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I'm of the opinion that changing characters is often nessesary to make the transition between mediums, but every character has a core personality that cannot be changed without backlash - this is where the Batman killing so many people in BvS becomes an issue, especially when it's compounded with the motive for hating Superman so much being tied to the collateral damage caused by the events of MoS.
Frankly I think there have been too many screw ups with the DC films for a cohesive shared universe and until WB can address that they'd be better off keeping the characters separate. All their efforts now look way too reactive to Marvel's successes.
I can imagine the execs at Warner Bros. looked at the billion dollar box office of Avengers and immediately wanted to replicate that success. Ignoring the years of goodwill built up with that audience. Considering WW and Aquaman both did exceptionally well, that would appear that Justice League was premature.
I also think that the team-up movie concept for DC characters really requires a significant departure from the comic source material. @klinton astutely pointed this out with respect to the Marvel films. The focus has to be on making compelling movies, not sticking to the source material. (Not all comic storylines are particularly good.)
I am a huge modern Captain Marvel fan, but it worries me that her 'powers' are so extensive, that she's becomes a McGuffin. Iron Man is interesting because he's fundamentally a human. Captain Marvel can fall into the trappings of Superman, whereby nobody actually has any empathy for or feels like the character is ever in any real peril.
I watched aquaman recently, and with the criticisms I read here, I was surprised I liked it quite a bit, I even think it was one of the best of the DCEU (probably just under WW)
I must also be one of the few people on the planet who thinks the DCEU is rather decent overall, only failure would be SS.
Including SS, which is getting a sequel. Anyway, I also think that the principle Justice League characters are a bit old-fashioned and their current iterations don't reconcile well with modern storytelling.
How does a gigantic crab/seahorse/bongo-playing octopus underwater war go completely unnoticed on the surface? We have satellites and listening stations for underwater earthquakes.
Ugh. I'm stuck in a timeloop of applying reason and basic knowledge to a DCEU movie. I've got to stop it.
I'd like to have seen some sort of cosmic DCEU movie before I'm supposed to accept that parademons from far-off place are going to steal energy cubes from Cybertron that were placed on Earth... in a very LotRy flashback montage that makes no sense.
Man of Steel remains my favorite. I can tolerate the first 3/4ths of that movie. Until Superman blatantly disregards the welfare of millions of people to engage in a magic fistfight with the bad guy from Kangaroo Jack. I also like WW up until Ares is revealed. All sorts of insipidness ensues after that. (The initial WW scene from JL almost makes up for it.)
I actually didn't even think SS was that terrible, rather disappointing, I was curious to know about the various characters, and learnt pretty much nothing about 90% of them. also I have doubt deathstroke is supposed to be some kind of paladin. oh and the final kill is ridiculous, enchantress was probably fast enough to kill them all before they could blink an eye.
BvS actually had an interesting story, though that was a bit of mess, oh and apparently I'm among the rare people who thought the martha scene was good.
Oh, I didn't intend that in any sort of positive sense. The divergence is too extreme. To the point where I don't even understand why they call them "Marvel" films. The characters (most notably the entire cast of GotG, and not-Thanos) are completely divorced from their comics counterparts. There is nothing there outside of visual cues that was actually based on the characters. They should have made these films as thier own unique franchise, with original characters rather than shoehorning other characters into familiar names.
And, are you seriously implying that the schlock that was GotG2 is better than the likes of "The Korvac Saga" or "Annihilation"? No, not all comic stories are particularly good, but most are a fair deal better than that rubbish.
This is precisely why I tend to prefer the DCEU films. They're not as commercially successful, but they tend to respect the source material. While they do take creative licence, the core of the characters are always grounded in the source material (yes, even gun happy bitter Batman is a legitmate comic book incarnation). Thier biggest fault lies perhaps relying a bit too heavily on their fans, as they throw things on the screen without clearly explaining the context which confuses and alienates the larger audience. This is why thier current film 'universe' tends to fall flat while the much more fleshed out and serialized television programming works much more successfully. They trie too hard to move too quickly and just short handed key information in a "blink and you've missed it" manner. As a fan though, these films are much more gratifying than anything Marvel Studios have churned out since Civil War.
Thanos Quest/Infinity Gauntlet would make for a terrible, terrible movie or movies. Frankly, Civil War and Secret Wars in their comic forms would be equally as terrible. With any adaptation, you have to be cognizant of your medium and audience, moreso than being true to the source material.
They didn't need to copy the story panel for panel to retain Thanos' core character. Had they kept the basic structure as it is, but retained his devotion to Death (his defining characteristic) as his central motivation, rather than some moral quest to prune the tree in order to foster future growth... would that have made him a less compelling character? Death needn't even be personified in thd MCU for it to work.
They can make changes and still deliver a satisfying product (for fans new and old). You mentioned Civil War, which is a prime example. The film distilled the essence of an overly convoluted comic story and delivered a superior experience. Vision and Wanda (my personal favorie Marvel characters, for the record) are both huge departures from thier comic incarnations, but their screen portrayals work. They act and behave in a manner that feels authentic, despite dramatic cosmetic changes to thier origin stories and power sets.
I get that they are different mediums, but the callous disregard for the characters they're supposedly portraying is just laziness. They can tell a story about those characters rather than adding those character names to a story they intend to tell.
I certainly respect the comics, but I have no expectations that any character is going to be consistent with their comic incarnation.
Laziness isn't the word I would use. I think a significant amount of thought and effort went into how the major characters are utilized in these films. The character development of Thor and Bucky over many films is the result of much planning and making very calculated decisions on how they are portrayed.
(I'd direct my attention over to Transformers, Indy 4 and F&F if you want to examine Hollywood laziness.)
And bongo-playing Octopuses. And Ivan Drago riding a seahorse. A SEAHORSE!
That said, this is the DC thread, which was my point in this tangent: DC is doing it right. :p
Also reminds me of the 'No LotR movie can be anything other than worthless if Tom Bombadil isn't in it.' The LotR movies were just fine with all of the modifications. If they did a shot-by-shot version of the book, we'd still be waiting for the 35th movie to be released.
Oh, come now. A little nod to the Golden Age wackiness is fun, no?
In most of the Thor-related comics I've read, I find him to be a very flat and hopelessly predictable character. But I'm no expert on his various comic iterations.
I often wonder how a Nolan-helmed Superman could have meshed with his Batman Trilogy. Other than Batman morphing into some version of Tony Stark, I'm not sure that would be good or coherent.
I really hate that there wasn't another installment of a solo Superman movie with Cavill. I really liked him in Immortals, MI - Fallout and Man From UNCLE.
He could also have been a bridge to introducing the DCEU cosmic universe. A buddy-comedy with a Drax-ish Martian Manhunter could have been gold.
DC's problem are pretty big. They do not really seem to have any kind of plan beyond "oh look all your favourites in one film!" and "oh its dark and gritty". They have really missed the mark about what people want from superhero films. Which is a good story line and not everything to be gray and a messy blur. This is why Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Shazam have done so much better. They have an actual plotline and are more along the same line as Marvel.
Personally I think that, unlike Marvel, DC have to stick more in line with characters. This is because I think they are more recognisable as characters than Marvel's are. MOS, BvS, JL and SS were so far removed from them that they were going to fail. People expect those characters to behave a certain way (Batman no killing, Superman happy). Titans has a pretty much spot on portrait of Dick after he leaves Batman (angry, confused, a little lost) but all the comments on Rotten Tomatoes are about how the show is nothing like Teen Titans Go (for the kids, now teens/adults, who grew up on that) or the happy Dick from his time with Batman.
DC already have a well established and excellent film producing sector in DC animation I do not understand why they did not pull some of those writers over to produce the scripts. They really understand the characters and how to make a plot.
In BvS, Diana just appears - more like Catwoman than her character in Wonder Woman. Same thing with Aquaman in JL.
As much as I was mediocrely inspired by WW and detested much of Aquaman, had I seen those movies before JL, I... probably.... would have seen JL in theatres.
JL suffers from no character development for Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg. And you can't shoe-horn three origin stories plus explaining Steppenwolf... and Motherboxes (McGuffin) all in one movie. Plus, you have to service Superman's resurrection.
The closest thing in Marvel is the somewhat dismissive introduction of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. "He's fast, and she's weird."
If Marvel didn't have origin stories for Thor, Captain America or Black Widow - it would be jolting to have them appear in Avengers. (Loki included - if you treat him as similar to Steppenwolf.)
Avengers isn't a masterpiece of scriptwriting - but having the luxury of the audience knowing and wanting to see all of the main characters enables you to skip to the meaningful action.
DC movies are what I want from superhero films. I don't want a Superman I or Superman Returns (yeah, I'm ignoring everything between II and Returns). I don't want the all-mighty Superman fighting Luthor by spinning the world (that's great scripting...) or lifting a kryptonite-made continent. In a modern adaptation, MoS and BvS were exactly what I expected - skepticism and adoration in equal amounts, and world leaders wanting to manipulate Superman to their advantage or to eliminate him for considering him a threat to their interests.
The reason why Nolan's Batman was successful was because it mixed Batman fiction with reality, it tried to be as real as possible in that fictional universe. Even Burton's take, though entertaining, was exaggerated and the society behind it made no sense, with the characters being too much unrealistic. And I wanted a real challenge for Superman, and the fight with Zod in MoS was much more "comic book-ish" than the one in Superman II.
Aquaman is a poor attempt at adapting Johns' run in The New 52. The script sucks, the FX are exagerated, and I share most of SumoLego's criticism. It just looks like a Marvel movie, that's probably why it was successful. Everything is put clearly in front of you, no thought required. There are some entertaining action scenes, though.
BvS, while failing in the theatrical version because it required the audience to know too much about the characters, clearly succeeds in its extended version because it fills the necessary gaps - and again, that was not Snyder's fault, it was WB.
Furthermore, I don't recall Grayson being a killer in the comics, but nobody seems to have a problem with that in Titans. Not even during his time with Spiral, recently in the comics, did he kill people. The DC shows (Arrow in the beginning, and the new ones) try to be as dark as the movies, their advantage is that they have a much stringent audience and so they can get away with that sort of things.
Marvel doesn't have that good writing, they just don't assume stuff from their audience to begin with. They started by introducing the characters and explaining them, and then assembled them as a team. And they treat the audience as dumb so nothing is complex, no thought is required to understand events. That was Marvel's strength.
I sometimes have to remember that just as many people saw and enjoyed WW as Captain Marvel, and Aquaman as Black Panther.
I would also note that Marvel is very patient with their properties and doesn't succumb to knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps that is in-part to being a cog in the Disney machine, but they don't rush their product to market.
And, again, your comparison helps my point - you're mentioning the two DCEU movies that look the most like Marvel movies as being the most successful ones (in terms of box office revenue, as always).
In the MCU, Black Panther had 48% from overseas, Captain Marvel 62% and Civil War 64% (BvS contemporary).
So I could speculate a bit around this, there are certainly some obvious reasons behind these values and overall box office "success" for the movies, but that would be pointless nevertheless, so I'll just leave it here.
Most superhero movies have title characters who learn and do less than BP did in brief intro in Civil War.
Indeed.
@pharmjod I didn't do any interpretation of the stats, as I clearly pointed out. That's your interpretation of them.
@SumoLego just to make it clear, for you and everybody else, it's not my opinion or me that "treats the movie-going public as a mass of idiots". My opinion is that Marvel "treats the movie-going public as a mass of idiots". Don't twist my words to please your point.
More than story depth or lack thereof, I think the main thing Marvel films are getting right is making characters people care about and are invested in. Even side characters like Coulson or Luis in Ant Man or Heimdell are interesting and memorable. I struggled to like Superman in Man of Steel in the final act. Wonder Woman actually did really well in making the group around her interesting and fun. The secretary, the Irish guy etc.
Much like the Howling Commandos in 'The First Avenger'...
I completely understand wanting to see these movies better reflect the source material.
(Although I'd like to think more thought went into the script of Infinity War and Endgame than the sum total of F&F movies combined.)
The problem with the DCEU is that they tried to catch up to the MCU from an extremely shaky starting point; the lukewarmly received Man of Steel. It's like the MCU tried launching off the shoulders of The Incredible Hulk, instead of the surprise hit Iron Man. DC took the biggest A-lister of all super heroes and lost out to Marvel's roster of B-listers (which is what they all were before the MCU). From the pretty straight forwards rehash of Superman's origins, DC then launched into the muddled mess that was Batman v. Superman. You may laud the ideas and concepts hidden within that film, but it is a mess, and in one fell swoop, it took away the movies' biggest advantage, having a clutter free, clean slate to build their own stories from the ground. If you only watch the films of the DCEU without knowing the characters beforehand, you probably won't get much out of BvS or Justice League, unlike with the MCU, where you will do fine only watching those films, until Spider-Man: Homecoming, which presupposes you have at least watched Spider-Man (2002) or The Amazing Spider-Man.
Since the DCEU doesn't care about world building, they would have done so much better just going straight for a Justice League movie right off the bat. They wouldn't have needed to devote an entire movie to gathering a team, like in The Avengers or the Justice League movie we got, they could have just started with the whole team taking on some minor threat, showcasing each character's powers and abilities, before having us learn more about the heroes and their personalities in the middle part, as they prepare to take on some major threat. In the beginning, the whole point of Marvel having a cinematic universe was to introduce it's unknown heroes to audiences across the globe before The Avengers. In the DCEU they only did movies for the three heroes most people already knew about, instead of The Flash, Cyborg or Aquaman.
The most mind-boggling thing about the DCEU to me is that they never pulled the plug. It's like with the comics, where they can only do a reboot through some reality bending event, instead of just saying, "Hey, this has gotten out of hand, we need to take a few steps back here." They've just kept painting themselves into corners, but I hope that is changing now. I don't know what that Joker movie is going to be, but I'm looking forwards to the new Batman film, and might even go see Shazam!.
In 2005, i saw Batman Begins and was impressed by the less campy version of Batman.
When Iron Man came out in 2008, I didn’t watch it. I didn’t know anything about. I passed on the Hulk because the previous version was poor. It was the animated series Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that got me interested in Marvel and eventually hooked on Marvel Comics and the MCU.
After Dark Knight was released in 2008, DC was at it’s height and I along with most movie goers were ready for the DCEU. Instead the Batman trilogy concluded and we got MOS, which I thought was very good (minus the endless battle scene at the end). BvS was ok, but how lazy was it to introduce the rest of the Justice League in a 2 minute clip that Batman discovers. I didn’t watch SS in theatre because of the negative reviews, but did when released on disc. The film was garbage with Harley Quinn as the only redeeming character. SS should have been built up slowly instead of being a hodgepodge of villains.
If good character development helps to make a good film and franchise then Marvel has it figured out. DC has skipped a few steps and it has cost them.
SS should have been built up slowly instead of being a hodgepodge of villains.
That literally defines what the Suicide Squad is.
Iron Man fought a larger Iron Man. Thor fought a sentinel. Hulk beat up a spikey Hulk. Captain America fought off an attack on the US with powered-up, but conventional weapons. All small potatoes - so it meant something then Loki appeared in Avengers.
The MCU characters started with 'small' things, which made the team-up movie more exciting.
Also,don't tell that to Chris Hemsworth!