DCEU: The Hare's Regret

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

I think the most telling thing about this version of the film is the aspect ratio. Even in the before-fore times, what percentage of the audience viewed a film at an IMAX screen? He's just made this for himself, with no consideration at all for the audience.

No, no, no. He made it for me, who watched it all on my Ipad Air. 4:3 ratio 4 life!

Totally agree with you on just lengthy shots of people just standing around. Another thing, when Diana recovers the Arrow of Artemis, did anyone else notice that Gadot seemed to have been directed to strike a catwalk pose every damned time she stood still? Like, I know that in the comics characters always stand around looking heroic at all times, but it doesn't translate to the screen, IMO, when it's so obvious that it's anything but natural.

Ditto with the figure-hugging, $3000 dress she's wearing at the Louvre while actively working on art conservation. 

@RumHam

Hah, good point about Deathstroke. Such an oddball thing.

As far as I understand it, Snyder is clear that he's not going to make any Justice League follow-ups, so it's all "universe that never was" stuff.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

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There's a ton of unnecessary stuff throughout the film though, even beyond the stuff already mentioned - the dumb Silas suicide bit takes an age, and our heroes stand about dumbly for 30 seconds plus staring at something for effect a number of times too. Like the bit where they recover Clark's body and all pose at the back of the van. Fucking awful.

I think the most telling thing about this version of the film is the aspect ratio. Even in the before-fore times, what percentage of the audience viewed a film at an IMAX screen? He's just made this for himself, with no consideration at all for the audience.

I couldn't agree more. Like I said in another post, this film is one of the most expensive vanity projects ever made.

Also I really do hate Zack Snyder's take on Superman. He makes the character kill people and miserable most of the time and now he hints that he might be a future villain if the WB is crazy enough to ever give this version of the film a sequel.

I'm pretty sure the Martian Manhunter scenes were added in the reshoots. I was reading somewhere that the original ending was Batman being visited by a Green Lantern, who warns him of Darkseid's coming, which to be honest makes more sense.

[Ran]

@sifth

Yeah, MM is reshoot stuff, as (I think) is the reveal of who he has been in previous films.

I'm now just shy of 50 minutes into the theatrical cut. It is so. much. tighter. Is it overly tight at times? A wee little bit here and there, but it cuts a lot more that it ought to cut than what it shouldn't. There was one clunker of a joke from Whedon -- the "brunch" thing -- but otherwise it's worked very well. Oh, and I much prefer the introduction to Victor in this one. It's a far more intriguing start for the character than just having him staring out into the night.

ETA: I don't know if I prefer Whedon's color grading choices, per se, but I definitely think Snyder's grading made everything muddy. A happy balance would have been somewhere in between the two, IMO.

[sifth]

27 minutes ago, Ran said:

@sifth

Yeah, MM is reshoot stuff, as (I think) is the reveal of who he has been in previous films.

 

That reveal also causes all sorts of plot holes when you think about how that character basically sat back and did nothing for the entire plot of Man of Steel and BvS, despite being a character nearly as power as Superman. It's like Zack Snyder just read some fan theory online and choose to role with it.

[Jace, Extat]

Also, the fact that only one fella has come round expressing that ''''''' ZACK SNYDER'''''''S Justice League''''''''' is the movie we all deserved tells me it's either worse than I could have imagined or a bunch of you are smarter than I give you credit for.

[Ran]

From THR's review:

Quote

With Snyder focused on posing his action figures, engaging performances are not a priority here — something you notice immediately when Billy Crudup arrives onscreen and reminds you what acting looks like. 

Heh. But it's also true. I figured Crudup was something that Whedon cut, but no, still in because, well, he's good and feels like he's in a totally different movie from everyone else (aka a good one).

Adam B. Vary's comparison of the two versions at Variety is interesting. I just got through the debate as to whether bring Superman back, which completely disappears in the Snyder version. Vary suggests that Snyder is focused on god-like superheroes to the point where they don't have disagreements and arguments because it's too much like "mortals", while Whedon focused on humanizing the characters in a fashion similar to what the Marvel films have tried to do. I'm not sure I fully buy his take, but interesting food for thought.

[Heartofice]

Do we think Snyder genuinely thought a 4 hour movie was going to ever be released by WB? I don’t know enough about how these things work but did he always plan a 4 hour movie that could possibly be trimmed down to 3.5 with some edits or has he just gone all out with this cut because it’s not going into theatres?

This seems to a repeatable problem with modern movies, where you get the sense that filmmakers are not really planning out 2 hour movies any more, that they just film a bunch of stuff and hope that the editor will sort it

[Ran]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Do we think Snyder genuinely thought a 4 hour movie was going to ever be released by WB?

His wife say they were aiming for a 2.5 hour cut. Warner Brothers mandated 2 hours, presumably because they believed that the film was a bomb at 2.5 hours and so 2 hours would at least get them more screenings that first week.

I'm an hour and 15 minutes into the theatrical cut. While I liked the scene introducing Victor/Cyborg and how it succinctly made his growing abilities the result of the alien technology his father used while mostly ignorant of its properties, obviously this was done as a shortcut to cut out a lot of the Cyborg scenes... and that appears to include the death of his father, just having the 3rd mother box taken without a fight. I don't think that works very well. The ideal would have been some re-editing of the Superman fight to have the box taken in the middle of it, with maybe Aquaman or Wonder Woman trying to get to it as they see the Boom Tube come down and Superman grabs them and throws them back. Obviously, that wasn't an option, since I don't think any of that fight was re-done.

I know the "Kal-el, no!" scene was lambasted by fans as a Whedon thing, but obviously it was a Snyder thing... and it would have been so easily fixed if it wasn't a tight close-up of her face because of her inability to sell it (Gadot is, so far as I can see, very beautiful, graceful in a way that sells her part in the fight sequences, but as an actress she has limited range), just have it be something further back showing the action she's reacting to and it'd be fine.

I really like Whedon's version of the Lois-Clark talk at the farm. His take on Superman is so much more the Superman I know and love, and as I recall Henry Cavill said in interviews before all the furor that he, Whedon, and Johns shared a similar view of the character (implicitly suggesting it was not Snyder's melancholy, grim Übermensch). 

[Ran]

Finished the Whedon theatrical cut. The last half hour is much more of a mess in his film than the comparable section of Snyder film. Whereas the lighter tone here and there, and more importantly the significant editing to trim it down, elevated the first half of the theatrical cut, these last thirty minutes are too heavily cut and too light in tone. I can see why people complained. Whedon just went too far and should have kept the gravitas more front-and-center.

Did like the classic Flash-Superman race. And Superman in general in the climactic action scene, he's just how Superman should be.

So, ultimate verdict: the entire starting premise of this movie was a huge mistake, and making a mandated 2 hour film was impossible without starting over from scratch. A better 2 hour film than what Whedon created was, I think, possible, so he's rightly faulted for that (unless the lightness and lack of gravity at the end was also mandated by WB, in which case it's their fault). But that hypothetical 2 hour film could not be created by Snyder, IMO, and doesn't exist inside this 4 hour movie.

[Derfel Cadarn]

They jumped the gun trying to do an Avengers-style team-up without first establishing the characters. Wpuld be like doing Avengers after Iron Man, and having to introduce Thor etc

[sifth]

This whole Snyder Cut thing, sort of reminds me of the original Dune movie. David Lynch apparently shot 5 hours worth of material for that film, some scenes even till this day have not appeared in any directors cuts for the film.

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

They jumped the gun trying to do an Avengers-style team-up without first establishing the characters. Wpuld be like doing Avengers after Iron Man, and having to introduce Thor etc

Yep, from the second Justice League was announced it was obviously an attempt to beat IW/EG to the punch, and it failed massively. Really cannot over exaggerate how much more reverence I have for Endgame than Justice League, they’re basically 10/10 vs 1/10. Not seen the Snyder cut but “that same shit film but 4 hours long and Snyderisms throughout” sounds like something I won’t ever watch.

It’s funny how, regardless if this cut was good or bad, WB still come out looking bad. If it’s good, then why did they butcher it so much? If it’s bad, then they made a bad film from the get go. Lost in the woods indeed. 

I’d genuinely love to know how DC fucked up their universe so badly, it’s just baffling decision after baffling decision.

[Heartofice]

Almost everything WB has done with its DC movies since Man of Steel has stunk of corporate interference. At almost every level their movies come across like a series of emails that got handed down from the very top, that simply said ‘make it cooler’ or ‘ where is the tie in to the next movie?!’

Just thinking about those bizarre moments in BvS where they just watch clips of the Flash on a laptop.. as if that is entertainment , or the way the opening half an hour of Sucide Squad was recut by the trailer company to be an incoherent music video. 
 

That’s probably why I tend to prefer the Snyder cut. Even if it is an over long masturbatory ego trip , it’s still preferable to the original cut which stunk of studio exec, even with Whedon trying to add some funny. 
 

I mean ok I can exempt Wonder Woman 1, but even then the half last 3rd is so awful that you question whether there wasn’t an order to make it more exciting. 
 

Edit, ok actually think a little bit more about it , I should acknowledge that they do appear to have at least course corrected at some point after realising how bad a job they were doing, so I’ll give them that, but I have such an irrational hatred for Sucide Squad and those terrible bits in BvS that i tend to focus on them

[DMC]

Yeah considering DC's almost impressive incompetence - pretty much since Snyder came along - I just thank the gods we got Nolan's Batman trilogy from them beforehand.

[sifth]

DC is strange to me. Almost all of their animated shows and movies are really good. It's just live action where they seem to always get things wrong. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the first Wonder Woman movie and Shazam, but just about everything else just felt like the wrong people being in charge of the wrong property. For example, Zack Snyder is a guy known for making dark and miserable films, why give him Superman, such a bright and hopeful character, it just doesn't make sense. Why not have Snyder make a movie about a character that more fits his style of storytelling, like Batman or Constantine, and have a writer/director who knows how to create a colorful and hopeful character like Superman in charge of that project.

[Ran]

I have never seen the story of how Snyder became the go-to DCEU guy. It seems to be part of the equation as far as mistakes go for setting the tone of the DC cinematic shared universe.

Wonder Woman was good (but not as good as some make out) and Shazam! was wholesome fun, but otherwise, the Snyder stuff has really just been one unforced error after another from DC. And then the non-Snyder films as well, for the most part have also been doing poorly. James Gunn and Matt Reeves are carrying a lot on their shoulders because if their films bomb, it's going to be carnage over at WB and DC.

 

[Jace, Extat]

4 hours ago, sifth said:

This whole Snyder Cut thing, sort of reminds me of the original Dune movie. David Lynch apparently shot 5 hours worth of material for that film, some scenes even till this day have not appeared in any directors cuts for the film.

I would watch a five hour cut of David Lynch's Dune. It's shocking how that movie is a prototype for the disasters of the modern day. Of course, it's much better than the efforts of today because Lynch is an artist and had precious few computer machines.

[Derfel Cadarn]

24 minutes ago, Ran said:

I have never seen the story of how Snyder became the go-to DCEU guy. It seems to be part of the equation as far as mistakes go for setting the tone of the DC cinematic shared universe.

Wonder Woman was good (but not as good as some make out) and Shazam! was wholesome fun, but otherwise, the Snyder stuff has really just been one unforced error after another from DC. And then the non-Snyder films as well, for the most part have also been doing poorly. James Gunn and Matt Reeves are carrying a lot on their shoulders because if their films bomb, it's going to be carnage over at WB and DC.

 

Weird decision to have the Reeves Batman be a seprate continuity. How hard would it have been to keep the same continuity given it would have been almost 20 years before BvS?

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Weird decision to have the Reeves Batman be a seprate continuity. How hard would it have been to keep the same continuity given it would have been almost 20 years before BvS?

I don't fully understand what they're doing. Are they basically doing the infinite earths, multiverse thing, so that they can just have the Reeves Batman be "the" Batman when they want/need? Though I doubt Robert Pattinson is on board with doing a bunch of franchise films.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I don't fully understand what they're doing. Are they basically doing the infinite earths, multiverse thing, so that they can just have the Reeves Batman be "the" Batman when they want/need? Though I doubt Robert Pattinson is on board with doing a bunch of franchise films.

I've read somewhere that they're going to do Flash Point, which is a great story arc for the Flash, in which he goes back in time to save his mother when he was a child and butterfly effects the entire universe. My guess is Robert Pattinson, will be the Batman of the new timeline created from Flashpoint.

This would also work, since James Gunn has gone on record saying the WB gave him permission to kill off whoever he wants for his up coming Suicide Squad film. Which is something that would make sense if they're about to reset their entire universe, lol