PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Apparently, after finishing the movie, the test audiences found it so bad that they calculated, that the release wouldn't even cover the cost of distribution.
From my limited perspective, they're making a large number of mistakes that are mostly caused by excessive impatience and greed.The only DC movies not screwed up before release seem to be the Lego Batman movie. Why is that?
Yeah this post puts it quite well. DCEU has never had the same amount of effort behind it as MCU has and as a result has tried to get a cheap win by imitating MCU with much poorer result.From my limited perspective, they're making a large number of mistakes that are mostly caused by excessive impatience and greed.
Their "original sin" from which all others spring is trying to copy the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Copying in movies and jumping on the bandwagon is generally the act of an inferior trying to ride a superior's coattails, not the act of a peer. "The copy is always inferior to the original" is a truism for a reason. Moreover, the MCU was lightning in a bottle, nobody has ever pulled off such a feat before and nobody has managed to duplicate it. I'm of the opinion that we won't see the like again for decades.
As a second sin caused by greed and impatience, they didn't even copy the MCU right. The MCU got a very clever start by making good standalone movies that didn't rely on interactions with each other, and only after several such successes did they release Avengers and tie things together. The DC copy tried to jump right into the crossovers, with Man of Steel and then straight to Batman vs. Superman with no Batman or Wonder Woman films released before that to establish the characters, and no standalone films to build the hype and interest the way the MCU did first. By contrast, the MCU had two Ironman movies, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America establishing each of those characters well before Avengers came along, and all those movies could stand on their own.
Possibly due to the rush job, they didn't leverage their IP very well and copied Marvel themes that don't work for DC. Marvel and DC don't really trade in the same type of stories. Marvel is much more prone to anti-heroes and shades of grey, with many characters changing sides regularly. Most Marvel heroes are deeply flawed and most of their villains actually have a point. DC is far more black and white with their heroes being more noblebright and their villains being more grimdark. To be sure that doesn't mean there are no exceptions at all, Captain America and Spider-Man are quite noblebright and a few Batman villains verge on antivillain status. However, overall, it's hard to find a Marvel Villain as utterly without redeeming qualities as the Joker, or a Marvel Hero as incorruptible as The Flash.
DC abandoned this when they made the DC Movies, they tried to make them all shades of grey and turn the heroes into anti-heroes more akin to Marvel characters, warts and all. But Superman doesn't have warts. There was a lot of controversy about Superman killing Zod, or Batman using a red-hot bat symbol to brand his targets with a scar that would mark them for elimination by other criminals. These aren't DC-type stories about heroes doing the wrong thing for the right reason, these are Marvel-type stories. Superman and Batman don't kill, don't maim, don't permanently scar and have others do the dirty work for them.
Due to the aforementioned mimicry and greed issues, they released too many characters too quickly. Batgirl? We haven't even had a Batman movie yet (aside from crossovers) to establish him for her to imitate! Note too that traditionally, Batgirl is the harbinger of the Apocalypse for the Batman franchise. Typically once she's added, the character bloat has gotten too large and the show suffers for it. The Batman avoided this by introducing her as the first sidekick before Robin appeared but it still eventually suffered from the Bat family getting too large. We had Justice League before there was an Aquaman, Shazam, or Flash movie to establish those characters, Suicide Squad with tons of villains a lot of people had no idea about, Birds of Prey without a Huntress or Black Canary movie for their main characters, etc. Too much rush, too slow.
Finally, they've had much more push to be woke, in part because the MCU came out earlier before this movement got traction. Quite ironically, the DCU should have had a significant edge here, DC has many more memorable female and/or minority heroes and villains than Marvel and including Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman in their first few movies was enough to put them well ahead of Marvel, but it's never enough. They got dragged down trying to push ultra-intersectional Batwoman, using wokeness as a substitute for minor things like plot, and had to release Batgirl before Batman to get those extra woke points. But woke points don't make bad movies good and Twitter posts don't put dollars in the box office.
DC and Marvel have a tendency to swap who's ahead over the years. Back when the DCAU was a thing it was vastly superior, and Marvel's attempts to copy it in their own cartoons was laughable. Today Marvel's well ahead and DC's scrambling to build their own Cinematic Universe is also laughable. Ultimately, the copy can never beat the original but, unfortunately, we don't always have original thinkers in charge and sometimes the bosses just try to plagiarize someone better out of greed and impatience for more money right now.
Not really a thing anymore, now it's direct to streaming as people simply don't buy much DVDs anymore. But then COVID came and shut down theatres so even A-list movies started going direct to streaming so it's pretty muddled.1 - when I was young(ish) bad movies were called "straight to video". This is no longer used? Or was the OP movie that bad?
From my limited perspective, they're making a large number of mistakes that are mostly caused by excessive impatience and greed.
Their "original sin" from which all others spring is trying to copy the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Copying in movies and jumping on the bandwagon is generally the act of an inferior trying to ride a superior's coattails, not the act of a peer. "The copy is always inferior to the original" is a truism for a reason. Moreover, the MCU was lightning in a bottle, nobody has ever pulled off such a feat before and nobody has managed to duplicate it. I'm of the opinion that we won't see the like again for decades.
Interesting to see Hollywood realizes that for once, it does not need to adhere to the sunk cost fallacy and dump hundreds of millions into marketing a movie that is going to flop. They can cut the knot beforehand. Let's see if Hollywood realizes that they can prevent these disasters at the planning the stage.
Interesting to see Hollywood realizes that for once, it does not need to adhere to the sunk cost fallacy and dump hundreds of millions into marketing a movie that is going to flop. They can cut the knot beforehand. Let's see if Hollywood realizes that they can prevent these disasters at the planning the stage.
Honestly, the cape genre has been a dead for over 30 years. No one reads the comics anymore. The actual comic companies of Marvel and DC are just kept alive for Hollywood to license the brand recognition of the IPs. They're just rehashing the same tired old story over and over and over again. The MCU wasn't popular because people like superheroes; it was popular because it was the summer action flicks that people were presented with the choice of watching.
Exceedingly difficult. Hollywood is thoroughly entrenched in the political machine to protect itself. Further everything in entertainment is unionized and anybody not part of the union will get nowhere. That's one reason you tend to run into such weird union jokes in movies and TV shows, every single job in entertainment is thoroughly unionized and they're all used to seeing unionized everything.mabye so but this is a chance for some one to create new insitutions outside of hollywood.
Exceedingly difficult. Hollywood is thoroughly entrenched in the political machine to protect itself. Further everything in entertainment is unionized and anybody not part of the union will get nowhere. That's one reason you tend to run into such weird union jokes in movies and TV shows, every single job in entertainment is thoroughly unionized and they're all used to seeing unionized everything.
The unions have so much power that George Lucas couldn't get help on Star Wars films due to not being a member of the Directors Guild. Screenwriters and directors felt that having their name attached to Star Wars would be a career killer if their union blacklisted them for it. If even he couldn't hire people due to guild interference? Yeah, without Union Busting from the government, absolutely nobody will be able to make new institutions outside of Hollywood.
YouTube is already visibly moving to crack down on such content and prevent it from working against that monopoly. Their algorithms are selecting against those streams and demonetizing them. Any indie movement that actually wants to beat Hollywood is going to have to beat Big Tech, Big Government, and scads of other Big Money interests first, who want to protect their propaganda department.you have people making their own flims on tiny budgets and then streaming them out.
Green screen technology has gotten so cheap randos can use it. Technology is going to kill that monopoly.
Apparently, after finishing the movie, the test audiences found it so bad that they calculated, that the release wouldn't even cover the cost of distribution.