'Batman v. Superman' Fallout: Warner Bros. Shakes Up Executive Roles

[BloatedGuppy]

...after what happened with both Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel...

Hopefully now they'll put that Christopher Nolan/Zack Snyder Grim-dark bullshit to pasture...

I don't really have an iron in the fire regarding "Grim Dark" and whether or not it's the right tone for a comic book film, but what's this revisionist nonsense about the Christopher Nolan Batman films?

Dark Knight Rises "failed" its way to a 1.1 Billion box office. The trilogy as a whole pulled in almost 3 billion. The films were both critically and popularly acclaimed, with only "Rises" representing a slight dip in that respect. One of them won an Oscar. Prior to Marvel's perpetual money-making machine/connected universe, they were THE benchmark for comic book film success and shattered all manner of records and expectations.

Comparatively, the Snyder led films were gargantuan disappointments. Underwhelming box office returns were coupled with brutal critical lashings. Both sets of films were "dark". "Dark" wasn't the problem. Snyder's inept direction and a lack of script cohesion was the problem. If the film was colorful and cheerful it would be equally bad. Realistically, "dark" at least gave it a sense of identity it would otherwise be sorely lacking. The grainy/gritty/desaturated style Snyder favors was initially visually arresting, and appears to have fooled at least a handful of executives into hanging the 'visionary director' tag on him. One would think the red flag known as "Sucker Punch" would have given them pause, but alas.

I can assure you, whatever your reservations with Nolan or his Dark Knight trilogy, if he had helmed the two Superman films we wouldn't be having this discussion. Remember this old comic?

That's how it was when Nolan was DC's front man. These days, it's the various Marvel franchises throwing the money back and forth, and DC/Snyder picking up the remainder.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Well it doesn't work that "human + Kryptonian = more powerful monster thing" either.

I think the implication in BvS was that "Doomsday" was actually a known phenomenon to the Kryptonians ("the desecration without a name", I think the ship calls it) so rather than being a more powerful human-Kryptonian hybrid, it's possible that Doomsday is just what you get when you try to clone a Kryptonian with corrupted or incomplete genetic information. It might even retroactively explain why the Kryptonians were so big on eugenics in Man of Steel; if their DNA is so volatile it can produce a twenty-foot unkillable cave troll every now and then, then suddenly Zod's fanatical devotion to artificial reproduction makes more sense.

None of that is stated in the film, but whatever. It's not a great film.

If so, Lois is fucked if she get's preggers. But I'm not saying that it is the dumbest plot created by man, I'm simply saying that it is a plot that was already done by the exact same character in the worst Superman movie ever. At least that one actually looked like a mix between a human and a Kryptonian, but thank the gods Doomsday didn't talk in Lex "Jr"'s voice.

There's a far cry between BvS!Doomsday and Nuclear Man. Nuclear Man had silver electro-nails and lost his powers when he wasn't in direct sunlight.

Execution is everything, is what I'm saying.

I can assure you, whatever your reservations with Nolan or his Dark Knight trilogy, if he had helmed the two Superman films we wouldn't be having this discussion. Remember this old comic?

I agree with everything else in your post, but I don't think Nolan would have been able or willing to handle a Superman reboot. He was very vocal about how he considered the Dark Knight trilogy self-contained.

While it would have been cool to see Nolan's version of a MoS-style origin story, I don't think he would have been willing to do it. Even if he did, it would by necessity be a sharp change from the Dark Knight trilogy's characteristic realism. It may at some point have been possible to tie the Dark Knight trilogy in with Superman Returns, but the general "meh" with which the world reacted to the latter film put a stop to that.

In retrospect, it's kind of ironic - people complained that Superman Returns was boring and old-fashioned, nixing any chance of a shared-universe experiment, so WB went full-tilt in the other direction and produced Man of Steel, which people complained about for the exact opposite reasons. The Internet has an extremely short memory.

 

[flying_whimsy]

Dark Knight Rises made well over a billion dollars, so what lesson exactly did you believe they would be taking from that?

Dark Knight Rises "failed" its way to a 1.1 Billion box office. The trilogy as a whole pulled in almost 3 billion. The films were both critically and popularly acclaimed, with only "Rises" representing a slight dip in that respect. One of them won an Oscar. Prior to Marvel's perpetual money-making machine/connected universe, they were THE benchmark for comic book film success and shattered all manner of records and expectations.

Dark Knight Rises may have made a lot of money, but that was based more on how much people loved Dark Knight: the film itself was not exactly a rousing critical or fan success. Man of Steel made a ton of money as well, but again it was not the runaway critical or fan success. If there had been a fourth batman movie or if Nolan had directed Man of Steel I doubt the results would have been any different: DC clearly didn't have any real strategy behind making these movies other than brand recognition. The lesson I was referring to was that they've had the wrong people in charge of their comic movies and their goals haven't lined up with audience expectations for years.

DC's problem all along has been too much of a focus on short term success (chasing those box office numbers you both mention which leads to a lot of executive meddling) as opposed to maintaining the quality of the brand.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

The Burbank-based studio is making changes to the way it handles its DC Entertainment-centered films, giving oversight of the feature projects to a pair of executives and creating a dedicated division for the films.

Are you fucking kidding me? They're 4 movies (2 released so far) into a franchise that's supposed to be rivaling the MCU is scope, and they're just getting around to making a dedicated division.

For fucks sake, WB. I know you can't make a super hero movie for shit and your executives all majored in 'Meddling' in university, but I figured you could at least sort out the business side of things. Shit.

When the Marvel cinematic expanded universe started, their movies weren't exactly spectacular..

I personally enjoyed Batman V Superman. Personally, I've seen the movie twice, and waiting for the R rated cut to see a third time, and yet, I don't think I could stomache anymore Civil War.

I couldn't disagree more. I saw Iron Man three times in theaters, twice during early-release. The Incredible Hulk was a pretty damn fine movie, and while Iron Man 2 and Thor weren't cinematic masterpieces, they were both enjoyable enough action films. Avengers was fantastic, and CA: The First Avenger was just... damn. Probably my favorite super hero movie, up until CA: Winter Soldier was released.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I agree with everything else in your post, but I don't think Nolan would have been able or willing to handle a Superman reboot. He was very vocal about how he considered the Dark Knight trilogy self-contained.

While it would have been cool to see Nolan's version of a MoS-style origin story, I don't think he would have been willing to do it. Even if he did, it would by necessity be a sharp change from the Dark Knight trilogy's characteristic realism. It may at some point have been possible to tie the Dark Knight trilogy in with Superman Returns, but the general "meh" with which the world reacted to the latter film put a stop to that.

In retrospect, it's kind of ironic - people complained that Superman Returns was boring and old-fashioned, nixing any chance of a shared-universe experiment, so WB went full-tilt in the other direction and produced Man of Steel, which people complained about for the exact opposite reasons. The Internet has an extremely short memory.

Willing...definitely not. I think he wanted to try his hand at other things. Able? I have no idea if he could have made a Superman film that pleased all Superman fans, or satisfied the ever dissatisfied throngs of internet commentators, but I stand relatively assured he would have produced a competently assembled movie. Which would automatically slot it as a significant improvement over Man of Steel. It's sort of the whole JJ Abrams/Star Wars argument again, on a different stage. Was Abrams the BEST man for the job? Who knows. Probably not. Was he a far sight better than the idiot he was replacing? Without question.

Dark Knight Rises may have made a lot of money, but that was based more on how much people loved Dark Knight: the film itself was not exactly a rousing critical or fan success.

DARK KNIGHT RISES

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic: 78%
Metacritic User Score: 83%
IMDB: 8.5/10

MAN OF STEEL

Rotten Tomatoes: 56%
Metacritic: 55%
Metacritic User Score: 75%
IMDB: 7.2/10

Some comparison points:

THE AVENGERS

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 69%
Metacritic User Score: 79%
IMDB: 8.1/10

BATMAN VS SUPERMAN

Rotten Tomatoes: 27%
Metacritic: 44%
Metacritic User Score: 71%
IMDB: 7.1/10

THE DARK KNIGHT

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 82%
Metacritic User Score: 89%
IMDB: 9/10

BATMAN BEGINS

Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 70%
Metacritic User Score: 87%
IMDB: 8.3/10

So what do we see here?

"Rises" was the 2nd best rated of the three Batman films, and was generally very highly rated overall, with better results than Marvel's popularly beloved Avengers on all but one site. This is across several critical aggregate websites, and if you know how aggregates work, you know this isn't the result of any one critic's bias. It also did excellent box office and had good staying power. Comparatively, the ratings for the two Snyder films are not kind.

Man of Steel made a ton of money as well, but again it was not the runaway critical or fan success.

By "a ton of money", it made slightly more than half of what Rises brought in. It was also aggressively panned by critics.

If there had been a fourth batman movie or if Nolan had directed Man of Steel I doubt the results would have been any different: DC clearly didn't have any real strategy behind making these movies other than brand recognition. The lesson I was referring to was that they've had the wrong people in charge of their comic movies and their goals haven't lined up with audience expectations for years.

This may very well be true, but I do think you're underselling the impact an incompetent director can have on a series of films. I give you "The Star Wars Prequels" as exhibit A. I don't think Snyder is quite as inept as Lucas, but I think he's a one trick pony suited to a very specific style of empty-calories film-making. "300" was right in his wheelhouse. Anything more ambitious than that and you're asking for trouble. Nolan might not be the perfect fit for Superman...indeed I doubt he is...but he's a workmanlike, competent director with exacting quality standards. He would have produced a passable film that at worst would have been mediocre. We're not talking about having Wes Anderson direct, Nolan knows how to crank out blockbuster entertainment.

Naturally DC needs to get their heads on straight and set about making some good films instead of simply trying to milk their IP for lazy dollars, that's beyond dispute. I'm simply debating the bizarre assertion that Nolan's films are in any way involved in DC's current doldrums. Not because I'm a Nolan fanboy, but because it's purely nonsensical. Nolan's Batman trilogy was a thundering success for DC. That they used it to springboard into a series of calamities by the director of Sucker Punch is little more than an embarrassment.

 

[lacktheknack]

Fuck that I would not watch that back alley abortion that's Plan 9 from Outer Space in its entirty.

I feel sorry for people who "ironically" watch "BAAAAAAAAAAAD" movies like these:

But why? No two movies make me smile harder than these two. Why would be sorry that I feel happy?

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

Man of Steel made a ton of money as well, but again it was not the runaway critical or fan success.

By "a ton of money", it made slightly more than half of what Rises brought in. It was also aggressively panned by critics.

56% isn't aggressively panned. That's mixed. That's polarizing. Not panned.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

Man of Steel made a ton of money as well, but again it was not the runaway critical or fan success.

By "a ton of money", it made slightly more than half of what Rises brought in. It was also aggressively panned by critics.

56% isn't aggressively panned. That's mixed. That's polarizing. Not panned.

Rotten Tomatoes has critics giving it an average of 49%. Pretty sure below average almost universally accross the board counts as being aggressively panned, especially considering many critics say anything below 2.5-3 stars (50-60%) is at best, bad. Only 27% of critics gave it a good score.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

56% isn't aggressively panned. That's mixed. That's polarizing. Not panned.

By Rotten Tomatoes metrics? That's abysmal.

 

[mduncan50]

I agree with everything else in your post, but I don't think Nolan would have been able or willing to handle a Superman reboot. He was very vocal about how he considered the Dark Knight trilogy self-contained.

While it would have been cool to see Nolan's version of a MoS-style origin story, I don't think he would have been willing to do it. Even if he did, it would by necessity be a sharp change from the Dark Knight trilogy's characteristic realism. It may at some point have been possible to tie the Dark Knight trilogy in with Superman Returns, but the general "meh" with which the world reacted to the latter film put a stop to that.

In retrospect, it's kind of ironic - people complained that Superman Returns was boring and old-fashioned, nixing any chance of a shared-universe experiment, so WB went full-tilt in the other direction and produced Man of Steel, which people complained about for the exact opposite reasons. The Internet has an extremely short memory.

Willing...definitely not. I think he wanted to try his hand at other things. Able? I have no idea if he could have made a Superman film that pleased all Superman fans, or satisfied the ever dissatisfied throngs of internet commentators, but I stand relatively assured he would have produced a competently assembled movie. Which would automatically slot it as a significant improvement over Man of Steel. It's sort of the whole JJ Abrams/Star Wars argument again, on a different stage. Was Abrams the BEST man for the job? Who knows. Probably not. Was he a far sight better than the idiot he was replacing? Without question.

Dark Knight Rises may have made a lot of money, but that was based more on how much people loved Dark Knight: the film itself was not exactly a rousing critical or fan success.

DARK KNIGHT RISES

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic: 78%
Metacritic User Score: 83%
IMDB: 8.5/10

MAN OF STEEL

Rotten Tomatoes: 56%
Metacritic: 55%
Metacritic User Score: 75%
IMDB: 7.2/10

Some comparison points:

THE AVENGERS

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 69%
Metacritic User Score: 79%
IMDB: 8.1/10

BATMAN VS SUPERMAN

Rotten Tomatoes: 27%
Metacritic: 44%
Metacritic User Score: 71%
IMDB: 7.1/10

THE DARK KNIGHT

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 82%
Metacritic User Score: 89%
IMDB: 9/10

BATMAN BEGINS

Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 70%
Metacritic User Score: 87%
IMDB: 8.3/10

So what do we see here?

"Rises" was the 2nd best rated of the three Batman films, and was generally very highly rated overall, with better results than Marvel's popularly beloved Avengers on all but one site. This is across several critical aggregate websites, and if you know how aggregates work, you know this isn't the result of any one critic's bias. It also did excellent box office and had good staying power. Comparatively, the ratings for the two Snyder films are not kind.

Not all aggregate sites are created equally. Avengers is a perfect example since it shows a huge differential in scores. So start with the Rotten Tomatoes score of 92%. That's good, but comparing to other sites we should be using the average critic score, which is 8/10 or 80%. Then the next big one is Metacritic, which has an average critic score of 69% which is quite a difference. Now you may not like this, but all those viewer scores can go to Krypton for all I care, because they don't mean a thing so long as anyone can post any review score as many times as they want without necessarily needing to see the movie. That's why you get situations like Dawn of Justice having a 97% viewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a hundred thousand scores... three weeks before the movie was released.

So it comes down to Rotten Tomatoes vs Metacritic. 80% vs 69%. And since these are just aggregate sites, just averaging out all the critic reviews shouldn't they be much closer, if not identical? Well, Rotten Tomatoes' 80% average comes from a total 315 critic reviews while Metacritic's 69% uses a grand total of... 43. This isn't a one off either: Batman V Superman's 49% average score on Rotten Tomatoes is based off of 332 critical reviews as opposed to Metacritic's 44% comes from only 51 critical reviews. And a couple of days ago I had someone ask me why I primarily speak about RT when talking about critical reception, and that right there shows it. I'm not saying Metacritic cherry picked the worse reviews or anything, but any statistician worth his salt will tell you that the larger your sample size, the smaller the margin of error.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Not all aggregate sites are created equally.

Correct, and I hesitated to even include Rotten Tomatoes for that exact reason. RT has always been slightly problematic due to its binary "fresh/rotten" scoring system...a film everyone found acceptably "meh" might land a 90%, but a film 75% of people thought was the best film of the year and 25% of people hated will get a mere 75%. This is why a "56%" on Rotten Tomatoes is dreadful...incidences of films THAT polarizing are virtually nil, so it represents a case where only 56% of critics even found it *passable*. That's bad.

Also worth mentioning is the recent purchase of Rotten Tomatoes by Fandango, a company that literally exists to sell tickets. It's a clear conflict of interest, and while it might not change the content of a critic's review, it could very easily change the way in which the site interprets said review as "fresh" or "rotten".

Metacritic, while polling from a smaller aggregate, vets and weights their reviews a bit more aggressively.

User reviews are naturally horseshit, but I included them because we still have a demographic on these forums that views professional critics with eternal suspicion and believes "the people" are the only true voice.

 

[mduncan50]

Not all aggregate sites are created equally.

Correct, and I hesitated to even include Rotten Tomatoes for that exact reason. RT has always been slightly problematic due to its binary "fresh/rotten" scoring system...a film everyone found acceptably "meh" might land a 90%, but a film 75% of people thought was the best film of the year and 25% of people hated will get a mere 75%. This is why a "56%" on Rotten Tomatoes is dreadful...incidences of films THAT polarizing are virtually nil, so it represents a case where only 56% of critics even found it *passable*. That's bad.

Also worth mentioning is the recent purchase of Rotten Tomatoes by Fandango, a company that literally exists to sell tickets. It's a clear conflict of interest, and while it might not change the content of a critic's review, it could very easily change the way in which the site interprets said review as "fresh" or "rotten".

Metacritic, while polling from a smaller aggregate, vets and weights their reviews a bit more aggressively.

User reviews are naturally horseshit, but I included them because we still have a demographic on these forums that views professional critics with eternal suspicion and believes "the people" are the only true voice.

As I said, the Tomatometer is not meant to give you the average score, the average score is meant to give you the average score. And I honestly can't see any way in which Metacritic's use of less critical opinions helps in any way shape or form. I can ask a few of my buddies what they think of a movie and use that as a review aggregate, but it would be far from accurate. As for who owns Rotten Tomatoes, I really don't see how that matters when all they are doing is averaging out everyone's scores. Considering WB still has a minority stake in it (they used to own it outright) you would think they would have tried to salvage BvS's critical drubbing if that was what they were going to use the site for. You could also say that since Metacritic is owned by CBS they have a vested interest in making the scores look artificially low (which happened in the two examples we looked at) so that people stay home and watch TV.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

...it's not too late to have Dawn of Justice work as Justice Lords part 0.

The question is: Should it be an alternate reality Justice League that comes and saves the day, and then they switch the movie focus to the 'proper' Justice League? Or should the movie Justice League be an uprising of B- and C-lister heroes from the same reality, who band together, overthrow the Justice Lords, and then we follow them?

I'm kind of leaning towards the later myself.

Part of what I loved about the Earth 2 New 52 comics (the one known as The Gathering in the trade...it was early New 52) was that it had an established Justice League who were killed and replaced by new heroes (well not new but new as in...they weren't around before...) It's an interesting idea and would probably work better than having a real Justice League come out of nowhere to replace Henry Cavill and the rest.

 

[mduncan50]

...it's not too late to have Dawn of Justice work as Justice Lords part 0.

The question is: Should it be an alternate reality Justice League that comes and saves the day, and then they switch the movie focus to the 'proper' Justice League? Or should the movie Justice League be an uprising of B- and C-lister heroes from the same reality, who band together, overthrow the Justice Lords, and then we follow them?

I'm kind of leaning towards the later myself.

Part of what I loved about the Earth 2 New 52 comics (the one known as The Gathering in the trade...it was early New 52) was that it had an established Justice League who were killed and replaced by new heroes (well not new but new as in...they weren't around before...) It's an interesting idea and would probably work better than having a real Justice League come out of nowhere to replace Henry Cavill and the rest.

Well considering their first step in creating the Justice League was to kill Superman, who knows, you may get your wish.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Part of what I loved about the Earth 2 New 52 comics (the one known as The Gathering in the trade...it was early New 52) was that it had an established Justice League who were killed and replaced by new heroes (well not new but new as in...they weren't around before...) It's an interesting idea and would probably work better than having a real Justice League come out of nowhere to replace Henry Cavill and the rest.

They kinda screwed the Earth 2 ongoing over when they fired the writer and shifted all the plot focus on a replacement Superman and replacement Batman. His replacement wasn't too bad, but the whole appeal of the title - a Justice League formed out of re-imagined versions of various B-and-C-listers - was made kind of moot.

Then they did this ridiculously terrible "Worlds End" title which had like...half a dozen writers on a single issue. Just a complete clusterfuck. They couldn't keep people's names straight, characters would just walk off-screen and disappear forever...And it ended with Earth 2 getting blown up and the whole thing folding into this equally nonsensical "Futures End" event. The whole title got shafted hardcore, is what I'm saying. Shameful.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I think WB is in trouble. Too many holes in the dyke, not enough fingers.

I can't help but wonder why they didn't have this system in place before they started making their movies.

 

[mduncan50]

I think WB is in trouble. Too many holes in the dyke, not enough fingers.

I can't help but wonder why they didn't have this system in place before they started making their movies.

I don't think the solution to WB's problems is hire more lesbians.

Damnit I hate myself for that, but it was just such low hanging fruit! *hangs head* I apologize.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I don't think the solution to WB's problems is hire more lesbians.

Damnit I hate myself for that, but it was just such low hanging fruit! *hangs head* I apologize.

It earned a snicker. But I would watch a Batwoman movie.

 

[Amir Kondori]

The saddest thing about that movie is that it could have been two good movies instead of one bad one.