If you was in control of DC ciniamatic Universe...

[batgirl_brandy_wayne]

I was thinking about the difference between DC and Marvel in terms of their movies. I personally believe DC tends to stray too far from the comics which takes away from the fan experience and love for the movies when, in my opinion at least, they have the better stories overall (Marvel does have some really great stories too) and much better characters. I would love to see DC taken after Marvel and slow down the pace a little, and allow each character to stand on their own a little bit.

Which brings me to my first question, and I will phrase things in terms of the Marvel Movieverse so people can easily understand what I am trying to say. You have total control over Phase One of the DC verse... what do you do with Superman?

Superman I: I base it off of the Superman Earth One comics, using the backstory of Krypton and Clark's ability to be able to do anything in life he chooses. I would allow both Jonathan and Martha to be major characters in the movie however and not kill either off. To avoid repeats in movies, I would focus the beginning of the movie around the comic book villain Tyrell and use him as a means to bring Zod into the plot. I also would make Superman still a senior in high school, making the most power hero in DC a young man could add some very interesting sub plots.

[Disciple]

I might've said this before, but here it is again... I don't think DC works particularly well in live-action, save for Adam West's Batman, which gets a pass precisely because its whole point was how utterly ridiculous Batman would look in real life.

Getting past that... I wouldn't make Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman part of a shared universe unless there was a gun to my head. One of the key differences between DC and Marvel is that while the latter's A-list heroes are pretty much the brainchildren of three guys (Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko), the former's come from far more separate - and often irreconcilable - roots. It's hard to imagine how Gotham could stay such a hellhole filled to the brim with serial killers and rapists, for instance, when its main hero has Superman on speed dial. Similarly, why would the Flash need anyone's help? Guy once evacuated all of Pyongyang in the split-second before a nuke hit.

Ehhh... maybe I'm just too much of a stop-having-fun sourpuss to buy the idea of the Justice League, even for a second...

[Femina]

I am not a humongous DC fan tbh :/ and probably WOULDN'T want to make the films. I have to disagree that DC 'tells the better stories' as I've always felt part of the reason I tended to gravitate towards Marvel as a girl was that it felt more localized in the 'real world' with Spider-Man operating out of New York and such while DC felt like COMPLETE fantasy... whether this would hold true now that I'm grown up I don't know. It could be as OW says above, that Marvel's hero's all seem to mesh better together because the same group of people originally invented the heavy hitters while DC had a more spread out creator base...

That all said, I think DC's only HUGE problem with the films is their unwavering attempts to make their universe resemble 'the dark knight' in visual style and narrative tone. Dark Knight was all dark and brooding, which is FINE for a batman film, but isn't really part of Superman's tone, or Wonder Woman, or Flash, or Aquaman, or any of their current lineup. They need to remember that their films should be occasionally light hearted and funny, not just depressing and moody.

I'm hopeful for the WW film precisely because the trailer felt more like a marvel trailer than a DC trailer... but if the movie holds to DC's 'dank and gritty' Snyder scheme... I fear the DC universe won't actually recover.

[Visitor]

DC and the non-Disney Marvel heroes keep going back to the origin story because they don't develop the villains that well. The Joker and Lex Luthor have been reused too many times. It seems that they keep hiring writers that don't want to spend time going back to the older comics and use the best ideas unlike the Adam West TV series that didn't see the point in ignoring good ideas.

Also the trend to make the movies dark in both content and lighting has to go. There's nothing wrong with some comedy to lighten things up which is why Harley Quinn is working so well. She may do bad things and love the Joker, but she's fun to watch and see what's she's going to do next.

Superman is a well establish character so the next movie should have him fighting a villain either at his power level like a Phantom Zone jailed character like Ursa or Faroa. Seeing Superman be beaten up by a woman that instead of just brute strength can use superior skill.

The other is someone that has normal human level abilities, but constantly outthinks him like the Toyman or Prankster.

[lionbadger]

Marvel has been able to work on it's less well known characters. They sold the big names that had some wider public traction, i.e. X men, Spiderman, fantastic 4 even Hulk and left them to other studios to mess up. Then they got the best of the rest and introduced them to the public. Thor, Iron Man etc were new things to see.

Superman and Batman have been in movies and tv for at least 40 years, they aren't new or special, they are basically the simpsons movie. If I was at DC I'd put a line through them and dig out some c list characters to work up over the next 10 years.

[tallyho]

^^^ C list characters eh? interesting notion... could this mean that Matter Eater Lad's time in the sun has finally come?

matter-eater-lad.jpg (121.83 KiB) Viewed 6213 times

matter-eater-lad2.jpg (79.67 KiB) Viewed 6213 times

[theScribbler]

Well, if Suicide Squad is a better movie than the critics claim it is,

and if these guys...

http://collider.com/batman-vs-superman- ... on-review/

are right when they say the 3-hour extended cut version of BvS is significantly better than the theatrical cut, then not sure what I'd do differently if I was in control. Other than I'd start with releasing the good version, the best cut/edit of movies to theaters rather than the crap version, crap cut/edit of movies.

[Heroine Addict]

Well, if Suicide Squad is a better movie than the critics claim it is,

and if these guys...

http://collider.com/batman-vs-superman- ... on-review/

are right when they say the 3-hour extended cut version of BvS is significantly better than the theatrical cut, then not sure what I'd do differently if I was in control. Other than I'd start with releasing the good version, the best cut/edit of movies to theaters rather than the crap version, crap cut/edit of movies.

The big problem with releasing a three-hour movie is that the theaters get fewer screenings per screen, per day. Meaning less revenue.

Somebody should have looked at the BvS script long before shooting began and realized that it needed serious restructuring to tell a coherent story within the desired runtime. Apparently, even after the three-hour extended cut, there's still a whole hour of footage missing. We're not talking about alternate takes, but rather an entire quarter of the narrative footage.

All movies have a few minutes of deleted scenes, but BvS had so much footage that trimming it caused serious structural issues.

[drvoodoo]

Problem is DC is not in control with the films, its WB, Whereas Marvel have their own studio and have more control.

[Heroine Addict]

Problem is DC is not in control with the films, its WB, Whereas Marvel have their own studio and have more control.

That issue may have recently been addressed by WB when they appointed Geoff Johns to oversee the DC movies.

This is comparable to Kevin Feige and Marvel's current set-up within Disney.

[Kitten]

Problem is DC is not in control with the films, its WB, Whereas Marvel have their own studio and have more control.

I'm not sure that's the root of evil.

Warner Bros. is owns the television station series, and seems to be generally recognized as doing better than Marvel on the small screen.

So i dont think it's as simple as pointing to WB and saying it's all their fault.

[Dazzle1]

I am more of a D.C fan an but Marvel in the movies stays far more true to their universe rules.

The three characters in Batman vs Superman do not, nor does Luthor.

This is a problem in other movies look at Abrams butchering of Star Trek and Star Wars

[drvoodoo]

I dont know if thats true, the marvel netflix series destroy not only the DC tv series but the movies too. The only thing they do right is the animation

[lionbadger]

That issue may have recently been addressed by WB when they appointed Geoff Johns to oversee the DC movies.

This is comparable to Kevin Feige and Marvel's current set-up within Disney.

I think this true, not so much Marvel having control as there is a central guy pulling together the strands to create some coherence across the board

[Visitor]

The problem is somewhere the writers send in scripts that use a character without any understanding of its past. Then the executives make a movie that lets this continue as if it was a conventional movie.

Whereas in the fetish industry you change the character name, but keep elements of the character's past.

Marvel gets to keep the character name, but it uses the character's past. They may use an obscure character, but they don't start out as if this is a new idea.

[Lurkndog]

Problem is DC is not in control with the films, its WB, Whereas Marvel have their own studio and have more control.

That issue may have recently been addressed by WB when they appointed Geoff Johns to oversee the DC movies.

This is comparable to Kevin Feige and Marvel's current set-up within Disney.

I hope that DC starts doing a better job, but I find Geoff Johns to be very hit or miss. Hopefully we get something good in the Justice League movie.

The last thing I want is a live action adaptation of "Darkest Shite."

[cdrei]

There used to be a longstanding fan consensus that DC had the better characters, but Marvel had the better stories. That's a YMMV sort of idea, but I tend to agree with it. DC's characters work really well as ideas, but telling compelling stories with them may be more difficult. They've always been more deeply immersed in the genre of which they're part. Marvel's characters, from the outset, sort of had one foot in our real world. They're more relatable. DC's primary characters and concepts date back to the earliest days of the genre -- they defined what the superhero genre was and is and could be -- and are trapped more in the genre's inherent escapist/wish-fulfillment nature. Particularly in films, where the goal is making a product which is accessible and appealing to wide audiences across many cultures, grimdark and Darker-n-Edgier 'realism' seems to be easier to pull off in action-adventure genres than pure escapism. Marvel has an advantage with that sort of 'realism' because its characters generally fit into that better.

There's an old thread about Watchmen, over at the John Byrne forum. Mr. Byrne explains how Moore's deconstruction of the superhero genre was, in his view, distorting and wrong-headed. "Superheroes are about hope!" he declares. Whereas Watchmen is about hopelessness, the essence of grimdark. He's sort of right. At its essence, the superhero genre is about hope. The characters which are most true to the form have that baked into them, and when you try to use them to tell stories that work against that fundamental theme, there's a conflict. The majority of DC's characters are more true to the origins and essence of the superhero genre than are Marvel's. You can twist the idea of Batman around to the point where grimdark works pretty well for him, but after a certain point you really begin to lose the character, turning him into a generic revenge fantasy action hero. With most of the others, it's harder to do that, because the essence of the character is in conflict with the desired tone.

Which is the long, rambling, and perhaps contentious way of saying that I think DC is wrong to try to tell Marvel Movie stories with its characters. They need to find DC Movie stories to tell, stories better suited to the ideas and ideals their characters represent. They need to eschew grimdark (even, I would argue, with Batman) and tell adventure stories about wonder and hope. Genre deconstruction stories work against them. They need to work toward reconstructionism. Astro City points the way to this, not Watchmen. DC needs to make its characters fun again, not in the camp sense of inviting the audience to laugh at the absurdity of the genre, but by actually embracing the escapist essence of the superhero genre.

I have a suspicion that DC's characters are better suited to the small screen than the big screen, just because of what action-adventure films need to be nowadays, in order to be successful. DC's stories need to be smaller than the Marvel movie stories. They can have that level of adventure and drama, the same sweep and excitement, but they need to build toward that differently. The audience needs to be drawn into the characters' world differently, more gradually and intimately. Serialized storytelling would seem better suited to this, for me. Among other things, part of what has always made DC's universe more compelling is its sense of history. Their stories can trace their roots back to the dawn of the genre! The history of the genre has been long and weird, goofy and wild and self-contradicting. They keep running away from that, in recent years, when they should embrace it and try to use it to tell good stories, rather than always striving to be Marvel.

Which maybe means I wouldn't attempt a cinematic universe for DC at all. Whether I would or not, I would try to use the DC characters to change the public perception of what the superhero genre is and can be. It can be a helluva lot more than it is, in any of the recent filmic treatments.

But what do I know, anyway. I've been out of step with fandom, not to mention mainstream movie audiences, for decades.

[Cdrei walks away, muttering and gesticulating.]

[Disciple]

It's occurred to me that if DC wants to go DARK AND MATURE so badly, it's got a whole mess of Vertigo properties lying around practically tailor-made to that tone. Marvel might have the edge in mature, realistic superheroes, but it doesn't have much else to its name besides superheroes. Meanwhile, DC's got a pretty strong bench of horror titles like Swamp Thing, fantasy like Sandman, etc.

[Visitor]

DC should skip trying to become Marvel and just tell stories in a self consistent universe like they did in the 1960s and 70s movies. It doesn't have to fit into our reality, but an alternate universe reality where superheroes are possible and the world has gone a different way because of it. That would fit in with past DC multiverse comics.

DC shouldn't go DARK since that's not the way most of their comics were written. There were very few of the older comics that were that way although Batman started out wearing a gun within a few issues he stopped. It wasn't until the late 1980s that he went from always trying to save lives to I won't kill, but if they die I won't lose sleep.

Suicide Squad at least had one writer that had read enough comics that references to them were used instead of just starting over with new versions that kept the name and some of the look. These were the bad guys that didn't take themselves seriously. Plenty of humor from Will Smith's Deadshot counting down to leaving if he didn't get paid with a bonus to almost any scene with Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. If it hadn't been PG-13 you could have had a hotter and heavier romance between the two than in Focus. It the fact that they pushed the humor like Marvel's Deadpool that makes it a good movie. You have DARK AND MATURE, but let's not get carried away with brooding in a Batcave.

[drvoodoo]

Vertigo is pretty much dead now, they merged it with the mainstream DC universe. Theres nothing really mature or adult orientated about swamp thing and other titles. Gone are the days of when they used to publish books like Preacher, the original hell blazer or watchmen.

[theScribbler]

Well, if Suicide Squad is a better movie than the critics claim it is,

and if these guys...

http://collider.com/batman-vs-superman- ... on-review/

are right when they say the 3-hour extended cut version of BvS is significantly better than the theatrical cut, then not sure what I'd do differently if I was in control. Other than I'd start with releasing the good version, the best cut/edit of movies to theaters rather than the crap version, crap cut/edit of movies.

The big problem with releasing a three-hour movie is that the theaters get fewer screenings per screen, per day. Meaning less revenue.

Somebody should have looked at the BvS script long before shooting began and realized that it needed serious restructuring to tell a coherent story within the desired runtime. Apparently, even after the three-hour extended cut, there's still a whole hour of footage missing. We're not talking about alternate takes, but rather an entire quarter of the narrative footage.

All movies have a few minutes of deleted scenes, but BvS had so much footage that trimming it caused serious structural issues.

Well, if it's a better movie at 4 hours, maybe they should've given some thought to releasing it as part 1 and part 2.

Sure, I get that theaters prefer 2-hours or shorter movies, but the movie was 2.5 hours as released already, so another .5 hour would've only killed one screening per day. Seems the 3-hour version would've been better received, likely less drastic fall-off of audience numbers after opening weekend, more goodwill and better word of mouth from movie fans, and possibly more return customers among the more diehard trinity fans to see the movie again before it leaves theaters.

Granted, it was a box office hit anyway, but it could have been better, and should've have been.

[Heroine Addict]

A two-parter would have caused its own problems as the first half of the film wasn't structured to lead up to a compelling cliffhanger. So the sum total of a Batman v Superman confrontation in Part 1 would have been the brief "Do you bleed?" scene. I doubt many people would have come back for Part 2.

In recent weeks, both Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Justice League Part 1 have been rebranded as standalone films. It seems the studios are reluctant to put out an incomplete superhero movie.

[chryskelly]

Wow, I seem to be watching different DC movies from everyone else, haha.

I get that most places.

Quite a few people have said something along the lines of "DC needs to stop making Marvel movies" and, umm, they're not making Marvel movies. Not at all. A Marvel movie is really well defined by this point (there's been enough of them). With the sole exception of Winter Soldier, a Marvel movie has a very basic and totally linear plot, lots of gags, some pretty cool action scenes, and a paucity of character development. They also have lots of explosions and bright colours. I'm not gonna lie, here, they have a definite appeal to me - but it's the appeal of turning off my brain and enjoying the kind of mindless movie I don't have to think about at all. They're kids movies, made to sell toys, and they directly appeal to my inner child.

Civil War was by far the worst of them. Winter Soldier was by far the best, it broke the mould the other films have been made in, and dared to be different. Civil War was awesome fight scenes separated by rubbish talk scenes, with a poor excuse for plot beyond "get to the next fight scene quickly." Characters in Civil War acted out of character, their power levels were different from previous films (Captain America seemed to be a lot faster, stronger and more agile in CW than previously shown in any Captain America movie). Even within the film, it followed very little logic - Scarlet Witch flattens Ultron in Stark Tower, but can barely stop Black Widow at the airport? Please. And she couldn't have been holding back, because she specifically said she was taking over the fight because Hawkeye was holding back.

On the flip, we have BvS. And BvS had some definite bad points to it. But... a lot of the criticisms directed towards BvS equally apply to CW but were never directed towards it. People are a lot more forgiving towards Civil War. The thing is, there was hate towards BvS before it came out (much as there was hate towards Ghostbusters before it came out) and although it was only a small minority of people who were hating both - somehow that hate seemed to go viral, and suddenly it was trendy to slate BvS.

Honestly, if critcs had let as much slip in BvS as they did in CW it would have a much higher RT score. Conversely, if they had held CW to the same standard as BvS it would have a much lower RT score. Obviously, all this is just my opinion. It's conjecture.

I genuinely believe that, out of the core concept of "hero fights hero" - Avengers Assembled is probably the best, when it has the three heroes squaring off in the forest. But as that was only a scene, not a movie - I think BvS was the better movie.

It had the most realistic character motivations for a start.

The idea of an old Batman, who has been fighting crime for decades, who has seen his sidekick murdered by the Joker, who has locked up every enemy he has ever faced but doesn't see any improvement in the world, is (on screen) unique. The idea that everyone is fallen, even himself, that he's just going through the routine now because it's what he does, rather than who he is or what he believes, is fantastic. How else could such a person, without hope, view the hero who is the embodiment of hope, other than with fear and distrust? He's been in the dark so long he doesn't trust the Light that is Superman. And even if he were to start believing it, there would bound to be some jealousy in there, too. It was brilliant, and it was subtle.

The idea of Superman has always been hard to bring to screen, because Superman's greatest power is that he gives people Hope. BvS is the only Superman movie to have ever successfully shown this. In the scene where they fight and he says "Martha," and Batman looks at him and stops seeing this alien God creature, but starts seeing a person. When he sees the person he could have been if he hadn't spent his life in Hell fighting monsters. When he sees the person he could become, once again, the hero he once set out to be: not by ridding the world of another hero, but by saving someone's mother. When he's reminded he didn't get involved with fighting crime to get revenge for his parents death, but to stop any other kid from living through what he lived through.

The other aspect of Superman is... how would governments and the public react to such a figure. Now? Today? This isn't 40s Superman, this is 2016 Superman - in a world where liberty is stripped away in place of security, where governments are formed from the most power hungry, where corporations have the wealth as their employees live in poverty - what would Superman be? A Messiah? A God? He could, if he wanted it, and the scene with the soldiers kneeling to him when Bruce is dreaming about the desert shows what God-Superman would be like: cold, and terrifying. But that's an image born of Bruce's fears - it's maybe even what he himself would do with so much power, cut off from the world. But all Clark wants to do is fit in.

As to Lex - he was not great. Not as bad as most reviews I've read suggest, but not great. He was exactly what I would expect a Millenial Lex to be. Which isn't high praise, nor damning praise, it simply is. I believed his motivation for setting the heroes against each other and creating the monster far more than I believed Tony Stark's motivation for signing the accords and setting up the first conflict with Steve Rogers (you know, the bit where he accepted the responsibility for an alien invasion of New York, and agreed government oversight was a good thing when he is the sole reason the government didn't succeed in their planes to NUKE the entire city).

BvS had weak points (I haven't seen the home edit so I hope they are addressed) but it was close to being a masterpiece. I haven't seen Suicide Squad yet, and I didn't really like Man of Steel (because I don't like any Superman movie - they usually just find a Kryptonian for him to fight and it gets boring fast - Superman's best battles are moral ones; I didn't like MofS, but I loved the ending where he has to choose between killing or letting innocents die (although why he didn't just cover Zod's eyes with his impervious to heat-ray hand I'm not sure. Maybe he's a bit thick).)

Oh, one more point I wanted to make re: everyone who complained at the time about Batman shooting people. He was having a nightmare for goodness sake. No one actually died in that scene. (This goes back to my earlier point about holding DC to a higher and more unfair standard than Marvel.)

What would I do if I was in charge of DCU? More of the same. But I might take some of the subtlety out of it. Mainstream (non-comic fans) viewers and reviewers don't seem to see the subtleties in BvS that I see. They want the bright colours and quick wit of a Marvel movie, as opposed to a movie that makes them think about things - and the strength of DC has always been it's ideas. Especially the ideas it germinates in others.

All of this is my opinion. Which most folk everywhere online seem to disagree with (I'm sure I watched a different movie). I don't mean to offend anyone with my opinion. I'm sorry I wrote a whole entire book in this post, but I got passionate.

[Disciple]

Almost every review of BvS I've seen tended toward the negative, but the big discrepancy between them is how much each reviewer blames the movie's concept, and how much they blame the execution. Some focus on the sloppy editing and zillion-prologue syndrome (I understand the latter has gotten even worse with Suicide Squad), some slag the "This ain't yo daddy's Batman!" depiction of Batman, etc.

To a degree, I can sympathize with people who argue the very concept of BvS isn't a good fit for Superman (I remember one guy likening it to a Sherlock Holmes story where the audience is expected to accept that ghosts exist). "Superheroes would be despised in our cruel modern world" is a rich story hook, but once you go with it you're pretty much telling an X-Men yarn, no matter which hero is "actually" in the spotlight.

On the Batman side of things, there's an uglier discrepancy: portions of the movie (like the callbacks to the dead Robin) practically demand you have at least a basic familiarity with the mythos, while others cheerfully piss all over said mythos to appeal more to the average action movie-goer. The movie's Dark Knight Returns-esque Batman was especially grating in this regard: he's supposed to be a subversion of "regular" DCEU Batman, but wouldn't things have been more effective had Snyder and company made a movie to familiarize us with "regular" DCEU Batman first?

[sneakly]

Personally, I would like to see Gal Godot' Wonder Woman get to recreate the 66 Batman universe... Every 22 minutes a fight, a capture, a gloat and a bat-trap style bondage cliffhanger..... Nora Clavicle with a budget, WW tied to a roasting spit a giant key cutting machine or being fed to a giant clam. Well, you could also do it with Nylonika, too.

[Heroine Addict]

I'm not sure anyone could do the Batman '66 style anymore. It struck a perfect balance between innocent comic book adventure and hilarious irony. Nobody has produced anything like it - with mass appeal - since then. The Black Scorpion movies and TV series had a brave go at trying to emulate it, but the campy comedy seemed too forced and it didn't sit easily with the darker elements.

I think Batman '66 was just a perfect storm. Even the same team couldn't replicate the magic with their frankly awful attempt to launch a Wonder Woman show in 1967.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tKZJVhn7M4

[Visitor]

Batman: The Animated Series was the closest in style to the Batman '66 TV series. Mostly bright visible action, peril, and some humor were all used. You lost the camp and making it on two levels so adults could enjoy things that children wouldn't understand.

You could remake it, but you would have trouble finding writers that could do the same style and then their's fighting executives that have a greater level of interference. Greatest American Hero ended after three seasons because Cannell got tired of fighting the network that wanted to change the concept. Even WB's DC comic TV shows are having long story arcs that just disappoint and don't fit with the better parts of their runs.

[Richpartist]

Sorry but it's "If you WERE in control......"

[Richpartist]

My super power is to correct grammar..............and to annoy people

[batgirl_brandy_wayne]

A DC movie verse would be a massive money maker, and they have some really really great comic book stories. They need to take multiple parts of different stories and put them together to make overall broader stories. They need to also stick to the comic lure, and make Luthor an evil genius opposed to what was flirting with The Joker in BvS.

As for Batman, there is a ton of great Batman stories that have not been used and should be. I think Joker has a ton of good stories that could be told, maybe as a lead in a movie rather than just a Batman movie. DC does need to lighten up a little bit, doing every single scene as a dark and brooding movie gets old. Some humor and such would really make the movies more fun.