Jump to content

DCEU: The Hare's Regret


JGP

Recommended Posts

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Thanks. It seems pretty clear that Warner wanted one movie and Snyder tried to force two, though.

 

ETA: I think a lot of issues ultimately stem from Snyder becoming so enamored with his vision that he filmed a monstrous long thing expecting he could convince them to let him show it. A recent interview talked about how he ignored notes from WB, and that he insisted on filming scenes they repeatedly told him they refused to use.

The cut he presented was 3.5 hours long(!) and he later claimed he had a 2 hour, 40 minute cut when he left... but the reason Warner wanted it down to 2 was because the film was a turkey at 3.5 hours and at 2.67 hours, and was sure to be one at 2 hours as well but at least they could pack in 50% more screenings the opening week. Hiring Whedon to try and lighten it up and bring some humanity to it while cutting it to two hours was something of a hail mary, but the worst that could happen is that they spent X million on additional shoots and Whedon's fees and still had a turkey that was 40 minutes shorter than the shortest cut Snyder was willing to give them.

JL was initially planned as a trilogy to complete a 5 film "Superman" arc. In 2014 DC announced a film slate that included JL1 (2017) and JL2 (2019).

I guess the guy with the movie box office calculator must have been sick on the days they locked Wonder Woman (141 min), WW84 (151 min), Shazam! (132 min), and Aquaman (143 min). There is no logic to the 120 minute mandate. Tsujihara gave that late in the production. Snyder was right to think it was a joke. And why is it so shocking that the film would be longer? Endgame was 3 hours. The Lord of the Rings films all had run times of 3 hours or more and the extended cuts were even longer. 

Cutting the bulk of Victor Stone's character arc was a mistake. And for what? One post credit scene that implied a spin off that never happened and one that was pure fan service, A Russian family that's the moral equivalent of Donner's Jimmy Olsen (jokes, need of saving), and a couple of useless prologues; one featuring a piece of video game tech that's never seen again and one featuring Cavill's freakish upper lip. Oh, and a fair bit of treating Wonder Woman like a sex object. That was memorable at least.

It would also be nice if someone involved with the theatrical cut could explain the decision to completely remove so much relevant DC comics mythology from the film, e.g. Darkseid, Desaad, the anti-life equation. 

As far as the film being a "turkey", the actual line being reported back in 2017 amounted to "Insiders at WB say the cut that was shown to execs was 'unwatchable'." Each to their own, but I'm not getting that from this film. Based on the reactions I'm seeing, I'm not alone. Well, on these boards I probably am but you know what I mean.

I think it's great. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Snyder seems to have a reputation for causing trouble for the WB, I wouldn't be shocked if this was his final project with them. They told him not to film new scenes and he basically said "screw that" and filmed the final 15 minutes anyway, just to fill his own ego. They almost cancelled the film out right and banned him from putting Jon Stewart at the end of the film, which was apparently the original ending, which Zack Synder shot at his own home last year. Watch this movie really does just feel like watching money burn to me; 100 million to reshoot the the movie to get it down to two hours and 70 million just to return it to it's original form.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, sifth said:

Snyder seems to have a reputation for causing trouble for the WB, I wouldn't be shocked if this was his final project with them. They told him not to film new scenes and he basically said "screw that" and filmed the final 15 minutes anyway, just to fill his own ego. They almost cancelled the film out right and banned him from putting Jon Stewart at the end of the film, which was apparently the original ending, which Zack Synder shot at his own home last year. Watch this movie really does just feel like watching money burn to me; 100 million to reshoot the the movie to get it down to two hours and 70 million just to return it to it's original form.

Which is it, $70 mil to return the film to its original form or did he film an additional 15 minutes of footage? And why is it Snyder who get's singled out among directors for having an ego? When there are stories of Whedon shitting on Snyder's film while on set (from Kevin Smith) and saying "I didn't take notes from RDJ so why would I take them from Ray fisher", not to mention all the other allegations that are coming out about him, is that not ego? Here's the reality: film makers, actors, studio executives, rock stars are all egotists. Wes Anderson might look like a lanky hipster but I promise you in his mind he's the greatest motherfucker in the room. In fairness, he probably is. 'Goes with the job. Keep in mind that Snyder finished this movie for free to be able to do those things he wanted.

The additional photography took 3 days and featured the stuff they planned to shoot in 2016/2017 but weren't able to: The Manhunter reveal at Lois' apartment and at the lake house and the nightmare scene. They added maybe 6-7 minutes to the runtime. That comes from an interview with Deborah Snyder.

The Green Lantern stuff was all shot back in 2016/2017. That was the material that involved Sam Benjamin and may or may not have featured John Cleese. Who was cast as Jon Stewart is still an open question, though we might guess.

That might have been nice because it would have been the only GL stuff we would have had on screen since the GL Corps film was announced back in 2015. But supposedly there's a GL Corps Series slated for HBO Max. Fingers crossed.

A comment regarding the budget: Watch the companion documentary for the Final Cut of Blade Runner. It took a team of people years to pull that off; collecting and assembling the original film stock, changing color grading in various scenes, updating the soundtrack, and re-doing a lot of post production work, including digitally touching up much of the film. They had Joanna Cassidy come in for mo-cap work so they could paste her head on the stunt double's body for Zhora's death scene. They had one of Harrison Ford's sons come in to do motion capture on his jaw so they could paste it on Deckart's face to align the facial movements with the dialogue. They also apparently had to settle legal disputes regarding distribution rights. Not a little bit of effort or a small amount of money to finally realize Ridley Scott's vision. Thank the gods they did.

Do you think the fact that Blade Runner was a commercial and critical failure back in 1982 had any bearing on their decision to do that work and spend that money? Of course not. So why would it have any bearing here?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

JL hate-watch parts 2 and 3:

Spoiler

 

How does Steppenwolf teleport? The shaft of light implies a ship in orbit, or a machine somewhere. No time for that explanation, need more slow-mo.

For a moment I thought Aquaman was going to be the musical number team member, what with the Icelandic song, and then the other song as he chugs whiskey while allowing the waves to take him, in a completely made-for-trailer, pointless scene, ALL IN SLOW-MO. But then Flash gets his own song. 

Willem Defoe looked better in this one than in Aquaman. So a point for that.

Wasn't Dolph Lundgren Mera's dad in Aquaman? Here she mentions her parents were killed.

I'm confused about the Amazons. How strong are they supposed to be? None of them are at Diana's level, for sure, but they don't age. They make me think of the Noldor Elves in the First Age, but all female.

Hey, David Thewlis as Ares. He should have gone for the head. Just in terms of looks, Thanos >>> Darkseid.

If the Mother Boxes are so powerful, what has Darkseid being doing all this time? Conquering/destroying worlds without them? Shouldn't he have kept a watch on Earth, and the moment the gods were gone, the Atlanteans moved in the seas, and the GLs no longer protected Earth, he should have pounced. Instead, this all happens because of a completely unforeseen event.

Cyborg's dad tells him he is all powerful and hopes that his angry son isn't going to do anything bad. I guess he trusts in his wife's raising of his son, since he was kinda absent.

One moment Barry was dead set on continuing down the path that he chose to free his dad, the next he gleefully joins Batman's team before asking any serious questions. I guess he saw Batman as his money ticket to completing his college education. (Where did he get the money to build himself the suit?)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I guess the guy with the movie box office calculator must have been sick on the days they locked Wonder Woman (141 min), WW84 (151 min), Shazam! (132 min), and Aquaman (143 min). There is no logic to the 120 minute mandate.

You mandate 2 hours or less to maximize opening week of a film you know is going to sink like a rock after the launch. A 2 hour movie can be shown 6 times per screen per day, a 3 hour movie can be shown just 4 times per day per screen.

The difference between all the above movies that were released in the pre-pandemic world (can't really compare WW84), and a 3 hour of 2.67 hour or a 2 hour Zack Snyder-affiliated Justice League is that they all turned profits at the box office whereas there was no version of a Snyder-affiliated Justice League film that was going to turn a profit, but maybe there'd be a short, tight 2 hour version that would minimize the bleeding. The basic approach to understanding this film's troubled production is that Warner Brothers dodged a bullet with Batman vs Superman financially, but they knew the writing was on the wall and they were not going to let Snyder give the audience more of the same given the massive 2nd week fall off of that film (69% per Deadline, where 50% is what a successful film may see and 60% was the worst analysts expected) was setting up an even poorer financial showing for his follow-up film. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

What they should have done is scrapped the entire thing for theatrical, let Snyder do his gonzo 4 hour cut for streaming and home after he felt able to do it, declare it non-canonical and give Snyder a gold watch, and go on to do a few more individual films like The Flash and Aquaman while finding someone else to put together an actually-good Justice League film where all the main characters have already been introduced more-or-less so that that part of the heavy lifting was already done. Imagine how much cleaner the narrative of this film would have been if Flash and Aquaman had had their own films which ended with tags of Batman and Wonder Woman getting them together, and then Cyborg is the only one who needs any introduction and personal storyline.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

How does Steppenwolf teleport?

Boom tubes.

Spoiler
Quote

If the Mother Boxes are so powerful, what has Darkseid being doing all this time? Conquering/destroying worlds without them? Shouldn't he have kept a watch on Earth, and the moment the gods were gone, the Atlanteans moved in the seas, and the GLs no longer protected Earth, he should have pounced. Instead, this all happens because of a completely unforeseen event.

This is, really, the most nonsensical part of the whole thing, which is why it's all basically a big ol' MacGuffin. The attempt to attach Superman's death to why the invasion happens now just doesn't work when you're working on a timeline stretching thousands of years. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes, I remarked that the whole premise of this was crazy, though the Marvel thing makes me wonder... the issue with introducing three new characters in this particular project is that you're also focusing on three already-established characters, which means balancing them is quite difficult in a 2 hour time frame. AFAIK, there's no Marvel film that has done this -- the Guardians movie introduces a bunch of new, low-profile characters and then the second film just adds a new villain and a new pal (IIRC), the Avengers film introduces Hawkeye I think, but that's it, and the second one just introduces the villain and then the Vision (though technically, since he's in origin JARVIS, so technically he's been around since the inception of the MCU), and so on. Marvel realized it's stupid as hell to try and give new faces playing characters most people aren't familiar with the same screen time as the three big established heroes that everyone knows. 

As to Fisher, I mean, Snyder and Warner were the ones who really fucked him over, the one by making an awful, long film that was going to bomb and the latter by realizing their only hope of not eating an even bigger loss was getting it down to 2 hours so they could hoover up cash on the opening week because it was going to fall like a rock after that.

 

Hawkeye is introduced in Thor

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Hawkeye is introduced in Thor

Ah, there you go. So no real character introductions at all in The Avengers and basically just the villain in Age of Ultron.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Binge watched this last weekend. It's allight, I didn't hate it. My mind must've suppressed all memory of the theatrical release as I was very surprised at how much of it felt fresh and new - though technically, being twice as long as the movie release, at least half of it must be new. I don't get the fans who think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Sliced bread is overrated, give me the whole loaf to tear into piece by piece. It has more endings than The Return of the King. Also not a fan of Snyder's colour grading here. His preference for the darker sepia was perfect for Dawn of the Dead and Watchmen and maybe 300, but I feel a superhero movie, especially with the big three, needs to be more bright and hopeful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Which is it, $70 mil to return the film to its original form or did he film an additional 15 minutes of footage? And why is it Snyder who get's singled out among directors for having an ego? When there are stories of Whedon shitting on Snyder's film while on set (from Kevin Smith) and saying "I didn't take notes from RDJ so why would I take them from Ray fisher", not to mention all the other allegations that are coming out about him, is that not ego? Here's the reality: film makers, actors, studio executives, rock stars are all egotists. Wes Anderson might look like a lanky hipster but I promise you in his mind he's the greatest motherfucker in the room. In fairness, he probably is. 'Goes with the job. Keep in mind that Snyder finished this movie for free to be able to do those things he wanted.

 

 

Dude way to all text me man. Sorry, but I'm not a Synder fan. The guy for me has not made a good movie since his remake of Dawn of the Dead. He honestly seems like one of those guys who constantly seems to be rewarded for failure and known for making his movies as dark and violent as possible, just because he thinks that makes them cool. I honestly don't care about your point on Bladerunner, since it's both off topic and not a franchise I'm a fan of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, Ran said:

Ah, there you go. So no real character introductions at all in The Avengers and basically just the villain in Age of Ultron.

 

More like a cameo in Thor, similar to the one Nick Furry has in Iron Man. He's not properly introduced until Avengers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Ah, there you go. So no real character introductions at all in The Avengers and basically just the villain in Age of Ultron.

I quite liked the approach with Black Panther, he was in Civil War but all you needed to know was that he thought Bucky killed his father. I think you can introduce new characters in ensemble films, what you can’t have is a full-on origin story and expect to do it justice alongside your big team up movie. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I quite liked the approach with Black Panther, he was in Civil War but all you needed to know was that he thought Bucky killed his father. I think you can introduce new characters in ensemble films, what you can’t have is a full-on origin story and expect to do it justice alongside your big team up movie. 

Right. And just one character at a time basically. Or two related, closely associated characters. Three characters with completely different origins and no connection to one another? Just not doable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Right. And just one character at a time basically. Or two related, closely associated characters. Three characters with completely different origins and no connection to one another? Just not doable.

They did introduce spider-man in the same movie. But everyone knows who he is. As I recall when he starts explaining his origin story Tony basically tells him to shut up and get on the plane. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

I quite liked the approach with Black Panther, he was in Civil War but all you needed to know was that he thought Bucky killed his father. I think you can introduce new characters in ensemble films, what you can’t have is a full-on origin story and expect to do it justice alongside your big team up movie. 

They also did a better job of displaying his character in the short space of time he was in CW than they managed to do in his entire movie.

Some characters don't need a massive backstory and explanation of who they are, and I'd argue that is almost the point of comic book characters. They expectation isn't that you would have read everything about a character before picking up a comic book. It's that you kind of get what is going on from very limited information. I don't need to know to much about Hawkeye to understand him on a surface level, hes a guy who's good with a bow. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, RumHam said:

They did introduce spider-man in the same movie. But everyone knows who he is. As I recall when he starts explaining his origin story Tony basically tells him to shut up and get on the plane. 

Yeah, Spider-Man has had so many movies, even if that iteration was new he's just better known by movie-going audiences than the three new guys in the JL movie. Hell, Aquaman has been a punchline for ages, and Cyborg is completely unknown to anyone who doesn't read comics or didn't watch Teen Titans

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I quite liked the approach with Black Panther, he was in Civil War but all you needed to know was that he thought Bucky killed his father. I think you can introduce new characters in ensemble films, what you can’t have is a full-on origin story and expect to do it justice alongside your big team up movie. 

I'm in the minority here, but I honestly thought Black Panther had the best arc in Civil War. He showed true heroism at the end, more so than any of the other characters in that film and I loved him for it. To be honest, I think his arc in Civil War, was better than the one he got in his own movie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, sifth said:

I'm in the minority here, but I honestly thought Black Panther had the best arc in Civil War. He showed true heroism at the end, more so than any of the other characters in that film and I loved him for it. To be honest, I think his arc in Civil War, was better than the one he got in his own movie.

I completely agree, he’s really great in that movie, maybe the highlight of the whole thing in fact. That’s why I found the standalone movie such a disappointment , they did very little with it and I barely recognised the same character 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's really number that I'm getting at, and I guess depth. Yeah, you can throw in a bunch of new characters in an ensemble film... if they scream "THESE GUYS ARE AWESOME/EVIL/QUIRKY" and you don't get much further into them.

Or you can introduce a new guy, and give him depth. Or you could introduce two super-powered siblings... oh, right, Age of Ultron introduced Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver as well. But anyways, two siblings who have a common origin story, that works. 

But three disparate characters, each expected to bounce from this into their own films, and giving them some amount of origin and depth all while also giving time to the established characters and the Big Bad...

It was an insane, ridiculous idea. I know Warner and DC were playing catch-up, trying to jam through a large-scale DCEU that could stand up to the burgeoning Marvel juggernaut, but it was just woefully ill-conceived, and to whatever degree Snyder was one of the main architects of this plan, he bears some fault for what has happened.a

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...