DC Cinematic Universe: Let the Blames Begin

[Jaxom 1974]

Have the even actually started anything on a second Aquaman? I don't really care. I just don't remember seeing anything about it being written, let alone filmed...

[Dragon in the North]

59 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Have the even actually started anything on a second Aquaman? I don't really care. I just don't remember seeing anything about it being written, let alone filmed...

I believe Aquaman 2 is scheduled to be released in December.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 6/8/2023 at 12:31 PM, Heartofice said:

There might be some power in shared universes, but evidence suggests it’s not much given how many failed shared universes there are. Marvel managed to make it work but mainly because they had created a solid standard for their movies.

This is double edged sword. Shared universe momentum can pull weaker films along to success they might not have had otherwise. But a feeble S-U can drag down otherwise good films as well.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

That's not a real Aquaman trailer FIY. It's just clips from the first one made into a fan concept.

Screen Culture gets a lot of clicks from bullshit trailers. It seems to be all they do. It’s why I have that channel blocked.

[karaddin]

8 hours ago, IFR said:

Oh yes, please excuse me for having the audacity of sullying your day by idly observing a point of obvious social hypocrisy that I found personally interesting. I often forget that you are the center of the universe, and accommodating your whims should be prioritized.

Yeah heaven fucking forbid you can click into a thread in entertainment hoping to laugh at what a dumpster fire corporate mismanagement of a popular franchise is without being reminded that your existence is part of some group think cultural domination plan or whatever the fuck you were trying to say.

There is no shortage of mainstream media articles supporting JKR, and personally I haven't seen anything at all defending Miller nor do I want to. As @polishgenius has already done in this thread it is quite easy to simultaneously respect their pronouns as a non binary person and maintain that they're an absolute piece of shit, and that their lack of criminal consequences for their very blatantly criminal actions is both baffling and extremely corrupt.

Depp is a comparison where there's more of an argument, and I think it simply comes down to Depp being a bit of a borderline call - the people that didn't want to see him in movies felt they needed to fight to see that happen. Miller is just so brazen that it's kind of stunned disbelief DC just plowed ahead trying to make it happen, it doesn't need much conversation because I can't see anyone needing to be convinced other than DC itself. And apparently the only way to do that is to make it bomb at the box office and audience reviews.

[JGP]

IFR came out swinging too lol

That part was cute, anyway. 

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Holy crap the Kraven trailer just dropped. I totally forgot that was coming out.

Just watched this and...what's like "meh", but stronger? "Way Meh"?

Awful lighting, ridiculous action, Russell Crowe trying to do a...terrible...Russian accent, and he's a...gangster?*, and magic powers from...lion blood? Between the flat digital look of the film, with its washed out colors and generic action beats, and the hammy acting, the only thing that gives me hope in this is the directorial chops of J.C. Chandor, who made the excellent Margin Call and mostly OK Triple Frontier. 

 

*The Kravinoffs were escapees from the Russian Revolution, so not sure what's going on here?

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Raja said:

Yeah..the trailer looks...not the best

 

Not an actual trailer. This is a fan-made video.

[JGP]

7 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

so not sure what's going on here?

Nor I, but one thing that stands out in starkest relief -in regard to Marvel IP- is that Sony live action should be deferring to its Animation dept.

Edited June 20 by JGP

[IFR]

45 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yeah heaven fucking forbid you can click into a thread in entertainment hoping to laugh at what a dumpster fire corporate mismanagement of a popular franchise is without being reminded that your existence is part of some group think cultural domination plan or whatever the fuck you were trying to say.

The lack of acknowledgement that there's any kind of nuance to the discussion of JKR is what I would call groupthink. If this opinion that there is nuance is horribly offensive to you, I apologize for being objectively wrong since I suppose the issue is very black and white, right?

48 minutes ago, karaddin said:

There is no shortage of mainstream media articles supporting JKR, and personally I haven't seen anything at all defending Miller nor do I want to.

Such as an entire studio backing Miller? I certainly have not seen a vigorous online movement boycotting The Flash for Miller's involvement.

But again, if you want to pursue this discussion, I suggest DM is the appropriate venue.

51 minutes ago, karaddin said:

There is no shortage of mainstream media articles supporting JKR, and personally I haven't seen anything at all defending Miller nor do I want to. As @polishgenius has already done in this thread it is quite easy to simultaneously respect their pronouns as a non binary person and maintain that they're an absolute piece of shit, and that their lack of criminal consequences for their very blatantly criminal actions is both baffling and extremely corrupt.

Interesting that you make this point and single out this poster, when everyone who has commented on this issue has done the exact same thing. I know I haven't assigned any kind of gender to Miller. I've simply referred to them as Miller. No one has remarked in a derogatory fashion about non-binary individuals. And no, suggesting that there is nuance to the discussion of Rowlings is not implying anything with respect to the discussion of non-binary indivuals.

55 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Depp is a comparison where there's more of an argument, and I think it simply comes down to Depp being a bit of a borderline call - the people that didn't want to see him in movies felt they needed to fight to see that happen. Miller is just so brazen that it's kind of stunned disbelief DC just plowed ahead trying to make it happen, it doesn't need much conversation because I can't see anyone needing to be convinced other than DC itself. And apparently the only way to do that is to make it bomb at the box office and audience reviews.

I agree with this. But I think it understates the situation. There has been a massive, years long campaign of outrage against Depp based entirely on unreliable accusations. He lost multiple jobs, etc.

Miller was far more brazen, as you say, and not only is the studio behind them (with the director and James Gunn making positive comments), but the campaign of outrage, at least how I've seen it, was much more muted. Perhaps your experience differed. But I never claimed to speak anymore than anecdotally on this, and I doubt it's possible to do otherwise.

Anyway, I appreciate that you are angered, and I would be happy to discuss this further via DM. But as Raja stated, this discussion really diverges from the main topic, which is why the DCEU are so staggeringly bad at making movies (at least that ought to be the topic).

[JGP]

1 minute ago, IFR said:

Such as an entire studio backing Miller? I certainly have not seen a vigorous online movement boycotting The Flash for Miller's involvement.

Leaving the rest of the post aside, you're smarter than that. The studio was backing its investment [ergo Miller by proxy] and clearly it failed. 

[blows a raspberry]

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, IFR said:

 But as Raja stated, this discussion really diverges from the main topic, which is why the DCEU are so staggeringly bad at making movies (at least that ought to be the topic).

That is indeed what I clicked into the thread for!

I don't have the energy or inclination to continue the rest of the discussion but suffice to say we clearly see very different things on the Internet lol. The campaign I've seen relating to Depp was the one orchestrated on his behalf rather than the one against him.

I'll grant that the studios support does count as support of Miller, I just assumed that one was a given that we're all surprised by. I haven't seen anything outside that.

And just to be clear the pronoun nod to polish wasn't meant as a shot implying you weren't, there are plenty of posts in the thread using "he" for them though (most probably inadvertantly), and I wanted to make it clear that's an entirely different thing to them being a piece of shit. Polish was merely the first I saw combining those two things in the posts I read today.

[IFR]

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

That is indeed what I clicked into the thread for!

I don't have the energy or inclination to continue the rest of the discussion but suffice to say we clearly see very different things on the Internet lol. The campaign I've seen relating to Depp was the one orchestrated on his behalf rather than the one against him.

I'll grant that the studios support does count as support of Miller, I just assumed that one was a given that we're all surprised by. I haven't seen anything outside that.

And just to be clear the pronoun nod to polish wasn't meant as a shot implying you weren't, there are plenty of posts in the thread using "he" for them though (most probably inadvertantly), and I wanted to make it clear that's an entirely different thing to them being a piece of shit. Polish was merely the first I saw combining those two things in the posts I read today.

Absolutely. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but I do want to make it clear that I absolutely respect you and I thoroughly enjoy your posts. You're a great part of this community!

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

50 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

… Margin Call and mostly OK Triple Frontier. 

 

*The Kravinoffs were escapees from the Russian Revolution, so not sure what's going on here?

Yeah those were great.

So the Kraven family are White Russians? Aristocrats? Boo.

[IlyaP]

35 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Yeah those were great.

So the Kraven family are White Russians? Aristocrats? Boo.

Originally, yeah. 

I was also vaguely irked that instead of hiring a good Russophone actor, we got Russell Crowe. Like Cate Blanchett in Indy 4 or Michael Nyqvist in John Wick, it's yet another mangled/stereotypical accent on display. Just hire good actors from the Balkans and Baltics who speak the language! 

[JGP]

31 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Just hire good actors from the Balkans and Baltics who speak the language! 

Kraven's motivations are pretty dated. If I'd been writing, I'd have gone with an older Kraven to play off the generational discrepancies between Sergei and Ana, and eventual succession. So, if I'd also been casting, I'd have been looking for a Baltic equivalent of Timothy Dalton say [thinking his turn on Penny Dreadful here] Hell, Dalton has the chops himself with proper voice coaching, but I know you don't want to hear that :p

Edited June 20 by JGP

[karaddin]

56 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Originally, yeah. 

I was also vaguely irked that instead of hiring a good Russophone actor, we got Russell Crowe. Like Cate Blanchett in Indy 4 or Michael Nyqvist in John Wick, it's yet another mangled/stereotypical accent on display. Just hire good actors from the Balkans and Baltics who speak the language! 

Aussies, Baltics... As far as Americans are concerned both environments are just trying to kill you so they're all the same :p

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Aussies, Baltics... As far as Americans are concerned both environments are just trying to kill you so they're all the same :p

They just wanna see me sit in that theater and twitch every time someone says something in broken Russian. (I love John Wick, but a part of me wishes it could have been a silent movie, as no one in that movie seems to know how to speak Russian and it hurts my precious, it hurts!)

[Heartofice]

I suspect that the poor box office for The Flash is because the general public don’t care. They don’t care about the DCU, they don’t care about The Flash as a character, they don’t care about Keaton Batman (unless they are well old like me). By that same token I also suspect they don’t care about Miller, or even know who that is or what they did. 
 

Having said that, I do think there has been a conspicuous relative silence around Miller since the movie came out. Sure a few months ago there were some articles incredulous at the idea the movie could go ahead, but now it’s out there are no mass protests, no women wailing in the streets, nobody demanding you don’t see it outside theatres. That ironically might have helped the movie.

Almost every review I’ve read does the same thing too, acknowledges the Miller thing briefly, because they have to, then brushes it under the carpet, quite often praising Millers performance as well. I get that reviewers don’t want to get into the controversy and just want to talk about the movie, but I also think that were it some other star you’d never hear the end of it.

Imagine it was Armie Hammer! 
 

So either WB have an incredible press dept able to stop people talking or there is a real lack of motivation to really have a go at Miller. I dunno, guess their mental health defence worked. 

[Ran]

The CinemaScore for the film was a B, which you would think is pretty good, but it's not.  Which means that audiences that watch it are likelier to be unenthused. There's a post at the boxoffice subreddit discussing how directors who direct B cinemascore films for WB and Marvel tend to never do a blockbuster again for them (or, in some cases, anyone), with Zack Snyder the only exception after BvS and we all know the mess that was his Justice League.

A writer at Variety is arguing that it's more a general fatigue towards superheroes that can only be alleviated (by the makers of superhero films) by making better films than The Flash. Could be right.