Honestly it’s mostly the DC live actions that are the constant fucking failures. They have made plenty of solid animated movies over the years with good scripts and stories. Somehow when it’s big budget they pull out the tard brigade and do their best to shit the bed most times.
Your statement about DC movies and tards reminds me about a quote I heard in a documentary about indy/"shlock" films in the section about Russ Meyer, who made such fare as "Faster Pussycat!! Kill Kill!!" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", who was famous for his use of busty actresses. One day, a PA (who was by then a famous director in his own right) asked him "Mr Meyer, where do you find them all?" He said, "Kid, above a certain size they find me." I always think about that line when something consistently happens that really shouldn't be the case. Above a certain budget size, the ambitious retards want to be involved with the prestige movies.
The WB Exec management doesn't understand the appeal of its own properties, has a system in place that encourages meddling with superhero movies, hiring directors/producers based upon great talk and terrible performance, reactionary plans competitors, etc. Meanwhile, under the radar, the animation guys fly under/off the radar, doing work that's both true to comics when adapting stories and true to the characters when doing original works.
Now for the TLDR section:
DC movies were once great. Superman 78 and Batman 89 were great movies. Follow-ups not amazing, the 3rds dubious, and the 4th movies absolute dreck in each case. Honestly, that was the way EVERY movie used to be, there was NEVER a case of sequels being even good prior to The Godfather part 2 that I can recall. They were generally low budget cash grabs. There was never a "The Dark Knight" in a franchise's future; it was always Jaws 3-D and Friday the 13th Part 7.
Kevin Feige (along with Joss Whedon) changed the game completely. Not only did he churn out multiple good movies with lesser known characters, he connected them and then made the Avengers which blew everyone's $2 Billion dollar doors off.
Oh boy this is something I know a bit about.
JL 1 was to introduce Steppenwolf as Darkseid’s Lt.
JL 2 was the “knightmare” scenario hinted at in BVS. Darkseid takes control of Superman or manipulates him to be evil after Lois Lane dies (pregnant with Bruce Wayne’s baby for some stupid reason).
JL3 was to be the big ending with Superfriends vs Darkseid.
now, the Bruce Wayne + Lois Lane sounds ridiculous. But I did like the Knightmare scene in BVS and in SnyderCut. I think seeing Superman being evil would be really interesting.
ultimately, I don’t think WB has good leadership. The comics have been a hot mess since the end of the New 52 in 2016. The movies have been atrocious (with a rare good one like the Batman or the Suicide Squad).
apparently David Goyer’s original cut of Suicide Squad (2016) was really good. I mean the dude made Fury (2014) right before it. He’s an amazing writer director. Fury is one of the best war movies to come out in the 21st century.
I think Snyder crushed it with Man of Steel, even if there were pacing issues and the beginning scene was too long for a blockbuster. Snyder obvi crushed it with 300, Dawn of the Dead, and I personally am hella impressed with his Watchmen adaptation (it’s very faithful to the comic).
but I don’t think WB would let him do what he wanted to do. We see that with BVS being a hot mess, we see that with Suicide Squad (2016), we saw that with Justice League.
WB owns the biggest superheroes IP. Yet they keep shooting themselves in the foot being reactionary and trying to replicate Marvel, and even Marvel hasn’t released a good MCU movie since Infinity War.
I think endgame was entertaining with fan service but an actual good movie from pacing, writing, plot development, etc it wasn’t. They killed the villain in the opening act. Then did a time travel alt universe thing. It just felt like lazy writing imo.
Spider-Man 3 was good to see Toby and Garfield again, but it was made by Sony, and tbh, I think it has the same problems as Endgame.
Deadpool 3 was great, but lesbihonest, that’s very much a Fox production white labeled as Disney.
MCU is dead, unfortunately. The Batman 2 still has hope. Super-strong-independent-woman-who-don’t-need-no-Superman looks like a GOTG clone. Not really interested in that as the actor has the charisma of a door knob.
Tom Clancy wrote alcoholism well with Jack Ryan struggling with it during the Sum of All Fears novel. Alcoholism can be portrayed really well, but, party girl with no consequences is not it, fam. Unless she drinks away her life or something.
I hope the actor and movie does well. But I genuinely don’t see how y’all are attracted to her. Different strokes for different folks, but she just isn’t my type at all.
This is a good summary RE: Man of Steel/BvS/JL.
Post Avengers, DC reacted and tried to rush out its Most Popular Character That Hadn't Just Been In A Trilogy™ and got the guy that is GREAT at adapting stories shot-for-shot but has issues when he doesn't have a comic panel story to work from. The Nolan version of Batman being so successful gave WB the wrong blueprint from which to approach Superman, and Man of Steel suffers for that. Using Batman vs Superman as the template for a lead-in to the Justice League was another mistake; although it gets the two characters together, it works on the page because they have a long history. When they don't have that history, it's setting the stage for trouble like they had here. It's a shame, because I think there was real potential there.
But You can never step in the same river twice, because you aren't the same person and it isn't the same river. Joss Whedon might have tried to rebottle the Avengers magic but it hadn't worked after the first time and it doesn't work for these characters in this moment. Quippy humor was Marvel's thing half a decade before and it was getting tired, plus Zack had started out in a completely different direction.
Lots of bad cuts were being done for WB movies circa 2016-17, as you indicated. But they had Wonder Woman, which wasn't a bad movie but made $800M, thus setting the stage for ruining all superhero movies as a genre; afterward, Feige said he was going to move towards having more female than male heroes in the MCU, thus the M-She-U was born. Aquaman, based on a fairly recent comic basing Aquaman (whose name is actually Arthur) as a Arthurian tale set in Atlantis rather than Camelot) also made $1B, which is why Iron Man and Cap got to die but Thor was paid to stay around and take his shirt off.
It's a great point about the comics for New 52 in DC. It start in Marvel in All-New, All-Different a few years earlier when the Woke infiltration started. I don't take anything written in the last 15 years seriously, or as (my head) cannon.
dcau.fandom.com
