DC Comics on Film

[matrixschmatrix]

So Nolan, Goyer, Snyder and Terrio went with the God-on-Earth conflicts - how does a Superman find his place in our world? Will he be accepted? What does his presence do to politics, religions, and the criminal minds?

This is a fair question, but given the content of the film, it's a hard sell to claim that the filmmakers answer it. Wayne mentions his perception of Superman as a threat it in conversation with Alfred, but those few lines don't really unpack his thoughts in a substantive way, which is a shame, because I do think there's enough to chew on there.

Yeah, I think there is probably fruitful ground there, and I think if a different filmmaker made BvS as a response to MoS you could have had an interesting commentary not only on Snyder's specific excesses but the ENDLESS 9/11 imagery and accompanying destruction of cities that superhero movies (and blockbusters in general) have been working out for a decade or more.

[captveg]

As I recall, Zod's interest was exclusively in killing Superman, and would presumably have chased him anywhere he went.

Zod's interest is in killing every HUMAN, and Superman is merely in his way. If Superman had left Zod wouldn't have chased him, but would have just started frying civilians.

@ 1:10

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As for the scenario being compelling or not as you both just outlined - I'm totally fine with it not being engaging for other people. It was engaging to me. If I was the only on it did that for then, well, probably not best to use populist characters and tentpoles filmmaking to do it in.

As I said before, now that we're through MoS and BvS I doubt they'll be exploring this any further. At the end of BvS Superman is wholly embraced by the world. When he shows up in JL it'll be in iconic mode, and I expect the conflicts he deals with in any future films to be decidedly other-world ones.

[captveg]

BvS is a sludge of incident that spells things out either in the bluntest terms (Wayne justifying his view of Superman as a threat) or not at all (the fill-in-the-murder-frown at the defaced Robin suit). It leaves all the wrong things to the imagination, putting the onus on the viewer to cobble significance out of the comics they've read.

I can agree with this. The film needed more middle-ground characterization/exposition. It's what has me so curious about the longer cut, which seems to have mostly removed such scenes from the first third of the film.

[hearthesilence]

Just reported in Forbes: Batman v Superman set a new record at the box office with the largest Friday-to-Friday drop ever, losing a whopping 81.2 percent.

[matrixschmatrix]

Doesn't the first Friday gross include Thursday previews? I wonder if that figure could be a bit misleading.

[captveg]

Yes it does. The overall weekend drop should be around 70%, which isn't good, but it's not the 81% of the Thursday Night+Friday to Friday drop.

[matrixschmatrix]

I do have to imagine that this is going to lead to Warner rethinking this as a tentpole of a Marvel-esque connected universe, at least under Synder's general imprint. How many of the upcoming movies are already in pre-production?

[hearthesilence]

Exact quote from Forbes clarifying details: "It suffered a drop of 81.2% from its $81.5m opening day. Yes, that includes $27.7m worth of Thursday previews. But this would still be a 71.5% drop even from the 'pure' $53.8m Friday figure."

I actually forgot about that - didn't Warner essentially clear their schedule and stack it with DC Comics movies that are interrelated à la Marvel? If they're riding on the whole idea of making features that are essentially commercials for "the next" movie, it does ring some serious alarm bells.

[DarkImbecile]

Doesn't the first Friday gross include Thursday previews? I wonder if that figure could be a bit misleading.

I actually don't think that's very misleading, given that almost every blockbuster for the last decade-plus gained a huge chunk of its Friday gross from Thursday previews; as long as they're comparing apples to apples in the analysis, I think the historic nature of that decline is legit.

[hearthesilence]

What are Thursday previews? Midnight screenings, a full evening of shows across the country, select screenings? Regardless, the more I think about it, from a business perspective I don't think you can really factor those in as just gravy (i.e. added money on top of what they would have gotten on Friday anyway). For the purposes of gross projections, they're pretty important in weighing audience interest, maybe even moreso since they're the first ones available to the public.

[captveg]

I do have to imagine that this is going to lead to Warner rethinking this as a tentpole of a Marvel-esque connected universe, at least under Synder's general imprint. How many of the upcoming movies are already in pre-production?

Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman are finished. Justice League starts shooting next week.

Here's what's gonna happen:

Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman will get a much better reception from critics/fans because they are more crowd-pleasers by their nature, and they won't have Snyder to bring it down (rightly or wrongly, he's become a target for critics and fans to zero in on. He's taking the brunt of BvS criticisms, even when it comes to issues on screenwriting and producers/studio demands for the film).

They may reign in the budget of JL to the $150-175m range, which means a $700m+ box office is far more profitable.

JL is already intended to be lighter in tone, plus it'll be a movie with Batman and Wonder Woman trying to get the band together, which is a far simpler concept to convey (in theory) than what BvS tried to balance. I suspect the film's primary conflict will be getting the Amazonians and Atlantians to get along. Superman will arrive in time to bring that struggle to an end with iconic heroism.

Then 2018 will get the Flash movie with Cyborg along for team up LOLs.

The Batman will take the Summer 2018 spot that Aquaman is currently holding, and will make $2 billion if it's the Batfleck -starring-written-directed by movie everyone wants it to be.

TLDR: Aside from cutting back on the budget of JL and moving fast on the production of The Batman, not much will change.

[flyonthewall2983]

Would you predict any change to the Vertigo/New Line deal that was announced last year?

[captveg]

Would you predict any change to the Vertigo/New Line deal that was announced last year?

That whole thing is such an unknown right now anyway that who's to say what happens. I expect it to be a pre-production quagmire for a while still.

[matrixschmatrix]

I'm curious to see how Suicide Squad does- the reception to what's been put out about it so far has been pretty universally poisonous, and it's hard not to see it as essentially Hot Topic circa 2003: the Movie. It also doesn't have the built in audience that BvS had, so it doesn't have the sort of too big to fail vibe that will automatically make it a juggernaut on opening weekend.

If that flops badly, the bad will may be attributed to this whole DC cycle, rather than Snyder specifically- I mean, if people hate these movies, the Marvel strategy of taking time out of one movie to sell the audience on another might backfire, and convince them they never want to see these actors playing these characters again. Certainly I think it's fairly clear that Warner is doing this because they're jumping on a bandwagon here as much as Universal was trying to make their monster IPs into a connected universe, and frankly I kind of hope it falls apart; I like the Marvel movies, but a cinema universe where absolutely everything is in some way or another part of a huge wad of shared IP sounds like a nightmare.

[captveg]

I'm curious to see how Suicide Squad does- the reception to what's been put out about it so far has been pretty universally poisonous,

It has? It seems to have been met with huge excitement from what I can tell. That second trailer went over like gangbusters, especially among the high school / young adult demographic.

[matrixschmatrix]

Ha, probably the (apocryphally attributed) Paline Kael issue of differing environments, then. I suppose the release will tell.

[captveg]

True. It's certainly true that the initial draw of SS is far less because the characters are unknown. But it's being sold as the villain-Guardians of the Galaxy. If it delivers that for audiences it'll do quite well. They'd be overjoyed with $500m WW, and I think it'll do far better than that. It can make significantly less at the box office than BvS and simultaneously be seen as the greater success.

[jbeall]

Second-week box office not so good.

[flyonthewall2983]

Surprised that at nearly a 70 percent drop it's still able to hold the top spot, which may not matter as much as it sounds (except to possibly the marketing people).

[knives]

It helps that there was no serious competition going against it. Outside of Meet the Blacks and Hello, My Name is Doris going wide the film was against nothing.

[captveg]

While WB certainly wanted BvS to sustain better and be better received, it's still made it past Man of Steel 's WW box office in a little over a week (MoS ended at $668m on a $225m budget; BvS is at $681m on a $250m budget).

People's problems with the film aside (many of them legit observations, many of them legit issues with subjective taste in material), one thing the film accomplished for even most of those who didn't like it is increasing interest in Batman and Wonder Woman. And WB just so happens to have their next three DC films be: a film that features Batman's villains and a cameo by Batman (Suicide Squad), Wonder Woman's film, and a "lighter" team up film being headlined by Batman and Wonder Woman (Justice League).

If they're smart and keep other DC feature film going forward budgets down to no more than $150-175m for the JL types, and $100-125 for the solo films (and runtimes down to 2hrs or less), then BvS, despite its problems, has done its job.

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't really think interest in Batman needed increasing

[Luke M]

I don't really think interest in Batman needed increasing

Right. If anything probably a negative hit to the Batman brand.

[captveg]

There's a reason they're chomping at the bit to get the Batfleck film in production after JL principal in finished. 99% of viewers loved the Batfleck.

[Finch]

It boggles my mind that a film needs to earn $800m to just break even. These figures are just crazy. I still think Spielberg and Lucas are right: the time will come where one of these movies flops hard, and WB may have done just enough to prevent worse from happening but if this second week drop is repeated abroad, the film will need to do really well on home video to be even somewhat profitable.