.
 
That's a very good point. Today's executive would look at the success of Titanic and think it was because of the huge ship and period costumes rather than the love story between two very likeable characters.

Well I for one couldn't give two shits about the love story between "very likable" (:crazy:) characters but everything surrounding them is wonderful.

Just goes to show what works for some don't work for others.
 
I do think tone is part of the problem. Snyder piles on the grimdark and bombastic without relief. If he allowed pockets of lightness and relaxation into his movies, they'd be much more watchable.

We'll see -- clearly that's what he's doing in Justice League. That alone won't give it a coherent story, though. Snyder's problem is that he's only interested in creating moments and doesn't put the work into justifying them, providing the connective story tissue that gives them a reason to be there. In MoS, there was absolutely no reason for the World Engine to land in Metropolis, since Clark had never even been to Metropolis at that point and Zod had no reason to targe it. It was just there because the audience expected it to be there. Then there was the moment where Superman arrived to save Lois after half of Metropolis had been wrecked, and Perry's assistant Jenny saw him land with her and said "He saved us!" in an awed tone of voice, even though she had no possible way of knowing that he'd stopped the other World Engine at the antipodes. As far as that character could have known, Superman had been completely absent while her workplace and half the city had collapsed around her and nearly killed her, then the US Army had crashed a plane into the World Engine and somehow stopped it, and then some flying guy in a cape had finally shown up and saved exactly one person who'd fallen out of said plane. There's no story-logic reason for Jenny to give Superman the credit; the line was just unnaturally put into her mouth because the audience expected Superman to be the hero. Nothing was done to earn the moment in-story.

And BvS was far, far worse. Nothing was earned or justified. Everything came randomly of nowhere. Conversations were disjointed ramblings that would jump from one mock-profound proclamation to an unconnected one without rhyme or reason. Clark and Lois were given a shred of uncertainty about their relationship that wasn't set up by anything and was subsequently forgotten. Clark was given business about investigating the Batman, then this just disappeared when Lex blackmailed him into fighting Batman. And so on.

Maybe, just maybe, if Geoff Johns and the other producers ride tight herd on Snyder with Justice League, if they give the movie a solid, cohesive script and minimize his ability to tamper with its structure, and if the WB execs don't panic and force a Suicide Squad-style "repair" onto it, then JL could end up with a relatively coherent story. But that's just not how the feature industry works. Directors are given free rein and scripts are just there to be reshaped to the directors' whims. So even if JL does have more fun moments, like the Bruce-Barry scene, I really, really doubt that they'll come together into anything like a coherent narrative as long Snyder's the director. He can do moments, but that's all he can really do. He should've stuck with directing commercials.
 
We'll see -- clearly that's what he's doing in Justice League. That alone won't give it a coherent story, though. Snyder's problem is that he's only interested in creating moments and doesn't put the work into justifying them, providing the connective story tissue that gives them a reason to be there. In MoS, there was absolutely no reason for the World Engine to land in Metropolis, since Clark had never even been to Metropolis at that point and Zod had no reason to targe it. It was just there because the audience expected it to be there. Then there was the moment where Superman arrived to save Lois after half of Metropolis had been wrecked, and Perry's assistant Jenny saw him land with her and said "He saved us!" in an awed tone of voice, even though she had no possible way of knowing that he'd stopped the other World Engine at the antipodes. As far as that character could have known, Superman had been completely absent while her workplace and half the city had collapsed around her and nearly killed her, then the US Army had crashed a plane into the World Engine and somehow stopped it, and then some flying guy in a cape had finally shown up and saved exactly one person who'd fallen out of said plane. There's no story-logic reason for Jenny to give Superman the credit; the line was just unnaturally put into her mouth because the audience expected Superman to be the hero. Nothing was done to earn the moment in-story.

I don't think your opinion of Snyder is all that far off, but in all fairness to MoS, I have to say you're pretty much the first person I've ever seen who would pick those specific examples to describe what's wrong with the movie. Is it true that Metropolis was included because that's what the audience expects? Sure. But so what? Not every detail needs a reason. The alien weapon was focused straight through the planet, with one end on empty seas and the other on a big city, which just happened to be metropolis. It could've been any other city and the main part of the story would've been the same. But we actually knew some of the characters in metropolis, at that point, so making it metropolis was clearly the right decision regardless of whether Superman had ever been there before.

Likewise, sure, if you want to analyze everything rationally, she probably shouldn't have any idea what Superman's done, but never the less, it's not all that strange to emerge unscathed from a disaster beyond comprehension, see what basically amounts to a god-like figure rescuing someone and assume that he's responsible for saving the day.
 
Then there was the moment where Superman arrived to save Lois after half of Metropolis had been wrecked, and Perry's assistant Jenny saw him land with her and said "He saved us!" in an awed tone of voice, even though she had no possible way of knowing that he'd stopped the other World Engine at the antipodes. As far as that character could have known, Superman had been completely absent while her workplace and half the city had collapsed around her and nearly killed her, then the US Army had crashed a plane into the World Engine and somehow stopped it, and then some flying guy in a cape had finally shown up and saved exactly one person who'd fallen out of said plane. There's no story-logic reason for Jenny to give Superman the credit; the line was just unnaturally put into her mouth because the audience expected Superman to be the hero. Nothing was done to earn the moment in-story..

Except that is not what happens in the movie.

Superman doesn't suddenly show up to just to save Lois. The plane is being chased by Zod in a Kryptonian scout ship, and just as Zod's about to fire at the plane, Superman crashes into it knocks it off course, fights Zod inside, then crashes the scout ship and gives the plane a chance to do its thing.

Jenny meanwhile is seeing none of this, as she's on the ground in a giant dust cloud, probably busy dodging rubble, what she does see once things start clearing up a bit is the last bits of the giant ship disappearing into the Phantom Zone and Superman and Lois as the only two people flying away from it. What she witnessed is her city being destroyed around her, with army planes and helicopters being swatted out of the sky with no effect, until a flying guy turned up and then it suddenly stopped. So then she says "He saved us", which in the context of what she actually saw makes total sense.
 
I don't think your opinion of Snyder is all that far off, but in all fairness to MoS, I have to say you're pretty much the first person I've ever seen who would pick those specific examples to describe what's wrong with the movie. Is it true that Metropolis was included because that's what the audience expects? Sure. But so what? Not every detail needs a reason. The alien weapon was focused straight through the planet, with one end on empty seas and the other on a big city, which just happened to be metropolis. It could've been any other city and the main part of the story would've been the same.

But "just happened to be" is exactly the problem. How screwed up is it to tell a story about Superman saving Metropolis and never having him spend a single second in Metropolis before that moment? It shouldn't be some random accident. It should be his home. It should be personal to the character, not just to the audience. That's what I'm saying. Snyder tacks on moments that the audience expects and does nothing to earn them within the narrative itself. It's all surface and no depth. This specific example is just one symptom of a pervasive pattern.


Likewise, sure, if you want to analyze everything rationally, she probably shouldn't have any idea what Superman's done, but never the less, it's not all that strange to emerge unscathed from a disaster beyond comprehension, see what basically amounts to a god-like figure rescuing someone and assume that he's responsible for saving the day.

Screw that. He was totally absent while thousands died, then he shows up and saves exactly one person. The expected reaction wouldn't be "He saved us," it would be "For God's sake, where were you this whole time??? Why did you save her and not so many other people??" It would be outrage, not reverence. When Jenny said that line, I think I laughed out loud because it was so stupidly incongruous with the way the scene had been presented. If the screenwriters wanted to build to "He saved us," then they shouldn't have made the decision to deliberately structure the situation so that Superman was literally on the exact opposite side of the planet from the people who needed saving. They should've set up the situation so that Superman would be in the city actually saving people instead of deliberately removed from the city so that Snyder could indulge his crass, exploitative 9/11 porn for what felt like hours. This is what I'm saying. The moments are not set up. They're not built to. They're not earned. They just get tossed in out of nowhere, all form and no depth. They often even contradict what came before. It's fundamentally incompetent storytelling.
 
How screwed up is it to tell a story about Superman saving Metropolis and never having him spend a single second in Metropolis before that moment? It shouldn't be some random accident. It should be his home.

But Metropolis isn't his home, Smallville is.
He goes to Metropolis in the comics because that's where he can do the most good, which is exactly what he decides to do at the end of Man of Steel.

It should be personal to the character, not just to the audience.

Incidentally, Superman does defend Smallville in Man of Steel and it is personal.

Screw that. He was totally absent while thousands died

You're transferring your expectations based on knowing Superman from before on the people of Metropolis in this movie.
But they have never seen him before, they don't know the extent of his powers, what he can and can't do, for that matter, Superman himself doesn't yet know the full extent of his powers. Why would anybody be angry at him when nobody expected to be saved by Superman at that point because nobody had ever even seen Superman in this world? And the first time they do see him is flying away from a destroyed big alien spaceship that until recently was wreaking havoc all over the city with the army being powerless to stop it.
 
But "just happened to be" is exactly the problem. How screwed up is it to tell a story about Superman saving Metropolis and never having him spend a single second in Metropolis before that moment? It shouldn't be some random accident. It should be his home. It should be personal to the character, not just to the audience. That's what I'm saying. Snyder tacks on moments that the audience expects and does nothing to earn them within the narrative itself. It's all surface and no depth. This specific example is just one symptom of a pervasive pattern.

Yeah, no. You're not critiquing the movie here. You're critiquing whether it met your expectations of a Superman movie. There's absolutely no reason the story has to be Superman defending Metropolis like it's personal. That's not even the point of the movie. The point is him choosing to defend humanity, for which Metropolis is a stand-in. The movie has plenty of flaws, but this is not even remotely one of them.

Screw that. He was totally absent while thousands died, then he shows up and saves exactly one person. The expected reaction wouldn't be "He saved us," it would be "For God's sake, where were you this whole time??? Why did you save her and not so many other people??" It would be outrage, not reverence. When Jenny said that line, I think I laughed out loud because it was so stupidly incongruous with the way the scene had been presented. If the screenwriters wanted to build to "He saved us," then they shouldn't have made the decision to deliberately structure the situation so that Superman was literally on the exact opposite side of the planet from the people who needed saving. They should've set up the situation so that Superman would be in the city actually saving people instead of deliberately removed from the city so that Snyder could indulge his crass, exploitative 9/11 porn for what felt like hours. This is what I'm saying. The moments are not set up. They're not built to. They're not earned. They just get tossed in out of nowhere, all form and no depth. They often even contradict what came before. It's fundamentally incompetent storytelling.

I agree the destruction porn went on too long and too pointlessly. But you're seriously overstating the importance of Jenny's (completely human and understandable) reaction. It's not a moment that needs to be earned. It's just a moment that's there and then it's gone. The kind of moments that need to be earned are, for instance, "This man is not our enemy" (which was great) or "Save Martha" (which was horribly mishandled). And that's the big difference between MoS and BvS. Snyder's not great, but he did a decent job in making MoS pretty coherent. It mainly only suffered from a certain string of questionable story choices. In BvS he just completely imploded.
 
Yeah, no. You're not critiquing the movie here. You're critiquing whether it met your expectations of a Superman movie.

No, I'm critiquing the craft and structure of a narrative. Whether it's about Superman is beside the point, because it's a matter of basic storytelling that applies to any work of fiction. If you want the audience to care about something, you should establish that the characters have reason to care about it. It's the protagonist's investment in a goal that engages the audience, even if that goal is unimportant to the audience themselves. Snyder got that backward -- he just took it as a given that the audience would be invested in Metropolis, and thus didn't bother to give Superman a reason to be invested in it.


There's absolutely no reason the story has to be Superman defending Metropolis like it's personal. That's not even the point of the movie.

Exactly why it's wrong. An origin story is supposed to be about showing us why the series's tropes come about, why they're important and meaningful to the characters. Making it random and impersonal is a strange choice for an origin story.


But you're seriously overstating the importance of Jenny's (completely human and understandable) reaction.

No, I'm not, because it's just one of the many, many, many problems with the movie. I only brought up a couple of stray examples in passing because this is the wrong thread for an in-depth critique of those movies. And by fixating on the two examples I gave, you're missing my actual point, which -- as I've already said -- is that those are just symptoms of the larger underlying pattern. There are dozens of examples across both films, and I'm just not interested in making an exhaustive list, and this is the wrong thread for one anyway.


And that's the big difference between MoS and BvS. Snyder's not great, but he did a decent job in making MoS pretty coherent. It mainly only suffered from a certain string of questionable story choices. In BvS he just completely imploded.

Yes, undoubtedly MoS is a better film. But its problems were massive and were only exacerbated in BvS, which leaves me no faith that Snyder is capable of learning from his mistakes. (Indeed, his interviews made it pretty clear that he was doubling down on the problems rather than admitting them and trying to do better, and the final result bore that out in spades.)
 
It's best to just tune out the deep, infantile bias of @Christopher posts. He's been embarrassing himself for some time on this board now and is generally viewed as something of a hack.
 
It's best to just tune out the deep, infantile bias of @Christopher posts. He's been embarrassing himself for some time on this board now and is generally viewed as something of a hack.

I strongly disagree. You may view him as "something of a hack", but I don't, and I highly doubt that he is "generally" viewed this way.
 
No, I'm critiquing the craft and structure of a narrative. Whether it's about Superman is beside the point, because it's a matter of basic storytelling that applies to any work of fiction. If you want the audience to care about something, you should establish that the characters have reason to care about it. It's the protagonist's investment in a goal that engages the audience, even if that goal is unimportant to the audience themselves. Snyder got that backward -- he just took it as a given that the audience would be invested in Metropolis, and thus didn't bother to give Superman a reason to be invested in it.

What you're saying is not even remotely universal enough to apply to any and all works of fiction.

Superman doesn't need to be invested in Metropolis for the audience to be invested in metropolis. And, again, the point of the sequence isn't about metropolis at all. It's that superman is invested in humanity, enough to fight and kill the last living member of his own species. Say anything you want about whether or not that was a good idea for the climax of the movie, but as a climax, it does not in any way require us to be invested in Metropolis specifically. The sequence could take place in any city in the world, and the movie would not suffer one iota for it (except it would be harder to justify the street level scenes with Perry White et al).


Exactly why it's wrong. An origin story is supposed to be about showing us why the series's tropes come about, why they're important and meaningful to the characters. Making it random and impersonal is a strange choice for an origin story.

Again, no. That's what you want a superman origin story to be. That is not the only valid manner of origin story. Batman Begins didn't need to introduce Robin just because he's a major trope in the batman mythos, and man of steel didn't need to introduce Metropolis as Superman's home.
 
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