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11 minutes ago, (BP) said:

I agree. My point was if you had to explain how that happened it would only take about 5 minutes of describing the two cinematic universes that were presented up to that point and even someone in 1997 would get it. 

I think it's reasonable, but I'm not 100% sure I'd believe you if you tried. I'd tell you that you presented a logical and reasonable scenario but surely you jest.

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7 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think it's reasonable, but I'm not 100% sure I'd believe you if you tried. I'd tell you that you presented a logical and reasonable scenario but surely you jest.

In 1997 I don't think it would be hard to convince someone that a major studio screwed up a comic book property. It would probably be more work to explain that a studio had done so much right that a Black Panther movie wasn't just warranted but in demand. 

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You would have lost me with "Well, they didn't have Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, or The X-Men so they had to lead with the classic Avengers and then go on to Star Lord and Ant-Man," especially in the ninjas and spies period of the early 00s. 

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I think 1998 Matt D probably had this distant, idealized concept of stuff like Star-Lord and Killraven or Starstalker that I had never really been able to read because I never came across it in back issue boxes and it wasn't in print.

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Matt D is right, but if we were to start listing all the things about modern superhero movies that people wouldn't believe ten or twenty years ago we'll be at it a while.

"They're going to add Iron Man to a Spider-Man movie, not to give Iron Man some exposure, but to boost Spidey's box office."

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@(BP) I'm not saying everyone loved BvS, they obviously didn't.  Most people feel the Director's Cut is better but that's a different story.   The bottom line though is that BvS was a widely successful film.  Man of Steel was successful.  Suicide Squad was successful.   Wonder Woman was hugely successful.  

Justice League is the outlier.  There's more evidence that the DCEU had a following and that following wasn't interested in a Whedonization of the universe than anything to do with previous movies.

I mean people didn't even give JL a chance.  I sure didn't. And the trailers were soooo bad.  The post-production between Man of Steel and THIS was night and day.  The CGI in Man of Steel blows JL out of the water.  

It was clear the studio just gave up, they saw the writing on the wall and cut their losses. Patty Jenkins liked some tweets about Whedon being out of Batgirl.  Nobody wants him around these characters,  especially female characters.   He turned Wonder Woman into straight eye candy and little else. 

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Cutting your losses generally doesn't involve hiring a new director, doing massive reshoots, and paying for rush job CGI. That's actually pretty much the exact opposite.

It didn't work (although it's pretty easily the second best film in this terrible universe) but they certainly didn't cut their losses.

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@Niners Fan in CT you're right about JL turning off its audience with the tonal changes, but it had already narrowed down that audience by building its universe on really polarizing movies. Most of the time I think you're right that comparing DC and Marvel's franchises isn't that useful, but in the case of BvS and Civil War both films had to do a lot of the same things to propel the franchse forward while dealing with a lot of moving parts and new characters, and one succeeded where the other didn't. 

The DC movies haven't been commercial failures, but considering that all but MoS was designed with the intention of building a cinematic universe that would payoff with JL, they aren't total successes either. If the individual films hadn't stumbled in some regard JL would've never turned into a problem picture in the first place (obviously not counting WW which premiered after JL was already in the can.) 

Regarding the BvS director's cut, it's a much better movie than the theatrical and also very frustrating.  A smart cutter could get that back down to theatrical runtime or shorter and have a coherent and effective film. 

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Have we gotten to the part yet where Joss Whedon could have killed Hitler but didn't, blew up the Hindenburg, and scratches his back with the bones of the Lindberg baby?  'Cause I'm willing to bet that he did all those horrible things too.

I actually don't have an opinion on Whedon other than thinking he was a good scriptwriter twenty years ago.  I just find some of the criticism of him overheated.   

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There's plenty of things to hold Whedon accountable for (I don't have much use for either of his Avengers movies) but WB wanted to be in the Joss Whedon business and they wanted him to do his thing on what was essentially a finished product. He just did what he does. It's not like he went to WB hat in hand and begged to retool someone else's movie. 

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17 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

It didn't work (although it's pretty easily the second best film in this terrible universe) but they certainly didn't cut their losses.

They cut their losses in the advertising department.  They didn't go to bat for it because they knew they had a bomb on their hands.   Justice League MIGHT be better than Suicide Squad.  It's quite easily the worst or second worst.    Man of Steel isn't even all that polarizing.  It's 55% on RT but who cares.  That's a lot better than JL as is the audience score. The audience score is better than the audience score for Superman Returns.  

I'm not going to delve too deep into all these made up statistics.  The point is that Man of Steel had it's fans.  Even BvS had it's fans.  Wonder Woman certainly has it's fans,  near universal acclaim.   But Justice League?  The best that can be said about it is "ehhh  I guess..."  The word of mouth is hilariously nonexistent.  At least Snyder put asses in seats.  

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They were advertising it all year. I saw more ads for it then any movie other than Star Wars last year.

Eh, why not

5. BvS

4. MoS

3. Suicide Squad

2. Justice League

1. Wonder Woman

 

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Is Niners confused or am I missing something? He keeps pinning the blame solely on Whedon and saying audiences didn't care for him when 1) Whedon was brought in for reshoots and 2) the majority of movie goers couldn't care less about the director.

Again, maybe I'm wrong, but it's very odd to me to pin everything on Joss.

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I'm not confused at all. If the argument is "nobody wanted Snyder's vision" then why are audiences happier with the movies that he completed. They were divisive but they also had a following.

BvS didn't"kill" Justice League. Man of Steel was all Snyder and audiences lined up in droves to watch BvS. His films were successful. 

Ayer's film despite me not liking it was successful.

Wonder Woman which Snyder worked on was widely successful.

Justice League was the one bomb. People obviously cared or else the opening weekend wouldn't have been so awful. Nobody wanted to see half-ass Snyder combined with a Whedonization of the DCEU. If JL had stuck with Snyder and his daughter hadn't passed away, I have no doubt it would have made more money than it did. 

I'm not saying critics would have liked it, just that there would have been an audience for it. JL had an audience for no one.

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BvS had a huge opening weekend based on the anticipation of a new Batman and seeing Batman and Superman together in a movie for the first time.  It dropped 70% in its second weekend and continued falling off precipitously from there.  Basically half it's domestic gross came from that first weekend.  Yeah, people lined up in droves to see it opening weekend...but once they saw it, they pretty much unanimously decided they didn't want to see anymore and told all their friends likewise.

As far as engendering widespread enthusiasm and anticipation for Justice League, I'd say BvS was pretty much the opposite of successful.  BvS was barely out of theatres before WB/DC started their "We're sorry for BvS, we're totally gonna fix it in JL" media blitz.

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I think it's worth noting that the two DC films that overperformed (Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman) were the most diverse of the batch. I've seen a TON of young women gobbling up Squad merch and it got some acclaim for the broader diversity of the cast as well. Wonder Woman was an incredible showing that we'd still be talking about more if Black Panther hadn't totally shown it up by now.

Man of Steel made money, but not as much as a Snyder/Nolan Superman reboot should have coming off Watchmen and the Dark Knight Trilogy. BvS made less than the last couple Batman movies and adjusted for inflation would fall in the middle of the pack, so despite making money wasn't quite a success either. And Justice League pulled the gross of Ant Man on an Avengers budget. 

I think it's pretty clear the DCEU can draw and is worth sticking with, but bland navel gazing white dude fodder isn't exactly its strong drawing point. And I say that as someone who's enjoyed every DCEU film to date. Whatever you may think about Snyder or Whedon, it's pretty clear that neither is bringing much of value to the DC film universe from a financial perspective. 

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It's also worth noting that Wonder Woman, while it ultimately turned out to be a huge, $400 million hit domestically, only opened to $103 million (just $10 million more than the bomb Justice League).  So clearly anticipation for WW was hurt by BvS, too, it's just that, you know...it was great, and the word got around and kept it playing for the whole summer.

I think at one point the public had a great thirst for DC movies, as evidenced by the huge openings for BvS and SS, but the openings for WW and JL show that a significant portion of moviegoers have become much more wary of the franchise and are willing to wait and see if it's worth their money.

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23 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

They were advertising it all year. I saw more ads for it then any movie other than Star Wars last year.

Eh, why not

5. BvS

4. MoS

3. Suicide Squad

2. Justice League

1. Wonder Woman

 

This would probably be what mine looks like w/o having seen the other version of BvS. I think WW is the only one of these I fully like thought JL was decent.

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On 3/23/2018 at 6:54 PM, EVA said:

It's also worth noting that Wonder Woman, while it ultimately turned out to be a huge, $400 million hit domestically, only opened to $103 million (just $10 million more than the bomb Justice League).  So clearly anticipation for WW was hurt by BvS, too, it's just that, you know...it was great, and the word got around and kept it playing for the whole summer.

I think at one point the public had a great thirst for DC movies, as evidenced by the huge openings for BvS and SS, but the openings for WW and JL show that a significant portion of moviegoers have become much more wary of the franchise and are willing to wait and see if it's worth their money.

In general it feels like the demand for bland summer blockbusters is waning. Last year and this one so far are showing a way bigger correlation to reviews and revenues than has really been a thing in times past. DC is just feeling it particularly hard because their stuff has been getting panned.

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