DCEU: The Hare's Regret

[SkynJay]

I am going to be tricked into watching a Suicide Squad movie again aren't I?  Because that looks good...but i was stupid excited the last time.  I hope it A. keeps the tone of the trailer throughout, and B. has a semi cohesive damn plot.

[Red Tiger]

This kinda reminds me of what DC did with Legends of Tomorrow.

First season was meh, with two characters that had very few fans, so they got rid of those two. Then in seasons afterwards they upped the camp and humor and the series became highly entertaining television.

[Rhom]

My friends and I have laughed entirely too much about the Bag of Dicks for Liberty interaction.  

[Corvinus85]

I finished watching Justice League, and just a few more thoughts about it:

- The second half was better as things got going. I feel that the team chemistry was better as it got to the climactic battle and maybe with the added character time, it was earned. That's one reason why the Snyder cut is better than Whedon's.

But a few other things makes the Snyder Cut much better:

- No gratuitous shots of Gadot's ass, even when there was the opportunity like that scene when she's on the Nightcrawler as it's climbing.

- The final battle was better, visually and mostly narratively. Why did Whedon have to go with the red background?

- While Superman dominated Steppenwolf, it just didn't feel like before, where my reaction was why does Superman need any of the other guys? Because ultimately it's Flash and Cyborg who save the day. If anything WW and Aquaman did far less, but at least they have their own movies now.

- Steppenwolf's death was way better. None of that fear shit. Just smash and kick, decapitation, byeee.

Now for a few more criticisms:

- When a CW superhero show makes the Martian Manhunter look better. Sorry, the MM here looked like crap. Really didn't need to introduce him, tone it down Snyder.

- That final dream sequence was garbage that just kept sliding out of the bag, and that's not how you should end the movie. There was enough negativity throughout the movie, the victory against Steppenwolf was that much sweeter because of it. The expected ominous threat could have been way shorter. And I don't need to see Leto's Joker every again.

[polishgenius]

19 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

- The final battle was better, visually and mostly narratively. Why did Whedon have to go with the red background?

Comics reference, going all the way back to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and developed since then. I actually thought the idea was kinda cool when the trailers first dropped showing it, but it was ultimately pointless and misused because red skies signify multiversal crisis in the DCU and this wasn't one.


(I've also always enjoyed that in the first Crisis the red skies were just a cool visual but since then totally coincidentally the DCU absorbed Wildstorm, and with it the idea of an inter-universal dimension that is red, and boom, red skies are shorthand for multiversal mixing)

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 3/25/2021 at 2:36 AM, Ran said:

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.

 

I am aware of the box office performance of BvS. I'm also aware that it's ancient history. In the mean time, the ultimate cut was released on home video and it was much better received by fans and by critics who've seen it. That version film has gained a following and the enthusiasm for it is the reason there was demand for the Snyder cut in the first place.

IMO, the biggest mistake WB made was to not release a PG-13 version of the ultimate cut in theaters, regardless of what the bean counters had to say about the run time. Their second mistake was not realizing the first. 

And given how ZSJL is (tentatively) being received compared to 2017's JL, if Tsujihara was still at WB, I think he'd have some hard questions to answer, and discussions of what happened in 2015 or how run-times relate to opening weekend ticket sales wouldn't help him.

The theatrical cut of WW84 was locked long before the pandemic. They could have easily trimmed 20 minutes out of it and not missed anything. Personally, I think they dodged a bullet with that one. First week streaming numbers were great. Ive heard nothing on second week streaming numbers.

On 3/25/2021 at 4:15 AM, sifth said:

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.

I get that you're not a fan of Snyder. I don't understand what that has to with the accounting. I also don't get the complaints about "ego" in terms of which elements appear in the film or don't. I've also heard accusations of "arrogance" for including himself in a cameo. Like no director has ever done that before.

The Blade Runner example speaks to your comment about the budget. If you don't like that I could always link to a dissertation explaining variations of the sunk-costs fallacy. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So they made another Harley Quinn SS film. The trailer looks cool, but the first film was terrible. Is Birds of Prey even worth seeing?

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is Birds of Prey even worth seeing?

Depends if you like the DCEU Harley. It’s got some really funny bits, some stupid bits, and maybe one miscast character if you’re feeling uncharitable. Worth it IMO, but YMMV.

[Veltigar]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So they made another Harley Quinn SS film. The trailer looks cool, but the first film was terrible. Is Birds of Prey even worth seeing?

No.

[Soylent Brown]

I enjoyed Birds of Prey far more than I did Justice League. And it's not 72 hours long either, so you won't have to book any days off work to watch it.

[Ran]

9 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Comics reference, going all the way back to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and developed since then. I actually thought the idea was kinda cool when the trailers first dropped showing it, but it was ultimately pointless and misused because red skies signify multiversal crisis in the DCU and this wasn't one.

To be fair, the Fourth World has something of a unique relation to the multiverse, especially after New 52. If I remember rightly, the latest take on things is that the Fourth World and New Gods stand outside the multiverse, but are represented within the various flavors of multiverse through avatars. Or something.  

Which is to say that the red skies strike me as fitting, as indicative of a breach within the multiverse being made to open the way for Darkseid's dimension to disgorge itself into it. 

DC continuity is an enormous mess. Two wholesale reboots plus a handful of partial reboots. in the span of... what, 30 years? The first Crisis made a great deal of sense, but every story since that has tried to be Crisis-like just makes it more and more obvious that DC has been stuck in a rut in regards to continuity. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, Mr Gordo said:

Well, Robbie in that film turns the accent up to 11 and makes me want to rip my eardrums out through my mouth. Also they forgot to have the Birds of Prey in most of the film. So if you like Quinn and don't know shit about the BoP...maybe? I wouldn't pay money for it.

I like her as an actress, and I'd be lying if I denied that one of the few times in my life I went "Holy shit" when seeing an actress for the first time was seeing her in The Wolf of Wall St., but her accent in a lot of films is all over the place. Not that I could do any better, but it can stand out at times.

Quote

I don't get the complaints about Quinn in the new trailer though. It's a Suicide Squad film, she's in it about as much as I'd expect. It's not like she's leading the Teen Titans or something.

I think it's just more worries that it will be another underwhelming film and that we got the best parts in the trailer. And with Quinn some of the jokes felt like "We're the bad guys" clip we first got in the original's trailer. 

[Jace, Extat]

DC movie? Be bad? That's unpossible! The trailer was gud!!! 

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

[williamjm]

21 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So they made another Harley Quinn SS film. The trailer looks cool, but the first film was terrible. Is Birds of Prey even worth seeing?

I didn't think it was anything special but I enjoyed it, it's definitely better than Suicide Squad.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

34 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I didn't think it was anything special but I enjoyed it, it's definitely better than Suicide Squad.

Sounds like what most people say. The sad part is SS had some things that you could like, but overall it was bad, and correct me if I'm wrong, but was the final scene not like one of the worst uses of CGI ever in a major budget film? I recall it being like a shitty video game from a decade ago.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

19 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sounds like what most people say. The sad part is SS had some things that you could like, but overall it was bad, and correct me if I'm wrong, but was the final scene not like one of the worst uses of CGI ever in a major budget film? I recall it being like a shitty video game from a decade ago.

Pretty much. Steppenwolf in the 2017 JL film was worse.

I don't think there's much to choose between SS and BoP. Suicide Squad's re-shoot and re-editing drama was truly idiotic and fairly well documented. BoP as I recall, didn't have anything cosmically wrong with it but It just didn't do it for me.  An attempt an an R-rated super hero comedy along the lines of Deadpool that almost works. Though it does have its fans.

The trailer for the Gunn film looks OK. I'll give it a watch when it comes out. 

[HexMachina]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sounds like what most people say. The sad part is SS had some things that you could like, but overall it was bad, and correct me if I'm wrong, but was the final scene not like one of the worst uses of CGI ever in a major budget film? I recall it being like a shitty video game from a decade ago.

Suicide Squad felt like someone made a lot of loosely connected videos and then just tried to smush them together. Badly.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Suicide Squad felt like someone made a lot of loosely connected videos and then just tried to smush them together. Badly.

That's probably the most blunt and accurate way to describe it. I liked some of the backstory stuff, but once the actual movie got going it was all fairly bad. 

Just saying though, Diablo 2 will always be my favorite game and in came out in the 90's. The graphics from the end of the movie don't look much better than the cut scenes from back then. 

 

[Ran]

Reminds me of The Mummy Returns and its CG Scorpion King. That was 20 years ago.

Also, that final fight video is awful. So glad I never bothered watching the film. We now have Birds of Prey on HBO Nordic, but ... eh, don't think I'm interested. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I'll leave this here rather than the Watch thread. Pretty damn funny: