Dear DC,

[McMarbles]

Dear DC,
Can we please get an animated movie, or indeed any movie, that doesn't involve Batman. I know he's really popular right now an therefor profitable, but we've had more than enough Batman movies. Give your other heroes a chance. Don't get me wrong, I like Batman, it's just I've gotten kinda burned out on Batman. Maybe we could get something with the Teen Titans like was teased at the end of Justice League vs. The Teen Titans.

Sincerely,
CP

Like "The Judas Contract" movie, which just came out?

 

[Natemans]

I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.

I think superhero films need to run the balance between "so dedicated to realism that the premise becomes absurd" and "so apathetic to realism that the film becomes absurd."

I mean, I saw Lego Batman a few days ago - we got it late in Australia - and I was actually unimpressed. It started out as a pretty funny riff on Batman, but by the end it was so astonishingly saccharine that I was abruptly reminded that I was watching a kid's movie. I mean, it ends with Batman in a sparkly white outfit singing about friendship. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddO2oMX61E] I'd just stopped caring. Running jokes off of Batman and Joker's homoerotic vendetta is funny, but it ended with him literally making up with the Joker and deciding that they're buddies. That's weird. It didn't feel like the Joker at that point.

But even the realism of the otherwise-admirable Nolan films also fell apart eventually. I mean, in the first two films, the plot was grounded enough that I could actually believe that a ninja with a bunch of military gadgets was doing the things Batman was doing. But by Rises, Bane's plot was so cartoonishly large-scale, over such a long period of time, with such ridiculously high stakes that I could not longer credibly believe what I was seeing. There were nukes and a six-month re-enactment of the French Revolution and all of the city's police were trapped in a hole. Bane's soldiers were shooting at the ground instead of at the marching citizens because otherwise they'd massacre them. The final confrontation was in broad daylight. It didn't work. The realism was straining to accomodate the absurdity of the narrative, and failing.

And when you get down to it, I don't think the Snyder films are "realistic" at all in. Not in the same way the Nolan films were. They're no more probable or logical than Marvel films are - in fact, the first Iron Man film is way more realistic than half of what Batman does in BvS - they're just more serious. They're playing the superheroics for drama and pathos, and people misread that as "realistic" when it's actually just as fantastical as everything Marvel's doing; it's just on the other end of the tragegy/comedy spectrum. It actually kinda worked in BvS - the title fight ended with some actual pathos, and the film was trying to be about the competing philosophies of the two main characters and the villain - but the film was hampered by shitty editing and pacing and a big stupid punch-up fight with a giant monster.

Like, the film starts with "Is a person with godlike power obliged to prevent evil, and are they culpable for allowing evil to persist? How do we hold God to account for his mistakes? Is there anyone morally capable of wielding that power, or is human nature so intrinsically flawed that they will inevitably break their most sacred principles?" And then it ends with "Wow, we sure killed the hell out of that giant monster!" Kinda...dropped the ball there, Snyder. Sorry.

I am not asking for Realism on the level of Nolan Batman like turning Bane from Chemical induced Super Warrior to whatever he's supposed to be in Dark Knight Rises.

I want Giant Monsters and Superpowers too, but I want the characters to treat their Superheroing Seriously.

Hence why the DC Rebirth and the MCU have been doing good so far.

Like for me how I want Superman to be done is this. Basically I want Superman to be turned into Spiderman in THIS sense.

I want the theme of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" heavily themed into Superman. Superman has ultimate power practically but he needs to bear the Burden of Heroic Responsibility more heavily than how they do it to Spiderman.

They tried to do that with BvS and it sucked.

Honestly as a Superman fan, this was kinda insulting.

 

[Natemans]

I think my favourite thing about the scene in Africa is that the warlords men were clearly shot by bullets, bullets it later turned out were being solely developed by Lex Corp according to the goddamn CIA, and yet Superman still gets the blame for it.

Oh, in the extended edition it shows KGBeast (Luthor's head henchperson, he's never called that in the film) burning all the corpses with a flamethrower to make it look like they were killed with heat vision.

The super-distinctive Lexcorp bullet thing makes no sense, though. It was like they needed a clue for Lois Lane to follow to tie it to Lexcorp, but in the end Lex just kidnaps her right as she's figuring it out, so it was kind of pointless anyway. And it makes Lex look dumb, because he uses distinctive Lexcorp bullets to frame Superman.

It would've made more sense if Lex had used some plot device bullet that's designed to disintegrate or explode when it hits a target - so that it's slightly more plausible to accuse Superman of killing the people in Africa, since there'd be no bullets in the bodies - and she picks up an un-disintegrated round that got lodged in her notebook and later ties it to Lexcorp, who designed this weird leaves-no-evidence bullet.

One other idea I had was that the bullets were made out of Kryptonian metals and designed to hurt or kill Superman, and Luthor used them because he knew that then the US military wouldn't investigate too closely because they didn't want to publicly admit that they hired Lexcorp to design anti-Superman bullets. But again, none of this is in the film, and it suffers for it.

Wait, wouldn't the bullets still be around despite burning the bodies? How much heat does the bullets require in order to melt them? Also if some of the clothing still existed or survived from incineration, wouldn't they notice the bullet holes?

Honestly the plot holes in this movie are so irritating to the point of the film not working at all in a story perspective. Seriously I can't go 5 minutes without asking a question, notice something bad or even find something that doesn't make sense or self-contradictory.

 

[Natemans]

I think what he was aiming at was a Batman who was so far gone off the deep end that he'd rationalised "thou shalt not kill" as "thou shalt not murder," and figured that if he kicks a mook into a hallway with a grenade that the mook had primed, the mook is really killing himself.

Which is...well, it'd be doable, but not in the way Snyder did it. I mean, at one point Batman just drives the Batmobile directly through another car full of mooks. It just disintegrates into an explosion. Those guys didn't survive. That's murder.

One other thing Snyder does well is montages that effectively convey plot beats while not using much or any dialogue. Like the opening to Sucker Punch [https://youtu.be/14GZruL1hrE?t=46], or the opening to Dawn of the Dead [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2YAtFeVOM], or the opening to Watchmen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h24D87SqaLQ]. Each of those basically tells you an entire plot in a few minutes without using many words at all, just emphasis on key images.

What I think BvS needed to do was start with the Metropolis flashback, and then cut to the titles and have one of those montages that shows us what Superman and Batman have been up to in the two years since then. Gradually show Superman saving people and earning the world's trust and adoration, and parallel it with Batman gradually becoming more and more brutal, more and more bitter, stapling guns to the Batmobile, branding and maiming criminals, and obsessing all the while over how the world is putting its faith and trust in a Superman who he thinks is literally too good to be true. Then end it with the scene in Africa with Lois Lane, having basically shown us both how Superman ascended to becoming the hero of the world and how Batman descended into becoming an antagonist. Because he is an antagonist; for most of the film, he's a well-intentioned villain.

Yeah, having a montage like the one at the beginning of Watchmen would have been pretty cool.
Actually, I wonder if maybe an issue with Snyders work is he likes to leave things unsaid? I remember having a discussion with my brother about Luthor in the film. I said he often came across as an inconsistent babbling idiot (see his speech at the part) while my brother thought this was meant to show that Lex was too busy thinking about his schemes, and not on the party, hence seeming distracted.

A load of boring stuff

That made me scoff as well. There's no way that random warlord pulled through that with his skeleton intact. He's either dead, or he's a bag of flesh full of broken bones.

Superman could've done something similarly intimidating, like super-speed up to the guy and just put his hand over the muzzle of the gun. Instead he just tackles him through like, three brick walls. That guy's not getting up.

Shit, something about BvS just gets me typing out huge mammoth posts analysing its shortcomings and strengths.

...I should go watch BvS again.

I think my favourite thing about the scene in Africa is that the warlords men were clearly shot by bullets, bullets it later turned out were being solely developed by Lex Corp according to the goddamn CIA, and yet Superman still gets the blame for it.
Or, you know, that they decided to just kill off Jimmy Olsen just cause.

Killing Jimmy Olsen just for fun is not only disgusting, but its downright insulting and a spit in the face to the fans.

Hell, I argued with someone who thought it was a good idea since he found Jimmy useless, not a fan favorite and it was a nice homage to Red Son. Its not a nice homage; its sick and insulting to a fanbase by saying to have "fun" with a fan favorite character is to shoot him in the head to show gratitude.

 

[Natemans]

Allow me to contend that Legends of Tomorrow did Golden/Silver Age heroes like the JSA fairly well, even on a TV budget. Its not always looks, its presentation, characterization... Granted it wasn't like a constant thing, but the few episodes they've been in actually were good. CW/DC though has been more on-point with using a lot of the sillier heroes/villains of the pre-Dark Knight age fairly well. Even King Shark and Gorilla Grodd were good despite being ridiculous concepts.

That's pretty much why I like the Arrowverse more than the DCEU: it's allowed to have fun and embrace the sillier aspects of comic books. Villains are goofy and cheesy. Characters ham it up all the time. Those shows are aware of how ridiculous comics sometimes get ... and don't care.

"Yes, go Barry! Run at that 2 ton sharkman!"

I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.

And people think "treating things seriously" is a bad and not valid thing to have anymore. I longer care about the charcaters if they just act like goofballs aimed for 10 year olds anymore. I want Superheroes to mature and stay mature.

I want DC to take notes from Vertigo comics than thier Silver Age past.

Even though there are comics in the Silver Age that are goofy and took themselves seriously. The same with Marvel. Dude, even the Young Justice comics had a bit of goofiness and comedy in it, but still took it seriously with brilliant characters and storytelling.

 

[Natemans]

Ok... Dear DC, just an idea.

Justice League is poisoned. You've proven so far that its impossible to build a shared movie universe on the awful foundation that was Man of Steel. Even if the movies make money, they will still be in inferior product to your competitors and an inferior money maker than what it could be.

So, reboot already. And... don't do or even work toward Justice League. Work toward Justice Society. Make the new rebooted universe the GOLDEN age DC heroes. Modern comic book audiences are way more familiar with the Silver Age, this gives you some freedom to do different and interesting things with the characters. Like say for instance... Batman. You could make his inclusion into the JSA more about him being the world's greatest detective, and less about him being the worlds broodiest rich ninja.

Another plus, ALL NEW HEROES. Or at least mostly new heroes. Batman and Superman wouldn't even need to be in the mix at all, they weren't at the beginning of JSA. Meaning you could make the first ever Dr. Fate movie, Jay Garrich Flash movie, Alan Scott Green Lantern movie, Sandman, Hourman, the Specter... really interesting things could be made from these characters. And if a movie doesn't do well, you can back shelf it and make them just an also ran in the team ups. And there are plenty of Golden age heroes, not associated with the JSA that could be. You have the freedom to make them whatever they need to be to make the stories more interesting and better.

I'm all for this idea. I love the JSA.


And THEN you can bring in the heavies of Batman or Superman. Later. When they aren't associated with the failure they are right now.

Wow all of that just sounds lame. I ma sorry dude but the Golden Age and Silver Age are just dated.

I don't want to see the DC heroes looking like this in live action:

Spoiler: Its mortal kombat vs DC universe just look at the DC heroes

I am sorry dude but what you are asking for is more appropriate for Animation than Live Action. Because it would look so gaudy live action.

I disagree heavily. I think it can work in films. Hell, the CW DC shows do this and work pretty well imo. The Flash is the best example of taking a goofy comic, embraces it and also does well with a compelling dark story and characters.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.

I think superhero films need to run the balance between "so dedicated to realism that the premise becomes absurd" and "so apathetic to realism that the film becomes absurd."

I mean, I saw Lego Batman a few days ago - we got it late in Australia - and I was actually unimpressed. It started out as a pretty funny riff on Batman, but by the end it was so astonishingly saccharine that I was abruptly reminded that I was watching a kid's movie. I mean, it ends with Batman in a sparkly white outfit singing about friendship. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddO2oMX61E] I'd just stopped caring. Running jokes off of Batman and Joker's homoerotic vendetta is funny, but it ended with him literally making up with the Joker and deciding that they're buddies. That's weird. It didn't feel like the Joker at that point.

But even the realism of the otherwise-admirable Nolan films also fell apart eventually. I mean, in the first two films, the plot was grounded enough that I could actually believe that a ninja with a bunch of military gadgets was doing the things Batman was doing. But by Rises, Bane's plot was so cartoonishly large-scale, over such a long period of time, with such ridiculously high stakes that I could not longer credibly believe what I was seeing. There were nukes and a six-month re-enactment of the French Revolution and all of the city's police were trapped in a hole. Bane's soldiers were shooting at the ground instead of at the marching citizens because otherwise they'd massacre them. The final confrontation was in broad daylight. It didn't work. The realism was straining to accomodate the absurdity of the narrative, and failing.

And when you get down to it, I don't think the Snyder films are "realistic" at all in. Not in the same way the Nolan films were. They're no more probable or logical than Marvel films are - in fact, the first Iron Man film is way more realistic than half of what Batman does in BvS - they're just more serious. They're playing the superheroics for drama and pathos, and people misread that as "realistic" when it's actually just as fantastical as everything Marvel's doing; it's just on the other end of the tragegy/comedy spectrum. It actually kinda worked in BvS - the title fight ended with some actual pathos, and the film was trying to be about the competing philosophies of the two main characters and the villain - but the film was hampered by shitty editing and pacing and a big stupid punch-up fight with a giant monster.

Like, the film starts with "Is a person with godlike power obliged to prevent evil, and are they culpable for allowing evil to persist? How do we hold God to account for his mistakes? Is there anyone morally capable of wielding that power, or is human nature so intrinsically flawed that they will inevitably break their most sacred principles?" And then it ends with "Wow, we sure killed the hell out of that giant monster!" Kinda...dropped the ball there, Snyder. Sorry.

I am not asking for Realism on the level of Nolan Batman like turning Bane from Chemical induced Super Warrior to whatever he's supposed to be in Dark Knight Rises.

I want Giant Monsters and Superpowers too, but I want the characters to treat their Superheroing Seriously.

Hence why the DC Rebirth and the MCU have been doing good so far.

Like for me how I want Superman to be done is this. Basically I want Superman to be turned into Spiderman in THIS sense.

I want the theme of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" heavily themed into Superman. Superman has ultimate power practically but he needs to bear the Burden of Heroic Responsibility more heavily than how they do it to Spiderman.

They tried to do that with BvS and it sucked.

Honestly as a Superman fan, this was kinda insulting.

Nothing will be as insulting to Superman for me than Superman At Earth's End. And I don't care if it was an Elseworld Story or that there is humor in its stupidity.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.

And people think "treating things seriously" is a bad and not valid thing to have anymore. I longer care about the charcaters if they just act like goofballs aimed for 10 year olds anymore. I want Superheroes to mature and stay mature.

Each to his own I suppose, but this has always struck me as kind of a self-defeating argument. If you're reading comics with superheroes in then the silliest aspect is the entirety of the core concept. Brightly dressed aliens with bizarre allergies to rocks from their own planet, billionaires who deal with trauma via chiroptera-themed fetish gear, cops in space with magic rings, various deities and demi-gods swanning about, about a billion or so dudes who get physics defying abilities from radiation rather than cancer and just so very many robots with feelings. Superhero comics are kind of silly from the get go.
Sure you can still use them to touch on mature themes (like the X-Men being stand-ins for any minority ever), but to try and deny all forms of silliness from a set of characters fond of wearing spandex tights is such cognitive dissonance that you should be getting a headache

 

[Natemans]

I hate the sillier aspect of comic books because then I cannot take these heroes seriously anymore.

I think superhero films need to run the balance between "so dedicated to realism that the premise becomes absurd" and "so apathetic to realism that the film becomes absurd."

I mean, I saw Lego Batman a few days ago - we got it late in Australia - and I was actually unimpressed. It started out as a pretty funny riff on Batman, but by the end it was so astonishingly saccharine that I was abruptly reminded that I was watching a kid's movie. I mean, it ends with Batman in a sparkly white outfit singing about friendship. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddO2oMX61E] I'd just stopped caring. Running jokes off of Batman and Joker's homoerotic vendetta is funny, but it ended with him literally making up with the Joker and deciding that they're buddies. That's weird. It didn't feel like the Joker at that point.

But even the realism of the otherwise-admirable Nolan films also fell apart eventually. I mean, in the first two films, the plot was grounded enough that I could actually believe that a ninja with a bunch of military gadgets was doing the things Batman was doing. But by Rises, Bane's plot was so cartoonishly large-scale, over such a long period of time, with such ridiculously high stakes that I could not longer credibly believe what I was seeing. There were nukes and a six-month re-enactment of the French Revolution and all of the city's police were trapped in a hole. Bane's soldiers were shooting at the ground instead of at the marching citizens because otherwise they'd massacre them. The final confrontation was in broad daylight. It didn't work. The realism was straining to accomodate the absurdity of the narrative, and failing.

And when you get down to it, I don't think the Snyder films are "realistic" at all in. Not in the same way the Nolan films were. They're no more probable or logical than Marvel films are - in fact, the first Iron Man film is way more realistic than half of what Batman does in BvS - they're just more serious. They're playing the superheroics for drama and pathos, and people misread that as "realistic" when it's actually just as fantastical as everything Marvel's doing; it's just on the other end of the tragegy/comedy spectrum. It actually kinda worked in BvS - the title fight ended with some actual pathos, and the film was trying to be about the competing philosophies of the two main characters and the villain - but the film was hampered by shitty editing and pacing and a big stupid punch-up fight with a giant monster.

Like, the film starts with "Is a person with godlike power obliged to prevent evil, and are they culpable for allowing evil to persist? How do we hold God to account for his mistakes? Is there anyone morally capable of wielding that power, or is human nature so intrinsically flawed that they will inevitably break their most sacred principles?" And then it ends with "Wow, we sure killed the hell out of that giant monster!" Kinda...dropped the ball there, Snyder. Sorry.

I am not asking for Realism on the level of Nolan Batman like turning Bane from Chemical induced Super Warrior to whatever he's supposed to be in Dark Knight Rises.

I want Giant Monsters and Superpowers too, but I want the characters to treat their Superheroing Seriously.

Hence why the DC Rebirth and the MCU have been doing good so far.

Like for me how I want Superman to be done is this. Basically I want Superman to be turned into Spiderman in THIS sense.

I want the theme of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" heavily themed into Superman. Superman has ultimate power practically but he needs to bear the Burden of Heroic Responsibility more heavily than how they do it to Spiderman.

They tried to do that with BvS and it sucked.

Honestly as a Superman fan, this was kinda insulting.

Nothing will be as insulting to Superman for me than Superman At Earth's End. And I don't care if it was an Elseworld Story or that there is humor in its stupidity.

I say the same thing with BvS. I don't care if it was an Elseworld story or its dark. It was stupid and awful. As godawful as At Earth's End, I can forget it. BvS I can't forget. I'm reminded of that insulting piece of crap every time I see the heroes.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Dear DC,
Can we please get an animated movie, or indeed any movie, that doesn't involve Batman. I know he's really popular right now an therefor profitable, but we've had more than enough Batman movies. Give your other heroes a chance. Don't get me wrong, I like Batman, it's just I've gotten kinda burned out on Batman. Maybe we could get something with the Teen Titans like was teased at the end of Justice League vs. The Teen Titans.

Sincerely,
CP

Like "The Judas Contract" movie, which just came out?

I think someone else mentioned that that had come out. I'll have to check that out.

 

[twistedmic]

I think my favourite thing about the scene in Africa is that the warlords men were clearly shot by bullets, bullets it later turned out were being solely developed by Lex Corp according to the goddamn CIA, and yet Superman still gets the blame for it.
Or, you know, that they decided to just kill off Jimmy Olsen just cause.

I got the impression that they weren't so much blaming Superman for the deaths at the compound but were holding him responsible for the massacres that followed after Superman destabilized the region. Remember, the lady that testified against Superman (paid off by Luthor) said that the military/government came in and showed 'no mercy'.

 

[TrulyBritish]

I think my favourite thing about the scene in Africa is that the warlords men were clearly shot by bullets, bullets it later turned out were being solely developed by Lex Corp according to the goddamn CIA, and yet Superman still gets the blame for it.
Or, you know, that they decided to just kill off Jimmy Olsen just cause.

I got the impression that they weren't so much blaming Superman for the deaths at the compound but were holding him responsible for the massacres that followed after Superman destabilized the region. Remember, the lady that testified against Superman (paid off by Luthor) said that the military/government came in and showed 'no mercy'.

It's been a while since I've seen the movie so maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't they have to prove that he killed those people to prove he destabilised the region? Or did he do something else?

 

[TrulyBritish]

Oh, in the extended edition it shows KGBeast (Luthor's head henchperson, he's never called that in the film) burning all the corpses with a flamethrower to make it look like they were killed with heat vision.

The super-distinctive Lexcorp bullet thing makes no sense, though. It was like they needed a clue for Lois Lane to follow to tie it to Lexcorp, but in the end Lex just kidnaps her right as she's figuring it out, so it was kind of pointless anyway. And it makes Lex look dumb, because he uses distinctive Lexcorp bullets to frame Superman.

It would've made more sense if Lex had used some plot device bullet that's designed to disintegrate or explode when it hits a target - so that it's slightly more plausible to accuse Superman of killing the people in Africa, since there'd be no bullets in the bodies - and she picks up an un-disintegrated round that got lodged in her notebook and later ties it to Lexcorp, who designed this weird leaves-no-evidence bullet.

One other idea I had was that the bullets were made out of Kryptonian metals and designed to hurt or kill Superman, and Luthor used them because he knew that then the US military wouldn't investigate too closely because they didn't want to publicly admit that they hired Lexcorp to design anti-Superman bullets. But again, none of this is in the film, and it suffers for it.

Or maybe they could have Luthor make some early form of his battle suit. Have it be strong enough to mimic Superman's strength with some form of heat ray. It'd make sense for people to blame it on supes and then that could be the showdown instead of Luthor creating Doomsday he can't control and isn't shown to have a plan to deal with.

 

[Winnosh]

Oh, in the extended edition it shows KGBeast (Luthor's head henchperson, he's never called that in the film) burning all the corpses with a flamethrower to make it look like they were killed with heat vision.

The super-distinctive Lexcorp bullet thing makes no sense, though. It was like they needed a clue for Lois Lane to follow to tie it to Lexcorp, but in the end Lex just kidnaps her right as she's figuring it out, so it was kind of pointless anyway. And it makes Lex look dumb, because he uses distinctive Lexcorp bullets to frame Superman.

It would've made more sense if Lex had used some plot device bullet that's designed to disintegrate or explode when it hits a target - so that it's slightly more plausible to accuse Superman of killing the people in Africa, since there'd be no bullets in the bodies - and she picks up an un-disintegrated round that got lodged in her notebook and later ties it to Lexcorp, who designed this weird leaves-no-evidence bullet.

One other idea I had was that the bullets were made out of Kryptonian metals and designed to hurt or kill Superman, and Luthor used them because he knew that then the US military wouldn't investigate too closely because they didn't want to publicly admit that they hired Lexcorp to design anti-Superman bullets. But again, none of this is in the film, and it suffers for it.

Or maybe they could have Luthor make some early form of his battle suit. Have it be strong enough to mimic Superman's strength with some form of heat ray. It'd make sense for people to blame it on supes and then that could be the showdown instead of Luthor creating Doomsday he can't control and isn't shown to have a plan to deal with.

Could have had Lex hack the Bat computers and steal Bruce's battlesuit plans, enhancing them with his superior technology and merging it with the Kryptonian tech he stole from the ship. Having that as the reason he wanted the ship and not because he needed Zod's body. Would explain him knowing Bruce's secret identity too, since I think people keep forgetting that he knows who Batman is.