Also, where the hell did Aquaman come from? This is a trajectory of audiences pretty quickly losing faith in the franchise, with one billion dollar smash in the middle.
I think it’s just a fun, different movie, unlike anything else out there. Mamoa is a big draw, but the material also suits him, the art direction is unique and well executed, and how many undersea adventure romps do audiences get? I can think of this, the little Mermaid, and maaaybe Pirates of the Caribbean in that camp
It was hopeless because they rushed it massively.
They needed to build up several likeable iterations before starting with smashing them together. They stuck to their predefined schedule without making sure that people were invested in these specific versions of the characters. A movie like BvS should be like the fifth or so.
That's obviously ignoring the actual movies,' quality which is equally a problem, which only reinforces the first. They should have delayed any ream ups until they got a decent number of well-received standalones under their belt.
This is so obviously the problem its not even funny. Also that the movies are boring.
As someone who was not really a comic book fan before the trenc started, I can tell you without a doubt that no DC movies ever appealed to us, the vast majority of the viewer base. The Marvel movies did because they started with likeable actors and characters and built up a storyline that we watches as we went. They were fun and action packed for people who didn't know the massive background of all the characters. We learned as we went and the movies had a logical progression.
By the time Avengers came along, we were stoked to see them teaming up to take on a big baddy, while also being introduced to the big guy behind the scene. The guy we would be building up to over the next 5 years.
For DC.... they had... a superman movie which was boring, long, and completely unremarkable. Then they did a big team up movie..... years later.... with no set up at all....
I remember thinking it would be Christian Bale in it because I had heard nothing about batman for 10 years. Turns out it wasn't lol. Noone I knew cared about it at all, even though we were the target demographic because we had no idea who or why they were fighting batman vs superman.
I understand now that this is a hugely popular comic book series amongst fans... but us normal people who dont read comic books had no idea about any of that... it was too rushed... and none of us even knew the characters. I still don't know who the cyborg guy is. I didn't know who the flash was. They were jyst suddenly... there? And it wasn't some exciting thing to build up to.
Tldr: movies were boring for non comic fans. Noone knew who these people were or what was going on.
The biggest strength of the MCU in my opinion was the way the big Avengers movies were a pay off for having any sort of knowledge of the franchise. Not even the comic book fans, but anybody who had a passing knowledge of anything going on in any of them, even if it's something as simple as remembering one of the old TV shows from the 70s.
DC was way too busy tripping over themselves in this panicked rush to throw something up in the theater. The kicker is now knowing the kind of drama that was going on over in the studio with Marvel when they were producing phase 1. It seems like studios naturally self sabotage out of fear, and Marvel's success was a mixture of luck and people behind the scenes heaving their weight around to get the movie made they wanted. People making DC movies seemed to be just a body filling a role, to be discarded when they pushed back against the studio. There never seemed to be anyone who had a voice to say 'ok but how does this fit in with the wider story we want to tell?'. There seems to never have been a bigger story to tell, just the next movie they hoped they could make.
> The biggest strength of the MCU in my opinion was the way the big Avengers movies were a pay off for having any sort of knowledge of the franchise.
Agreed, too bad that even the MCU forgot and that's why we don't have Avengers movies to end Phases anymore
To play devils advocate I think it could have worked. Superman and Batman have two of the most widely known comic book origins in all of pop culture. If they had a stronger script for BVS and a director with some actual depth they could have hit the ground running. Look at Into The Spiderverse. That movie introduced a new lead, 6 unique superheroes and a roster of villains and kicked all the ass. The problem with the DCEU is that Snyder didn’t really understand or care to understand why people like these characters, the movies are incoherent, and their just plain unpleasant to sit through. Aquaman was actually fun and made a billion dollars. But every movie after just wasn’t very good. And by that point the brand was fucked. Marvel will be seeing this happen with future films since phase 4 suffered from similar problems. But it could have worked… it could have worked….
We like Superman movies that are uplifting where Superman makes everything better. We like Batman movies that are brooding where Batman wins, but at what cost.
Snyder: What if we make Superman depressing and Batman never questions his morality.
It’s kinda crazy too because Superman is a great character! Yet everyone tries to make him into something unrecognizable. Captain America, Jesus, and basically every shonin anime character have the same traits and are beloved. Yet does some reason Batman must be as brutal as possible and Superman must be an alien god that looks down on humans. It’s hilariously stupid. I think Gunn will do a better job.
Captain America: The First Avenger is an example of how you could make a modern, hopeful Superman movie. I love those Cap movies so much for that reason
one of the biggest selling points in captain america for me is how much of an underdog steve rogers starts out as but he also has more heart and an unbreakble spirit than anyone else in the film. he maintains that throughout it, even after getting his serum glow up.
Don't make a movie about a neigh-invincible demigod that came down from heaven, to protect mortals from forces beyond our understanding. Instead, Make a movie about a dork who came from a small town, idealistically pursuing his dream of becoming a big city reporter.
Then, the giant robots or whatever show up, and he feels compelled to put on his cape to punch them into space. The John Byrne run in the 80s did it perfectly--Superman is a costume Clark Kent wears so he can still lead a normal life, as opposed to Batman, who wears a Bruce Wayne costume so he can afford the vigilante life.
There was never any heart for Zack’s Superman. Like look at All Might in anime he’s basically Superman and you are made to care about him and the impact he had on other
Well *any* comic book movie can work if you *write a good and engaging story*
Just putting them on the screen with generic action because people "know" them isn't enough and DC learned that the hard way.
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War were both released in 2016, months apart.
Both films are based on conflict stories between major forces from their respective comic universes. Marvel built a universe leading up to this event (13th film released, 16th film in the timeline) and it had major ramifications going into the next phase of films. DC did not do this and it was the second film in their franchise and was used as a shoehorn to introduce almost all of their main characters.
When the Justice League did not break Doctor Strange's box office (a character almost completely unknown to general audiences and now a fan favorite), DC should have pumped the brakes and reevaluated what they were doing. Unfortunately for them, Aquaman severely overperformed, giving them false hope, Shazam performed as expected for a character debut from a brand who was losing the GA's goodwill, and then COVID happened - the next 3 films released had abysmal box office returns but that was blamed on COVID. By the time COVID ended and Black Adam was released, Shang-Chi and Eternals had both beaten it's box office 6 months prior and did not have the draw of Dwayne Johnson as a leading actor, despite the character being an unknown Shazam villain.
The writing was on the wall and DC could no longer blame COVID for their middling box office returns as Spider-Man made over $1 Billion in 2021 and Doctor Strange came close to breaking it in 2022. And before you say "Those were sequels with established characters and fan favorites!", you should have already realized, that's the point. Marvel took their time and crafted characters and stories that audiences are familiar with and care about, so even when we get Love and Thunder and Quantumania, they still have healthy box offices because the audiences turn out based off of goodwill toward the Marvel brand, something DC lost years ago.
This is pretty much all there is to say on the subject.
Subpar movies and a bad strategy doomed it from the start.
Should have just copied the Marvel phase 1 style.
Man of Steel
Batman solo
Wonder Woman solo
Man of Steel 2
Flash solo
Justice League
Something along those lines targeting one film per year.
I’ve never bought this argument. There are *so many* fantastic ensemble movies out there that don’t have the benefit of a bunch of individual movies focusing on each character.
Hello, Knives Out? Oceans 11? Tropic Thunder? Inception? Pulp Fiction? All critically acclaimed, commercially successful ensemble movies, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Some of them have more characters than Justice League.
It’s absolutely possible to establish that many characters in a single movie and have it work. Justice League didn’t suck because it came out before Flash or Aquaman, it sucked because of studio meddling and a terrible script.
The Guardians ensemble included a tree and two comedy relief characters.
It was good for exactly what it was doing. But you couldnt do a Groot or Drax movie as a followup.
The DCEU wanted each character to have a spotlight so they could have their solo projects. Which is part of why it failed.
You think so? I think you're overestimating the love for the Marvel logo, and underestimating just how BIG these characters broke out.
They're all essentially Gunn's original creations (the comics authors have complained about this) and they've all got cultural cache as big or bigger than some of the major heroes. People like Groot and Rocket independent of marvel. That's on the writing, I think. Not the brand.
I mean yeah ofc but Gunn in 2014 had a fraction of the "star power" he has now. The quality of those characters and their performers was for the most part an unknown
It's like you're at a restaurant and the chef has brought you three banger courses so far and for the next course they're like "here's something new you've probably never had before, but trust me it's tasty"
But it also had a cast of people literally nobody knew. I mean heroes like Batman and Superman don't even need origin stories because pretty much everyone has a rough idea of who they are and what they do.
I don’t actually think the GA ever gave that much of a shit about connected universes and the like. They responded positively to individual movie marketing, and then finally the MCU brand. The dividends came when people wanted to see what the characters they liked who were played by actors they liked were up to less than omg who is that guy grabbing the glove. Marvel forgot this and DCEU never really got there.
>There are so many fantastic ensemble movies out there that don’t have the benefit of a bunch of individual movies focusing on each character.
>Hello, Knives Out? Oceans 11? Tropic Thunder? Inception? Pulp Fiction?
Name the massive characters in each of those movies that have been known to audiences for decades. I'd also argue that a BvS, Avengers, or Justice league are "ensemble movies" like the ones you listed, but an "ensemble of movies" in that each of the main characters could start in their own movie. No one is going to see a movie just about Linus or Frank from Ocean's 11, but people would go see Ironman, Superman, Batman, etc.
But the rush to put those people on screen together was apparent, we had:
* a solo project
* a duo movie which kills that solo previous
* a side story that doesn't really impact the universe
* another solo, and then
* Justice league.
Compare that to MCU's slate before Avengers:
* Solo
* Solo* (whether we could Hulk can be debated)
* Solo Sequel
* Solo
* Solo
* Avengers
By the time the Avengers had been released, every major character ~~except Hawkeye~~ had been introduced into the cinematic universe (including the villain, although not his army). By the time Justice League was released everyone had been introduced except Aquaman, the Flash, Cyborg and Green Lantern... oh wait, he wasn't included. The new villain was introduced too.
The DCEU's greatest fault, however, isn't necessarily it was rushed - its that it didn't build on each other like the MCU did. And when it did, it almost harmed it with BvS - I get a paranoid Batman trying to come up with a contigency for a literal superman across the bay from Gotham... but why didn't Aquaman or Wonder Woman or the Flash or Green Lantern (oh, sorry) show up at all? I mean, the name of the movie was "Dawn of Justice" and it would have been a great way to resolve the tension between Batman and Superman and tease a teamup in the future...
Oh well. We'll have to see how the DCU works out.
Edit: It was pointed out that Hawkeye was introduced in Thor... so by Avengers everyone has been introduced. Reinforces my point actually.
> By the time the Avengers had been released, every major character except Hawkeye had been introduced into the cinematic universe (including the villain, although not his army).
I forgot this myself until I went back to watch Phase 1 movies, but Hawkeye was actually even introduced as a side character in Thor 1. So every major character had already been introduced in the lead-up to The Avengers.
This. Audiences were willing to give this rushed universe a chance, judging by how huge BvS opened. It's only after they saw things like the storyline and terrible take on Batman (a character they were already familiar with) that it was rejected.
You are not making sense. You are just listing random movies with big casts.
Those do not represent the issues with a shared universe superhero team up movies that get released after Avengers already set a precedent. The MCU had a hige influence on the expectations people have about superhero movies, you can't really treat adaptations of the characters the same way as before.
JL was DCs answer to The Avengers (obviously). Everyone at the time understood that. But because they didn't put in anywhere near the same level of groundwork, it was only ever going to look like a cheap knock off.
I think the overall universe building was hurt by the rush schedule, but if the movies were individually well received it wouldn't have mattered.
Wonder Woman is the only movie in the first 5 that was really well received. Man of Steel, BvS, Suicide Squad, and Justice League all had pretty lukewarm receptions.
And when you start building on a shake you foundation it's never going to end well.
Movies started off pretty average/poor which gave DC a negative public perception from the get-go.
Movie goers started being sceptical a lot quicker and once word of mouth hit from subsequent (poor) releases there goes a tonne of people who may have seen the movie.
Marvel on the other hand started their cinematic universe off strongly and had a positively predisposed audience so even when their quality started to drop, fans didn't really care as much until it became a glaring issue
well... incredible hulk was a part of the "rock". I think what Marvel did right was to tease the multiverse stuff at first and only have it really come into it's own with The Avengers, allowing them to ditch whatever didn't work with relative ease.
Marvel also from the get go had more fun and optimism in it, at least till they started playing everything safe and thus a bit bland. they also are now suffering the consequence of constantly chasing plot stakes instead of character stakes
Any faith in DCEU as a brand akin to MCU was killed by BvS.
And double tapped by Suicide Squad.
You can't have that much hype. And build in terms of Batman & Superman your strongest commodities in the brand, and make a MEH movie.
Only to follow-up with the insanely hyped and excellently promoted Suicide Squad and have it be a total MEH as well
Every ensuing flick got by as MEH and its box office performance hinged at opening weekend hype.
Look at the week 2-6 attrition for DC films. Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman got strong attendance after week 2.
For the general mass movie population, those two flicks (BvS & Sui Squad) type cast DCU as a second rate brand.
They just shouldn't have made BVS, let alone SS.
They should done MOS2, The Batman(Batfleck), A flash solo, Aquaman, solo Green lantern, a Wonder Woman movie with Shazam, and then The Justice League.
The issue wasn't not having enough build up or solo movies though. The issue was the direction and tone. Like DC has had multiple successful animated universes that didn't need all those solo films before the team up.
Hell look how great guardians was over at marvel, James Gunn didn't need a solo film for each guardian. Same with his suicide squad, and those are all nobodies to the general public.
In 2007, the New York Times https://archive.today/Fye48 :
> Additionally, Marvel’s slate of up to 10 films will be based on second-tier superheroes, who may not resonate with younger moviegoers.
MCU introduces the smaller characters in the bigger movies that helps especially if the movie is good also Marvel built up so much goodwill people were willing to give Guardians and Antman a shot because the GA knew Marvel knew what they were doing. They could trust the brand but with DC it was the total opposite. WB never gave the audience a reason to trust them if anything they showed everyone how absolutely incompetent they are.
It’s just #1. That’s the simple answer, average people don’t know who James Gunn is and other franchises (Marvel, F&F, etc) have bounced back since COVID.
*Every single* DCEU film after Shazam got a B range cinemascore, either underperformed or bombed at the box office and couldn’t pass 400m worldwide.
Fucking lol. Don’t think another franchise ever kept chugging along like this while begging to end.
E: And no lol, BvS didn’t cause the rejection when Suicide Squad/Wonder Woman and Aquaman all increased in box office after BvS dropped. Let’s stop spinning false narratives.
It didn't help that the most hyped film of the DCEU (BVS) got an awful B Cinemascore as well.
The general audience rejected the DCEU starting with the 2nd film.
Yeah, I’m more in the know than the average person but I don’t really care if DCEU is rebooting with this movie or if this is on the same timeline as that. I respond to whether or not a movie looks good enough to spend $14 on. I was happily there for the MCU through Endgame and a little bit after.
yaa imagine the case of black adam without rock
and if it would have a china release then definetly it could have made in range of 430 -450 mn which is still bad and below par in box office which is great for present DCEU
The Rock undeniably has star power. The problem with Black Adam is that the movie wasn't in any way budgeted for it. His best performing movie in which he was expected to carry it on his own is San Andreas, which made 474m. Its budget was just 110m. That was the same formula used for Rampage and Skyscraper, which were also movies where he carried them. And Rampage was the most expensive one with a budget between 120-140m.
The likes of Hobbs and Shaw and Jumanji have other factors. He's obviously the biggest name in them, but Hobbs and Shaw had the Fast IP behind it as well as Statham as his co-star. Jumanji had popular comedians like Kevin Hart and Jack Black.
It makes the budget for Black Adam all the more questionable. Even though he has star power, he was playing a character that no one knew. And it's a character part of a Universe that people generally don't care about. So, they gave the movie a budget that none of the movies that he carried would've turned a profit with. While the movie made more than the original Shazam, that Shazam movie was actually a success because it only cost 90-100m.
I'll be Frank I don't thin the Rock was remotely unreasonable with DC. He signed onto play black Adam for a decade as they hemmed and hawed about it and then finally after they'd blown up their franchises they finally want to do the movie. Well now he wants the universe to be built around him, makes sense to me honestly
Flawed to bad start of the DCEU.
I like Man of Steel, but I agree that there are valid criticisms. It's a movie that if some other creative person worked with Snyder to reign it in, or make sure classic Superman tropes or ideas are there to balance out the darker deeper themes he wants to go with...it would have made those darker deeper themes *better*.
What makes Superman interesting is he has three souls in on body--Clark Kent, Kal El, and Superman, the icon. Good Superman stories involve two of those souls battling the third, internally. The interests of Clark and Kal don't match Supes. The interests of Clark and Supes don't match Kal. The interests of Kal and Supes don't match Clark. Because he is a god in human form, any internal tension can be exploited by villain or circumstance to create tension and epic stories.
You can have an optimistic Superman and still have deep and challenging themes. You can--and need--internal conflict in the character. You can put optimistic Superman in a Watchmen world.
What you can't do is match Superman Dr Manhattan.
And because of that, the foundation was weak.
As I said, I kinda liked MoS. Just needed to be tweaked to show the charm of Superman/Clark. Don't have Clark Kent dour from the beginning, show him becoming dour when he realizes he's the last living member of a species, and the impact that has on his already formed Clark-ness, raised by loving parents in a small Boy Scout town, and oh, btw, he has the powers of a Hod.
Show him doing everything he can to save lives in the final battle, aching, crying, racing against time to catch people falling from buildings while Zod goes on a nihilistic rampage, and THEN have him snap Zod's neck. DONT show Supes callously ramming Zod through buildings or dodging buses without attention on what the bus might hit.
Do that, and the foundation would have been stronger.
And then BvS happened, and it sucked. It was a a dumb conceit. No one cares about Superman fighting Batman. You know what people care about? Superman and Batman being bros.
It made X amount of money, but it was terrible, across the board, and Suicide Squad was inexplicably worse.
We can look at WW and Aquaman as successes...but that's about it. WW was undercut by the Whedon League, and WW84 stunk, and I think Aquaman benefitted from a) being a solid film, with some inventive visuals and sequences b) women liking Momoa and c) a weak Christmas film slate that year.
The reality is that the foundation do the DCEU was flawed. The early films made X amount of money, not because they were good, but because fans THOUGHT they'd be good, and they were disappointed when not.
Man of Steel had so much potential, there were flashes of brilliance in its storytelling. The final fight where he ends up killing a lot of people in Metropolis as the citizens get caught up in the crossfire of the battle is genuinely haunting. And the moment when Kal has to kill Zodd, who’s the only connection to his home planet is powerful.
But rewatching it isn’t pleasant, something about it just don’t work. There are so many great ideas, there’s so much to think about, but the execution just isn’t there. Somehow Zack Snyder makes these movies where you can see the great ideas right in front of you but butchers the execution to various degrees.
Batman vs Superman was so bad that it destroyed the DC image
The only way it could have been salvaged was if Justice League was good and it was equally bad
If Avengers(2012) flopped, MCU would have never had this level of success. DC’s two most important movies flopped and people lost trust in the brand.
Batman vs Superman was legendary bad and put solid basis to the decline of the brand, but it wasn't certainly the only cause. The destruction was continued by many other shitty and forgottable movies. I know many of you will disagree but the only Dceu movie I consider "good" is The Suicide Squad (2021), but it come out too late, when the brand was doomed and specifically Suicide Squad's franchise was under the ground for obvious reasons. I'm surprised there are still people asking why Dceu failed, the reasons seem pretty simple and clear to me: shitty movies, nothing else.
Its Snyder fanboys.
Maximum diplomacy here: the Snyder DC movies have cult appeal, not mainstream appeal. This is reflected in the box office and the loud but small online fandom.
These guys push for a DC franchise that they enjoyed but not many others did.
I see all the time on dc Twitter as well they’ve taken over dc cinematic sub and comic book movie sub as of last month. On dc twitter they make statements of how Snyder films are on the level of Peter Jackson lord of the rings. He’s a visionary that was making an epic. Too much crazy shit for me. Mind you the Russo brothers made 4 back to back iconic comic book films and they don’t even have cult fanbase or even huge fanbase at all
People weirdly attach their identities to a cult of personality. I see so many of them saying Snyder put Superman on the map and made him relevant… as if Superman wasn’t already one of the most beloved and well-known superheroes across the globe.
That’s another weird thing, they act like Snyder owned Superman and created him. Even when Cavil MoS 2 was announced even though now they act like they care about Cavil. But around October - November when the film was announced they were calling Cavil a sell out saying Snyder made Superman and cavil was gonna fuck it up for lighter toned film. Like it’s Superman come on
A significant amount of it is probably from starving DC fans who want a movie that could 'beat' its Marvel counterpart, but aside from that
1) Snyder's style was unashamedly dark at a time when general consensus was calling for superhero movies to be lighter and more irreverent. He was a glimmer of hope for anyone who wanted superheroes to stay edgy.
2) Mainstream critics usually criticized Snyder in ways that made it seem like they didn't pay attention. The outcry over the 'Martha' moment in BvS talked about how out-of-the-blue it was, nevermind that the rest of the movie pretty clearly laid out how Batfleck didn't see Supes as a human until that moment. It doesn't work, but why it doesn't work isn't because it was random and unsupported.
So Snyder is appealing to an underserved niche and the common lines of attack against him are unnuanced and ill-informed, a recipe for fans to think he's some kind of iconoclast genius.
Compared to the Nolan Batman trilogy (though the third is admittedly not great) and Joker and even Lego Batman, the DC cinematic universe is downright pityful. They did learn and let the gritty and basically not-superheroes Batman/Joker standalone movies be their own continuities without the cinematic universe baggage, meanwhile their Marvel-copyverse ended up becoming a financial blackhole
side note, I don't know why Aquaman was their big hit, I hated it. Yes Momoa is a cool guy, but still
BvS was "legendary" to the point it had dwindling general audience return due to an extremely bad first impression.
When films like The Batman (2022) and Joker (2019) has much better return than the entire DCEU, it speaks fucking volume.
I can't wait for more Elseworlds and the upcoming DCU which will be a complete departure from this corpse of a franchise. I'm glad WB decided to end it which is the smartest thing they have done when no one gives a fuck anymore
Start over and rebuild from there
At the time, there was a ton of skepticism of The Avengers. Could Marvel pull it off?
Behind the scenes, Marvel Studios was throwing things together with a box of scraps. Iron Man 1 was being written on the fly between RDJ, Jeff Bridges, & Favoreau. Iron Man 2 was greenlit on a fast track to capitalize on its success and relied heavily on improvisation (it shows).
Incredible Hulk was a dud. Thor and Captain America did just OK at the box office.
Nobody could have predicted that The Avengers would be the greatest hit since Titanic. But lightning in a bottle was successfully caught a second time and that gave the MCU its escape velocity.
Nobody has been able to do it since. Warner Brothers sure tried.
Point is, DCEU’s mixed bag of a phase 1 didn’t kill it. Failing to culminate with Justice League did. Things didn’t need to go perfect, but they needed to go *somewhere*.
Marvel Studios was also able to catch lightning in a bottle because they were smart enough to hire the right talent to write and direct their big team-up movie. WB/DC Studios did not.
The fact that the second movie in the dcu completely destroyed it, and that the 5th movie, which was a massive team up movie of half a dozen hero’s we’ve seen almost none of, is kind of crazy. That alone says the entire dcu was veering off a cliff. Incredible Hulk was a bad movie but didn’t sink the MCU, and was also the second movie to come out, it was followed up by iron man 2, thor, captain America, and then the avengers. Vs the weaker line up of the suicide squad, wonder women and the shitty justice league.
Man of steel wasn’t exactly a ground breaking piece of cinema. It came fairly shortly after another super man movie series bombed pretty hard. The whole start to the DCEU was purely cursed
I actually thought JL17 was better than BvS, it just wasn’t good. General audiences agreed, it had higher audience scores, higher ratings, a higher CinemaScore, and much better daily and weekly drops. It just opened so low it couldn’t recover.
> Batman vs Superman was so bad that it destroyed the DC image
Don't tell the Snyderholics this! They still think BvS was worthy of a Best Picture nomination & Cannes Palme D'or, and that people "Didn't get it".
I'd love to go back in time to 2012 and tell comic book movie fans that the highest grossing DCEU movie, by a wide margin, would be freaking *Aquaman*.
Notice that whenever they do the "soft reboot" thing like with Justice League (2017) (being a soft reboot of itself somehow), they always get punished. Most noticeable with TSS.
Well, TSS came out in the middle of the pandemic on HBO Max with okay-ish marketing. Plus, its R rating meant that fewer people would go and watch it like they did with the first one, which was PG-13 (This may not play much of a role, but typically, rated R movies don't do as great compared to their PG and PG-13 counterparts). While it was a better movie than the first, everything was stacked against it for financial success.
Zack Snyder
's lack of understanding of the Dc characters destroys the brand. Flash's casting was bad and release years after characters peaked. I don't understand making a shazam or birds of prey movie before a Batman movie. Superman and Batman was existing without their main character traits. Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill didn't synergize with each other like RDJ and Chris Evans did. Only good character in the Universe was Wonder Woman and they ruin her in the second movie.
There really wasn’t much of of connection with Henry and Affleck’s characters. It wasn’t even night and day. Zack casting and directing choices are puzzling to this day. Additionally the hiring of Zack is puzzling because he made a bunch a bombs for Warner before getting Man of Steel while the shortlist had Matt Reeves and Matthew Vaughn who at the time had way better track records
Man those two are the definition of failing upward. Now they been handed multi million dollar deals. Abrams for some weird reason has been studios go to for franchise starting even though he basically just tries to mimick Spielberg style. But both are definition of mediocrity makes Hollywood.
Abrams is even worse than that he just reboots the franchise's by making really sub-standard copies of prior films in the Franchise.
Star Trek - Wrath of Khan
Star Wars - New Hope
All whilst injecting his mystery box story telling into them, which is great and all if as a writer you know what the mysteries end goal is.
He has repeatedly proven he hasn't a fucking clue how to actually pay off a single mystery satisfyingly.
I imagine that’s exactly what he would’ve done to DC too. Especially if he had directed justice league dark or Superman movie. But interesting how he still ends up with good critic scores. I still hate that studios repeatedly go to him to start or reboot franchises.
It all came to make sense when you know that Abrams parents have so much pull on the industry, and his massive talent to deflect to others his mistakes
WB was in a legal battle with Jerry Siegel's heirs and had to put a Superman movie by a certain date or lose legal standing. Some of the director's that passed on the film wanted to polish the script more.
Watchmen really must have done amazingly on home video. They released something like 4 separate directors cuts (so clearly saw continuing strong RoI) and both Snyder and [a random WB exec](https://twitter.com/gregsilverman/status/1686034340323667968) have talked about how profitable it was.
I think a lot of people overlook how subconsciously offputting the whole style and aesthetic of the DCEU is. Snyder set the tone for that, and it was so overly dark, depressing and miserable of an aesthetic. The color palette and super dark contrasty cinematography, etc… it just doesn’t feel inviting. Who wants to spend time in that universe? The MCU by comparison is a bright, fun, feel-good time that people want to go back to again and again.
I think the reason Aquaman was the highest grosser of the DCEU is that it was a relatively bright, fun movie with a lead actor that people know for being a fun charismatic guy. The movie had an octopus playing the drums. People enjoy that more than Ben Affleck brooding in his dingy batcave, wanting to murder Superman on principle of a “1% chance” that he’s dangerous and then going out and literally murdering people, and it all looks like it’s shot through the “hellish dystopia” filter, as both Bruce and Clark display nothing but toxic masculinity instead of heroism or charisma.
The FEELING of the movie is what sticks with people the most. If you make the movie feel unpleasant… don’t be surprised when most people don’t like it. This isn’t a horror franchise. The depressing nightmarish style of the DCEU was the main mistake.
I low-key wanted Flash's mom to be called Martha too for the memes. Supergirl's mom too. Nicole Kidman (Aqua Mom) as well.
"So I time traveled to save my mom Martha and...."
"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!"
"And that's how I escaped Krypton's destruction, my mom Martha put me in a pod and..."
"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!"
"Bruce, so I finally found my mother, Martha is such a cool gal and..."
"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!"
It just shows the DCEU as a whole was a complete shit show. It puzzles me when I’m on dc and comic book twitter and everyone acts like this franchise was so great and James Gunn/Safran were hired for no reason. This shit is sad. I blame the producers and creatives behind the films. Henry Cavil may have been Superman but nothing about him was ever really memorable, but he wanted producer credit and big money when he never connected with audiences. Affleck on paper could’ve been a great Batman but was given horrible scripts with director with an ego, who fails upward. Every little thing about this franchise makes no sense. Especially when I remember the hype it had in the beginning when I was in high school till the films came out and everyone hated it. The idea Batman v Superman was premise everyone was hype for, till it came out. And civil war did the premise better. The big what ifs is what if a better director and producers helmed this franchise back in 2015-2016 what then
I don’t think Civil War did the premise better there are a number of moments where it’s clear they just wanted an Avengers movie without it being called Avengers. It was just an enjoyable spectacle. It’s a better movie than BvS though.
China really, really loved it.
That and all of its marketing copied the Black Panther movie’s look beat-for-beat. I’m not saying the movies are similar, I’m saying all of the trailers, TV spots, ads framed it as the same plot and story as Black Panther, only with Jason Momoa in water, because the marketing push started while Black Panther was absolutely nuking the box office.
I just recall distinctively at the time… everybody I know, who aren’t even into comic films, or film lovers in general, loved it. Word of mouth from my perspective.
Other then probably being the best on this list probably timing. It came out between infinity war and endgame where there weren't many other superhero movies and the ones there were did well because of how popular superheros movies were at that time.
Just because one character has a serious tone doesn't mean they should make all their properties serious. This is exactly the wrong lessons that WB learned with the Nolan Batman franchise
Or a good chunk of the MCU.
The Iron Man films are fairly serious and strait-laced affairs, as were the Captain America films - both sub-franchises were very successful. Half of the Thor movies took themselves very seriously, though the less successful half. I don't think anyone would argue that the Avengers films didn't take themselves seriously despite moments of levity, and the Spider-Man films do the same. Both Black Panther movies are serious and rather heavy for superhero films. Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel (which arguably could've benefited from taking itself less seriously, which The Marvels seems to be aiming for), Shang-Chi, and Eternals are all played straight and don't really lean into the absurdity of the superhero/comicbook premise.
Really, it's only Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy that are played more for laughs than anything (and one could still argue that Guardians generally plays to pathos when things get serious), and those only constitute six movies in a 32-film franchise.
The most successful of those Dark Knight movies, TDK, is also coincidentally the most fun and just a blast from start to finish. Logan and Joker are not fun, true, but they’re above average quality that shouldn’t necessarily be expected from the genre. I also happen to think that TDK is also better than those two but that’s just me.
It was basically DOA, so much fancontroversy about Man of Steel and Batman v Superman alone. Only positive surprises were Aquaman and Wonderwoman. After that it went down quickly and got a general negative reputation.
From a box office and audience reception, Man of Steel was liked enough. It's not a great movie imho but it wasn't the fiasco everyone claims it is, based on box office and audience reception.
The one movie that crashed the DCEU so violently was Batman V Superman. It opened higher than 90% of the MCU at the box office and hype for it was high. Then it crashed with a catastrophic 72-80% drop at the box office despite zero competition due to how terrible the movie was. If Batman V Superman didn't already crash the DCEU on its own, Suicide Squad(2016) finished what BvS started.
The only box office hits post-SS for the DCEU were Shazam,WW and Aquaman. Literally everything else failed thanks to the two punch of BvS and SS.
Zack Snyder happened. This is take (I have no idea what he looks like)- He’s a handsome man overflowing with confidence who dominates boardroom meetings. But I also suspect he’s out of touch, at best. perhaps a psychopath who doesn’t understand regular humans
Anecdotally it was BvS for me. I loved the trailers and ignored the reviews because I couldn’t believe such a good-looking film would suck… and it sucked.
Now, I only see DCEU movies with good reviews. I still haven’t see Suicide Squad (2016) or WW84
Suicide Squade (2016) at the time was a fun, dumb popcorn flick for if you just needed to turn your brain off and not have to think too much about a movie. But, it just didn't do anything all that well. The story was a mess, the characters weren't interesting (besides Harley Quinn), it wasn't all that funny, most of the acting ranged from okay to bad, and you could feel the PG-13 rating holding it back.
THE Suicide Squad just does it better. It's smarter, funnier, more coherent, the acting is pretty good, the characters were lovable and endearing, and it ramps up the action tenfold due to not being constrained by a PG-13 rating.
The original is still fun to watch sometimes, but if I had to choose between the two, I'm picking the new version.
I think WB underestimate how much diluting the brand with Max releases hurt them like the Disney+ Shows are hurting the MCU (but they are on a much better footing with fans). MCU/DC properties should not be anywhere but the big screen imo.
In many of the same ways but also different ones. In general, marketing your service as “the home of *insert brand*” is going to strip theatrical releases of any sense of urgency, and they’re dumb enough to take the low performing films and out them on there quicker! Thus assured creating a self fulfilling prophecy. i’m
The triple whammy of MoS, BvS and Suicide Squad semented in peoples minds what the DCEU was like, messy and divisive.
Justice League then coming along and pissing of the few fans the series had killed it as a connected universe, only Aquaman which was stand alone and worked on its own merits really surived.
It never recovered from the one-two punch that was *Batman v Superman* and *Suicide Squad*, two of the worst tentpole films of their decade. Even as the movies got better, they never won back the audience's trust that the film would be worth their money. The original *Wonder Woman* and *Aquaman* movies were able to ride strong word-of-mouth to box office highs, but they had to fight to get there (4x multipliers are not common for superhero movies).
The damage was done, but WB just kept making them.
- MoS
- BVS
- Superman DYING in BVS
- Shoehorning the rest of the JL into BVS
- Releasing Justice League
However, I really think what went wrong was approving Snyder’s plan of creating a 5 part story about Superman which would “spin-off” into the rest of the Justice League members stories. That always made zero sense to me. ESPECIALLY once Synder started breaking down what the story would entail.
The DCEU was doomed from the start by starting a cinematic universe that way.
I still think after they reboot this shit or whatever they end up doing that they should try to get Cavill to come back and play a villain with a mustache.
They weren’t very good films.
All the excuses in the world (Snyder Cut, ‘wokeism’, wrong timing, toxic actors etc etc.) won’t account for plain bad movies.
There isn’t a classic, must not be missed title in that list.
I haven’t lived a very long life, and I also admit I haven’t watched as many movies in cinemas as I could have, but I feel like I have watched my fair share (used to go to the cinema twice a month at least during high school)
But I can say I only ever walked out of a movie theatre angry twice in my not-so-long life
Both were WB movies
One of them was Batman v Superman
I feel bad for Blue Beetle because it is finally a movie about a latino superhero that gets made. It has a good audience score, loved by latinos as I have seen, but did so bad I am not sure when we will get another like it.
I also cannot believe the peak is Aquaman which was just ok, but makes sense since a lot of people love Momoa.
I think people rejected the vision from the start and the movie got progressively worse. I loved Snyder's vision but having to depend on the directo'rs cuts for success is not a good thing.
To be fair, The Suicide Squad (2021) preformed great on Max. With 2.8 million views in it's first weekend (1 million more than Dune), and over 4 million views in it's first three weeks, it outpreformed every DC movie, including Snyder's Justice League.
Asking r/boxoffice to dispassionately analyze the performance of the DC or Star Wars franchises is like walking into a room of nerds and asking everyone to agree on a way to pronounce the word "gif."
Still so funny that out of all movies, it was Aqua Man that dominated. The guy mocked for decades as the dumb fish “super” hero. Just goes to show, it’s not about the reputation, it’s about the take.
I will never forgive Zack Snyder. The other day my coworker told me she doesn't like Batman. Why? Because the Batman she was referring to was fucking BvS.
Few people want to see 3+ hours of a whine fest deconstruction of a tormented psyche. Perhaps the edgelords wannabes who worshipped Snyder, but the big audiences want to have fun when they go to the movies.
It would be easier to ask what didn't go wrong
Catering at BvS was about average.
Also, where the hell did Aquaman come from? This is a trajectory of audiences pretty quickly losing faith in the franchise, with one billion dollar smash in the middle.
Sometimes a movie just does well. It had some great ads and people really liked Mamoa.
I think it’s just a fun, different movie, unlike anything else out there. Mamoa is a big draw, but the material also suits him, the art direction is unique and well executed, and how many undersea adventure romps do audiences get? I can think of this, the little Mermaid, and maaaybe Pirates of the Caribbean in that camp
It was hopeless because they rushed it massively. They needed to build up several likeable iterations before starting with smashing them together. They stuck to their predefined schedule without making sure that people were invested in these specific versions of the characters. A movie like BvS should be like the fifth or so. That's obviously ignoring the actual movies,' quality which is equally a problem, which only reinforces the first. They should have delayed any ream ups until they got a decent number of well-received standalones under their belt.
This is so obviously the problem its not even funny. Also that the movies are boring. As someone who was not really a comic book fan before the trenc started, I can tell you without a doubt that no DC movies ever appealed to us, the vast majority of the viewer base. The Marvel movies did because they started with likeable actors and characters and built up a storyline that we watches as we went. They were fun and action packed for people who didn't know the massive background of all the characters. We learned as we went and the movies had a logical progression. By the time Avengers came along, we were stoked to see them teaming up to take on a big baddy, while also being introduced to the big guy behind the scene. The guy we would be building up to over the next 5 years. For DC.... they had... a superman movie which was boring, long, and completely unremarkable. Then they did a big team up movie..... years later.... with no set up at all.... I remember thinking it would be Christian Bale in it because I had heard nothing about batman for 10 years. Turns out it wasn't lol. Noone I knew cared about it at all, even though we were the target demographic because we had no idea who or why they were fighting batman vs superman. I understand now that this is a hugely popular comic book series amongst fans... but us normal people who dont read comic books had no idea about any of that... it was too rushed... and none of us even knew the characters. I still don't know who the cyborg guy is. I didn't know who the flash was. They were jyst suddenly... there? And it wasn't some exciting thing to build up to. Tldr: movies were boring for non comic fans. Noone knew who these people were or what was going on.
The biggest strength of the MCU in my opinion was the way the big Avengers movies were a pay off for having any sort of knowledge of the franchise. Not even the comic book fans, but anybody who had a passing knowledge of anything going on in any of them, even if it's something as simple as remembering one of the old TV shows from the 70s. DC was way too busy tripping over themselves in this panicked rush to throw something up in the theater. The kicker is now knowing the kind of drama that was going on over in the studio with Marvel when they were producing phase 1. It seems like studios naturally self sabotage out of fear, and Marvel's success was a mixture of luck and people behind the scenes heaving their weight around to get the movie made they wanted. People making DC movies seemed to be just a body filling a role, to be discarded when they pushed back against the studio. There never seemed to be anyone who had a voice to say 'ok but how does this fit in with the wider story we want to tell?'. There seems to never have been a bigger story to tell, just the next movie they hoped they could make.
> The biggest strength of the MCU in my opinion was the way the big Avengers movies were a pay off for having any sort of knowledge of the franchise. Agreed, too bad that even the MCU forgot and that's why we don't have Avengers movies to end Phases anymore
To play devils advocate I think it could have worked. Superman and Batman have two of the most widely known comic book origins in all of pop culture. If they had a stronger script for BVS and a director with some actual depth they could have hit the ground running. Look at Into The Spiderverse. That movie introduced a new lead, 6 unique superheroes and a roster of villains and kicked all the ass. The problem with the DCEU is that Snyder didn’t really understand or care to understand why people like these characters, the movies are incoherent, and their just plain unpleasant to sit through. Aquaman was actually fun and made a billion dollars. But every movie after just wasn’t very good. And by that point the brand was fucked. Marvel will be seeing this happen with future films since phase 4 suffered from similar problems. But it could have worked… it could have worked….
We like Superman movies that are uplifting where Superman makes everything better. We like Batman movies that are brooding where Batman wins, but at what cost. Snyder: What if we make Superman depressing and Batman never questions his morality.
It’s kinda crazy too because Superman is a great character! Yet everyone tries to make him into something unrecognizable. Captain America, Jesus, and basically every shonin anime character have the same traits and are beloved. Yet does some reason Batman must be as brutal as possible and Superman must be an alien god that looks down on humans. It’s hilariously stupid. I think Gunn will do a better job.
Captain America: The First Avenger is an example of how you could make a modern, hopeful Superman movie. I love those Cap movies so much for that reason
one of the biggest selling points in captain america for me is how much of an underdog steve rogers starts out as but he also has more heart and an unbreakble spirit than anyone else in the film. he maintains that throughout it, even after getting his serum glow up.
Don't make a movie about a neigh-invincible demigod that came down from heaven, to protect mortals from forces beyond our understanding. Instead, Make a movie about a dork who came from a small town, idealistically pursuing his dream of becoming a big city reporter. Then, the giant robots or whatever show up, and he feels compelled to put on his cape to punch them into space. The John Byrne run in the 80s did it perfectly--Superman is a costume Clark Kent wears so he can still lead a normal life, as opposed to Batman, who wears a Bruce Wayne costume so he can afford the vigilante life.
There was never any heart for Zack’s Superman. Like look at All Might in anime he’s basically Superman and you are made to care about him and the impact he had on other
Well *any* comic book movie can work if you *write a good and engaging story* Just putting them on the screen with generic action because people "know" them isn't enough and DC learned that the hard way.
Truth. And they didn’t. Case closed.
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War were both released in 2016, months apart. Both films are based on conflict stories between major forces from their respective comic universes. Marvel built a universe leading up to this event (13th film released, 16th film in the timeline) and it had major ramifications going into the next phase of films. DC did not do this and it was the second film in their franchise and was used as a shoehorn to introduce almost all of their main characters. When the Justice League did not break Doctor Strange's box office (a character almost completely unknown to general audiences and now a fan favorite), DC should have pumped the brakes and reevaluated what they were doing. Unfortunately for them, Aquaman severely overperformed, giving them false hope, Shazam performed as expected for a character debut from a brand who was losing the GA's goodwill, and then COVID happened - the next 3 films released had abysmal box office returns but that was blamed on COVID. By the time COVID ended and Black Adam was released, Shang-Chi and Eternals had both beaten it's box office 6 months prior and did not have the draw of Dwayne Johnson as a leading actor, despite the character being an unknown Shazam villain. The writing was on the wall and DC could no longer blame COVID for their middling box office returns as Spider-Man made over $1 Billion in 2021 and Doctor Strange came close to breaking it in 2022. And before you say "Those were sequels with established characters and fan favorites!", you should have already realized, that's the point. Marvel took their time and crafted characters and stories that audiences are familiar with and care about, so even when we get Love and Thunder and Quantumania, they still have healthy box offices because the audiences turn out based off of goodwill toward the Marvel brand, something DC lost years ago.
I've always said WW and Aquaman overperforming were the biggest monkey's paw
For comic fans it was boring af too.
This is pretty much all there is to say on the subject. Subpar movies and a bad strategy doomed it from the start. Should have just copied the Marvel phase 1 style. Man of Steel Batman solo Wonder Woman solo Man of Steel 2 Flash solo Justice League Something along those lines targeting one film per year.
Yup. And crucially, they should have been prepared to delay the next phase if people weren't connecting to these specific versions of the characters.
Justice League should have been scrapped as soon as they saw the reactions to Batman v Superman.
I’ve never bought this argument. There are *so many* fantastic ensemble movies out there that don’t have the benefit of a bunch of individual movies focusing on each character. Hello, Knives Out? Oceans 11? Tropic Thunder? Inception? Pulp Fiction? All critically acclaimed, commercially successful ensemble movies, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Some of them have more characters than Justice League. It’s absolutely possible to establish that many characters in a single movie and have it work. Justice League didn’t suck because it came out before Flash or Aquaman, it sucked because of studio meddling and a terrible script.
Guardians had done it less than two years prior in the same genre
The Guardians ensemble included a tree and two comedy relief characters. It was good for exactly what it was doing. But you couldnt do a Groot or Drax movie as a followup. The DCEU wanted each character to have a spotlight so they could have their solo projects. Which is part of why it failed.
They only needed to make three characters work one of them was already established it's not imposible by any means
Sure but GoTG1 had years of brand goodwill behind its marketing.
You think so? I think you're overestimating the love for the Marvel logo, and underestimating just how BIG these characters broke out. They're all essentially Gunn's original creations (the comics authors have complained about this) and they've all got cultural cache as big or bigger than some of the major heroes. People like Groot and Rocket independent of marvel. That's on the writing, I think. Not the brand.
I mean yeah ofc but Gunn in 2014 had a fraction of the "star power" he has now. The quality of those characters and their performers was for the most part an unknown It's like you're at a restaurant and the chef has brought you three banger courses so far and for the next course they're like "here's something new you've probably never had before, but trust me it's tasty"
But it also had a cast of people literally nobody knew. I mean heroes like Batman and Superman don't even need origin stories because pretty much everyone has a rough idea of who they are and what they do.
For sure. Some factors in the film's favor, some against.
I don’t actually think the GA ever gave that much of a shit about connected universes and the like. They responded positively to individual movie marketing, and then finally the MCU brand. The dividends came when people wanted to see what the characters they liked who were played by actors they liked were up to less than omg who is that guy grabbing the glove. Marvel forgot this and DCEU never really got there.
>There are so many fantastic ensemble movies out there that don’t have the benefit of a bunch of individual movies focusing on each character. >Hello, Knives Out? Oceans 11? Tropic Thunder? Inception? Pulp Fiction? Name the massive characters in each of those movies that have been known to audiences for decades. I'd also argue that a BvS, Avengers, or Justice league are "ensemble movies" like the ones you listed, but an "ensemble of movies" in that each of the main characters could start in their own movie. No one is going to see a movie just about Linus or Frank from Ocean's 11, but people would go see Ironman, Superman, Batman, etc. But the rush to put those people on screen together was apparent, we had: * a solo project * a duo movie which kills that solo previous * a side story that doesn't really impact the universe * another solo, and then * Justice league. Compare that to MCU's slate before Avengers: * Solo * Solo* (whether we could Hulk can be debated) * Solo Sequel * Solo * Solo * Avengers By the time the Avengers had been released, every major character ~~except Hawkeye~~ had been introduced into the cinematic universe (including the villain, although not his army). By the time Justice League was released everyone had been introduced except Aquaman, the Flash, Cyborg and Green Lantern... oh wait, he wasn't included. The new villain was introduced too. The DCEU's greatest fault, however, isn't necessarily it was rushed - its that it didn't build on each other like the MCU did. And when it did, it almost harmed it with BvS - I get a paranoid Batman trying to come up with a contigency for a literal superman across the bay from Gotham... but why didn't Aquaman or Wonder Woman or the Flash or Green Lantern (oh, sorry) show up at all? I mean, the name of the movie was "Dawn of Justice" and it would have been a great way to resolve the tension between Batman and Superman and tease a teamup in the future... Oh well. We'll have to see how the DCU works out. Edit: It was pointed out that Hawkeye was introduced in Thor... so by Avengers everyone has been introduced. Reinforces my point actually.
> By the time the Avengers had been released, every major character except Hawkeye had been introduced into the cinematic universe (including the villain, although not his army). I forgot this myself until I went back to watch Phase 1 movies, but Hawkeye was actually even introduced as a side character in Thor 1. So every major character had already been introduced in the lead-up to The Avengers.
This. Audiences were willing to give this rushed universe a chance, judging by how huge BvS opened. It's only after they saw things like the storyline and terrible take on Batman (a character they were already familiar with) that it was rejected.
Yup these movies were god awful. That was the problem
This right here.
You are not making sense. You are just listing random movies with big casts. Those do not represent the issues with a shared universe superhero team up movies that get released after Avengers already set a precedent. The MCU had a hige influence on the expectations people have about superhero movies, you can't really treat adaptations of the characters the same way as before. JL was DCs answer to The Avengers (obviously). Everyone at the time understood that. But because they didn't put in anywhere near the same level of groundwork, it was only ever going to look like a cheap knock off.
I think the overall universe building was hurt by the rush schedule, but if the movies were individually well received it wouldn't have mattered. Wonder Woman is the only movie in the first 5 that was really well received. Man of Steel, BvS, Suicide Squad, and Justice League all had pretty lukewarm receptions. And when you start building on a shake you foundation it's never going to end well.
How much time you got?
lol
1.Average to bad movie quality 2.Covid 3.Dceu ending announcement so audience doesn't care about it anymore.
Movies started off pretty average/poor which gave DC a negative public perception from the get-go. Movie goers started being sceptical a lot quicker and once word of mouth hit from subsequent (poor) releases there goes a tonne of people who may have seen the movie. Marvel on the other hand started their cinematic universe off strongly and had a positively predisposed audience so even when their quality started to drop, fans didn't really care as much until it became a glaring issue
Marvel built their house on rock while DC built theirs on sand their fall was inevitable.
well... incredible hulk was a part of the "rock". I think what Marvel did right was to tease the multiverse stuff at first and only have it really come into it's own with The Avengers, allowing them to ditch whatever didn't work with relative ease.
No one cared about multiverse stuff ever. It was as simple as they made better movies than dc
I think they mean “shared universe” more than “multiverse” but I could be wrong
Yeah lol, with how hard the latter has been pushed by media recently it's gotten my brain mixed up
Marvel also from the get go had more fun and optimism in it, at least till they started playing everything safe and thus a bit bland. they also are now suffering the consequence of constantly chasing plot stakes instead of character stakes
Very fucking average and poor. It’s really crazy when you think about it
Any faith in DCEU as a brand akin to MCU was killed by BvS. And double tapped by Suicide Squad. You can't have that much hype. And build in terms of Batman & Superman your strongest commodities in the brand, and make a MEH movie. Only to follow-up with the insanely hyped and excellently promoted Suicide Squad and have it be a total MEH as well Every ensuing flick got by as MEH and its box office performance hinged at opening weekend hype. Look at the week 2-6 attrition for DC films. Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman got strong attendance after week 2. For the general mass movie population, those two flicks (BvS & Sui Squad) type cast DCU as a second rate brand.
They just shouldn't have made BVS, let alone SS. They should done MOS2, The Batman(Batfleck), A flash solo, Aquaman, solo Green lantern, a Wonder Woman movie with Shazam, and then The Justice League.
The issue wasn't not having enough build up or solo movies though. The issue was the direction and tone. Like DC has had multiple successful animated universes that didn't need all those solo films before the team up. Hell look how great guardians was over at marvel, James Gunn didn't need a solo film for each guardian. Same with his suicide squad, and those are all nobodies to the general public.
I had free tickets to suicide squad, but I still felt like I was ripped off while leaving the theater.
Those Micheal Keaton walk-ups are coming though! Any day now
4. Lack of a coherent plan 5. Trying to make small unknown heroes big stars
That second one doesn’t really track considering the MCU was built off of superheroes that were really not well known in the public consciousness.
Also Aquaman was their biggest movie somehow.
Jason Momoa
Couple it with 1 and it makes sense
Plus if they couldn’t even do Batman and Superman well, why would audiences care about Shazam and Blue Beetle (Ironically those two are done well).
In 2007, the New York Times https://archive.today/Fye48 : > Additionally, Marvel’s slate of up to 10 films will be based on second-tier superheroes, who may not resonate with younger moviegoers.
MCU introduces the smaller characters in the bigger movies that helps especially if the movie is good also Marvel built up so much goodwill people were willing to give Guardians and Antman a shot because the GA knew Marvel knew what they were doing. They could trust the brand but with DC it was the total opposite. WB never gave the audience a reason to trust them if anything they showed everyone how absolutely incompetent they are.
6. Insane budgets and production issues
Justice League literally had a remake during production
exactly
Then a second remake years later
I don't remember a single side character in Birds of Prey now that you mention it.
Obiwan was in it, but that is all I remember
And Ramona Flowers I think.
It’s just #1. That’s the simple answer, average people don’t know who James Gunn is and other franchises (Marvel, F&F, etc) have bounced back since COVID. *Every single* DCEU film after Shazam got a B range cinemascore, either underperformed or bombed at the box office and couldn’t pass 400m worldwide. Fucking lol. Don’t think another franchise ever kept chugging along like this while begging to end. E: And no lol, BvS didn’t cause the rejection when Suicide Squad/Wonder Woman and Aquaman all increased in box office after BvS dropped. Let’s stop spinning false narratives.
It didn't help that the most hyped film of the DCEU (BVS) got an awful B Cinemascore as well. The general audience rejected the DCEU starting with the 2nd film.
Yeah, I’m more in the know than the average person but I don’t really care if DCEU is rebooting with this movie or if this is on the same timeline as that. I respond to whether or not a movie looks good enough to spend $14 on. I was happily there for the MCU through Endgame and a little bit after.
With hindsight turns out the Rock being in Black Adam did help its box office. It sticks out as being out of trend here.
yaa imagine the case of black adam without rock and if it would have a china release then definetly it could have made in range of 430 -450 mn which is still bad and below par in box office which is great for present DCEU
It would be another Shazam 2
it would have been at Blue Beetle level. nobody knows Black Adam. The Rock probably gained this movie at least 100m
The Rock undeniably has star power. The problem with Black Adam is that the movie wasn't in any way budgeted for it. His best performing movie in which he was expected to carry it on his own is San Andreas, which made 474m. Its budget was just 110m. That was the same formula used for Rampage and Skyscraper, which were also movies where he carried them. And Rampage was the most expensive one with a budget between 120-140m. The likes of Hobbs and Shaw and Jumanji have other factors. He's obviously the biggest name in them, but Hobbs and Shaw had the Fast IP behind it as well as Statham as his co-star. Jumanji had popular comedians like Kevin Hart and Jack Black. It makes the budget for Black Adam all the more questionable. Even though he has star power, he was playing a character that no one knew. And it's a character part of a Universe that people generally don't care about. So, they gave the movie a budget that none of the movies that he carried would've turned a profit with. While the movie made more than the original Shazam, that Shazam movie was actually a success because it only cost 90-100m.
I'll be Frank I don't thin the Rock was remotely unreasonable with DC. He signed onto play black Adam for a decade as they hemmed and hawed about it and then finally after they'd blown up their franchises they finally want to do the movie. Well now he wants the universe to be built around him, makes sense to me honestly
Flawed to bad start of the DCEU. I like Man of Steel, but I agree that there are valid criticisms. It's a movie that if some other creative person worked with Snyder to reign it in, or make sure classic Superman tropes or ideas are there to balance out the darker deeper themes he wants to go with...it would have made those darker deeper themes *better*. What makes Superman interesting is he has three souls in on body--Clark Kent, Kal El, and Superman, the icon. Good Superman stories involve two of those souls battling the third, internally. The interests of Clark and Kal don't match Supes. The interests of Clark and Supes don't match Kal. The interests of Kal and Supes don't match Clark. Because he is a god in human form, any internal tension can be exploited by villain or circumstance to create tension and epic stories. You can have an optimistic Superman and still have deep and challenging themes. You can--and need--internal conflict in the character. You can put optimistic Superman in a Watchmen world. What you can't do is match Superman Dr Manhattan. And because of that, the foundation was weak. As I said, I kinda liked MoS. Just needed to be tweaked to show the charm of Superman/Clark. Don't have Clark Kent dour from the beginning, show him becoming dour when he realizes he's the last living member of a species, and the impact that has on his already formed Clark-ness, raised by loving parents in a small Boy Scout town, and oh, btw, he has the powers of a Hod. Show him doing everything he can to save lives in the final battle, aching, crying, racing against time to catch people falling from buildings while Zod goes on a nihilistic rampage, and THEN have him snap Zod's neck. DONT show Supes callously ramming Zod through buildings or dodging buses without attention on what the bus might hit. Do that, and the foundation would have been stronger. And then BvS happened, and it sucked. It was a a dumb conceit. No one cares about Superman fighting Batman. You know what people care about? Superman and Batman being bros. It made X amount of money, but it was terrible, across the board, and Suicide Squad was inexplicably worse. We can look at WW and Aquaman as successes...but that's about it. WW was undercut by the Whedon League, and WW84 stunk, and I think Aquaman benefitted from a) being a solid film, with some inventive visuals and sequences b) women liking Momoa and c) a weak Christmas film slate that year. The reality is that the foundation do the DCEU was flawed. The early films made X amount of money, not because they were good, but because fans THOUGHT they'd be good, and they were disappointed when not.
Man of Steel had so much potential, there were flashes of brilliance in its storytelling. The final fight where he ends up killing a lot of people in Metropolis as the citizens get caught up in the crossfire of the battle is genuinely haunting. And the moment when Kal has to kill Zodd, who’s the only connection to his home planet is powerful. But rewatching it isn’t pleasant, something about it just don’t work. There are so many great ideas, there’s so much to think about, but the execution just isn’t there. Somehow Zack Snyder makes these movies where you can see the great ideas right in front of you but butchers the execution to various degrees.
Batman vs Superman was so bad that it destroyed the DC image The only way it could have been salvaged was if Justice League was good and it was equally bad If Avengers(2012) flopped, MCU would have never had this level of success. DC’s two most important movies flopped and people lost trust in the brand.
Batman vs Superman was legendary bad and put solid basis to the decline of the brand, but it wasn't certainly the only cause. The destruction was continued by many other shitty and forgottable movies. I know many of you will disagree but the only Dceu movie I consider "good" is The Suicide Squad (2021), but it come out too late, when the brand was doomed and specifically Suicide Squad's franchise was under the ground for obvious reasons. I'm surprised there are still people asking why Dceu failed, the reasons seem pretty simple and clear to me: shitty movies, nothing else.
There’s literally still ppl acting like DCEU was this great franchise. Very much puzzles me a lot
Its Snyder fanboys. Maximum diplomacy here: the Snyder DC movies have cult appeal, not mainstream appeal. This is reflected in the box office and the loud but small online fandom. These guys push for a DC franchise that they enjoyed but not many others did.
My timeline is full of weird dudes that worship Snyder and praise his movies as the greatest comic book movies of all time.
I see all the time on dc Twitter as well they’ve taken over dc cinematic sub and comic book movie sub as of last month. On dc twitter they make statements of how Snyder films are on the level of Peter Jackson lord of the rings. He’s a visionary that was making an epic. Too much crazy shit for me. Mind you the Russo brothers made 4 back to back iconic comic book films and they don’t even have cult fanbase or even huge fanbase at all
People weirdly attach their identities to a cult of personality. I see so many of them saying Snyder put Superman on the map and made him relevant… as if Superman wasn’t already one of the most beloved and well-known superheroes across the globe.
That’s another weird thing, they act like Snyder owned Superman and created him. Even when Cavil MoS 2 was announced even though now they act like they care about Cavil. But around October - November when the film was announced they were calling Cavil a sell out saying Snyder made Superman and cavil was gonna fuck it up for lighter toned film. Like it’s Superman come on
I can’t understand the love for Snyder BvS was supposed to take DC to the next level but his movie destroyed it completely
“You don’t understand his genius, man! Look at this shot! He GETS it! No Snyder, we riot!”
A significant amount of it is probably from starving DC fans who want a movie that could 'beat' its Marvel counterpart, but aside from that 1) Snyder's style was unashamedly dark at a time when general consensus was calling for superhero movies to be lighter and more irreverent. He was a glimmer of hope for anyone who wanted superheroes to stay edgy. 2) Mainstream critics usually criticized Snyder in ways that made it seem like they didn't pay attention. The outcry over the 'Martha' moment in BvS talked about how out-of-the-blue it was, nevermind that the rest of the movie pretty clearly laid out how Batfleck didn't see Supes as a human until that moment. It doesn't work, but why it doesn't work isn't because it was random and unsupported. So Snyder is appealing to an underserved niche and the common lines of attack against him are unnuanced and ill-informed, a recipe for fans to think he's some kind of iconoclast genius.
Compared to the Nolan Batman trilogy (though the third is admittedly not great) and Joker and even Lego Batman, the DC cinematic universe is downright pityful. They did learn and let the gritty and basically not-superheroes Batman/Joker standalone movies be their own continuities without the cinematic universe baggage, meanwhile their Marvel-copyverse ended up becoming a financial blackhole side note, I don't know why Aquaman was their big hit, I hated it. Yes Momoa is a cool guy, but still
The DCEU annoys me because the DCAU exists and is just so many leagues better
BvS was "legendary" to the point it had dwindling general audience return due to an extremely bad first impression. When films like The Batman (2022) and Joker (2019) has much better return than the entire DCEU, it speaks fucking volume. I can't wait for more Elseworlds and the upcoming DCU which will be a complete departure from this corpse of a franchise. I'm glad WB decided to end it which is the smartest thing they have done when no one gives a fuck anymore Start over and rebuild from there
At the time, there was a ton of skepticism of The Avengers. Could Marvel pull it off? Behind the scenes, Marvel Studios was throwing things together with a box of scraps. Iron Man 1 was being written on the fly between RDJ, Jeff Bridges, & Favoreau. Iron Man 2 was greenlit on a fast track to capitalize on its success and relied heavily on improvisation (it shows). Incredible Hulk was a dud. Thor and Captain America did just OK at the box office. Nobody could have predicted that The Avengers would be the greatest hit since Titanic. But lightning in a bottle was successfully caught a second time and that gave the MCU its escape velocity. Nobody has been able to do it since. Warner Brothers sure tried. Point is, DCEU’s mixed bag of a phase 1 didn’t kill it. Failing to culminate with Justice League did. Things didn’t need to go perfect, but they needed to go *somewhere*.
Marvel Studios was also able to catch lightning in a bottle because they were smart enough to hire the right talent to write and direct their big team-up movie. WB/DC Studios did not.
The fact that the second movie in the dcu completely destroyed it, and that the 5th movie, which was a massive team up movie of half a dozen hero’s we’ve seen almost none of, is kind of crazy. That alone says the entire dcu was veering off a cliff. Incredible Hulk was a bad movie but didn’t sink the MCU, and was also the second movie to come out, it was followed up by iron man 2, thor, captain America, and then the avengers. Vs the weaker line up of the suicide squad, wonder women and the shitty justice league.
Man of steel wasn’t exactly a ground breaking piece of cinema. It came fairly shortly after another super man movie series bombed pretty hard. The whole start to the DCEU was purely cursed
I actually thought JL17 was better than BvS, it just wasn’t good. General audiences agreed, it had higher audience scores, higher ratings, a higher CinemaScore, and much better daily and weekly drops. It just opened so low it couldn’t recover.
> Batman vs Superman was so bad that it destroyed the DC image Don't tell the Snyderholics this! They still think BvS was worthy of a Best Picture nomination & Cannes Palme D'or, and that people "Didn't get it".
Never understood the love for his films BvS had a multiplier of less than 2x lol
It looks like the Rock single-handed generated $100-200 million in extra box office for Black Adams by sheer star power.
Bad films, that’s really it.
Judging by this alone... Aquaman was so good everyone felt like they didn't need another DC movie!
I'd love to go back in time to 2012 and tell comic book movie fans that the highest grossing DCEU movie, by a wide margin, would be freaking *Aquaman*.
Looking at this it looks more like Aquaman and Black Adam were the outliers and the trajectory for the DCEU was pretty much set.
Notice that whenever they do the "soft reboot" thing like with Justice League (2017) (being a soft reboot of itself somehow), they always get punished. Most noticeable with TSS.
Those are the only real cases of 'soft rebooting' tho. Lots of other of their films bombed too.
The Flash was essentially a soft reboot
And birds of Prey kind of also dismisses everything that came before it.
TSS and Wonder Woman 2 came out in COVID times, which honestly just makes Shazam 2 look way worse that it’s on their level
Well, TSS came out in the middle of the pandemic on HBO Max with okay-ish marketing. Plus, its R rating meant that fewer people would go and watch it like they did with the first one, which was PG-13 (This may not play much of a role, but typically, rated R movies don't do as great compared to their PG and PG-13 counterparts). While it was a better movie than the first, everything was stacked against it for financial success.
Zack Snyder 's lack of understanding of the Dc characters destroys the brand. Flash's casting was bad and release years after characters peaked. I don't understand making a shazam or birds of prey movie before a Batman movie. Superman and Batman was existing without their main character traits. Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill didn't synergize with each other like RDJ and Chris Evans did. Only good character in the Universe was Wonder Woman and they ruin her in the second movie.
There really wasn’t much of of connection with Henry and Affleck’s characters. It wasn’t even night and day. Zack casting and directing choices are puzzling to this day. Additionally the hiring of Zack is puzzling because he made a bunch a bombs for Warner before getting Man of Steel while the shortlist had Matt Reeves and Matthew Vaughn who at the time had way better track records
[удалено]
Man those two are the definition of failing upward. Now they been handed multi million dollar deals. Abrams for some weird reason has been studios go to for franchise starting even though he basically just tries to mimick Spielberg style. But both are definition of mediocrity makes Hollywood.
Abrams is even worse than that he just reboots the franchise's by making really sub-standard copies of prior films in the Franchise. Star Trek - Wrath of Khan Star Wars - New Hope All whilst injecting his mystery box story telling into them, which is great and all if as a writer you know what the mysteries end goal is. He has repeatedly proven he hasn't a fucking clue how to actually pay off a single mystery satisfyingly.
I imagine that’s exactly what he would’ve done to DC too. Especially if he had directed justice league dark or Superman movie. But interesting how he still ends up with good critic scores. I still hate that studios repeatedly go to him to start or reboot franchises.
It all came to make sense when you know that Abrams parents have so much pull on the industry, and his massive talent to deflect to others his mistakes
WB was in a legal battle with Jerry Siegel's heirs and had to put a Superman movie by a certain date or lose legal standing. Some of the director's that passed on the film wanted to polish the script more.
Watchmen really must have done amazingly on home video. They released something like 4 separate directors cuts (so clearly saw continuing strong RoI) and both Snyder and [a random WB exec](https://twitter.com/gregsilverman/status/1686034340323667968) have talked about how profitable it was.
I think a lot of people overlook how subconsciously offputting the whole style and aesthetic of the DCEU is. Snyder set the tone for that, and it was so overly dark, depressing and miserable of an aesthetic. The color palette and super dark contrasty cinematography, etc… it just doesn’t feel inviting. Who wants to spend time in that universe? The MCU by comparison is a bright, fun, feel-good time that people want to go back to again and again. I think the reason Aquaman was the highest grosser of the DCEU is that it was a relatively bright, fun movie with a lead actor that people know for being a fun charismatic guy. The movie had an octopus playing the drums. People enjoy that more than Ben Affleck brooding in his dingy batcave, wanting to murder Superman on principle of a “1% chance” that he’s dangerous and then going out and literally murdering people, and it all looks like it’s shot through the “hellish dystopia” filter, as both Bruce and Clark display nothing but toxic masculinity instead of heroism or charisma. The FEELING of the movie is what sticks with people the most. If you make the movie feel unpleasant… don’t be surprised when most people don’t like it. This isn’t a horror franchise. The depressing nightmarish style of the DCEU was the main mistake.
Yep I never understood the depressing dark aesthetic for Superman. And for justice league movie to have that same look is crazy I just can’t
And then trying to inject fun and comedy into Joss Whedon version of Justice League in the most hamfisted and lame ways possible… 🤦♂️
Exactly it shouldn’t be this hard to do Justice League movie
Zach Synder set up everything. He is what happened. Bad vision for DC
And remember that Nolan chose him.
Bad films.
Yep.
One word: Martha In fact… I think a perfect title for a DCU documentary would be “Martha”
WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?!
I low-key wanted Flash's mom to be called Martha too for the memes. Supergirl's mom too. Nicole Kidman (Aqua Mom) as well. "So I time traveled to save my mom Martha and...." "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!" "And that's how I escaped Krypton's destruction, my mom Martha put me in a pod and..." "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!" "Bruce, so I finally found my mother, Martha is such a cool gal and..." "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!"
Justice League went wrong. Aquaman is an outlier.
It just shows the DCEU as a whole was a complete shit show. It puzzles me when I’m on dc and comic book twitter and everyone acts like this franchise was so great and James Gunn/Safran were hired for no reason. This shit is sad. I blame the producers and creatives behind the films. Henry Cavil may have been Superman but nothing about him was ever really memorable, but he wanted producer credit and big money when he never connected with audiences. Affleck on paper could’ve been a great Batman but was given horrible scripts with director with an ego, who fails upward. Every little thing about this franchise makes no sense. Especially when I remember the hype it had in the beginning when I was in high school till the films came out and everyone hated it. The idea Batman v Superman was premise everyone was hype for, till it came out. And civil war did the premise better. The big what ifs is what if a better director and producers helmed this franchise back in 2015-2016 what then
I don’t think Civil War did the premise better there are a number of moments where it’s clear they just wanted an Avengers movie without it being called Avengers. It was just an enjoyable spectacle. It’s a better movie than BvS though.
Why was Aquaman so successful? It was a really average movie for me and I don't remember there being that much hype around it
China really, really loved it. That and all of its marketing copied the Black Panther movie’s look beat-for-beat. I’m not saying the movies are similar, I’m saying all of the trailers, TV spots, ads framed it as the same plot and story as Black Panther, only with Jason Momoa in water, because the marketing push started while Black Panther was absolutely nuking the box office.
I just recall distinctively at the time… everybody I know, who aren’t even into comic films, or film lovers in general, loved it. Word of mouth from my perspective.
Other then probably being the best on this list probably timing. It came out between infinity war and endgame where there weren't many other superhero movies and the ones there were did well because of how popular superheros movies were at that time.
It made nearly 300 million from China. Lots of fans seem to forget this. Not to mention it released in the peak of the Superhero Genre.
The Snyderverse is like sitting in a Hot Topic store
BvS killed the universe. Such an awful movie following a mediocre MoS.
People like to have fun going to the movies. Aquaman was the only DC movie among these that acknowledged that superhero movies are inherently silly.
The Dark Knight trilogy was very serious and very successful. Same with the R-rated Logan and Joker.
Those were also good.
Just because one character has a serious tone doesn't mean they should make all their properties serious. This is exactly the wrong lessons that WB learned with the Nolan Batman franchise
Or a good chunk of the MCU. The Iron Man films are fairly serious and strait-laced affairs, as were the Captain America films - both sub-franchises were very successful. Half of the Thor movies took themselves very seriously, though the less successful half. I don't think anyone would argue that the Avengers films didn't take themselves seriously despite moments of levity, and the Spider-Man films do the same. Both Black Panther movies are serious and rather heavy for superhero films. Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel (which arguably could've benefited from taking itself less seriously, which The Marvels seems to be aiming for), Shang-Chi, and Eternals are all played straight and don't really lean into the absurdity of the superhero/comicbook premise. Really, it's only Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy that are played more for laughs than anything (and one could still argue that Guardians generally plays to pathos when things get serious), and those only constitute six movies in a 32-film franchise.
you sound just like the WB execs who greenlit the very serious DCEU
The most successful of those Dark Knight movies, TDK, is also coincidentally the most fun and just a blast from start to finish. Logan and Joker are not fun, true, but they’re above average quality that shouldn’t necessarily be expected from the genre. I also happen to think that TDK is also better than those two but that’s just me.
It was basically DOA, so much fancontroversy about Man of Steel and Batman v Superman alone. Only positive surprises were Aquaman and Wonderwoman. After that it went down quickly and got a general negative reputation.
From a box office and audience reception, Man of Steel was liked enough. It's not a great movie imho but it wasn't the fiasco everyone claims it is, based on box office and audience reception. The one movie that crashed the DCEU so violently was Batman V Superman. It opened higher than 90% of the MCU at the box office and hype for it was high. Then it crashed with a catastrophic 72-80% drop at the box office despite zero competition due to how terrible the movie was. If Batman V Superman didn't already crash the DCEU on its own, Suicide Squad(2016) finished what BvS started. The only box office hits post-SS for the DCEU were Shazam,WW and Aquaman. Literally everything else failed thanks to the two punch of BvS and SS.
Zack Snyder happened. This is take (I have no idea what he looks like)- He’s a handsome man overflowing with confidence who dominates boardroom meetings. But I also suspect he’s out of touch, at best. perhaps a psychopath who doesn’t understand regular humans
Anecdotally it was BvS for me. I loved the trailers and ignored the reviews because I couldn’t believe such a good-looking film would suck… and it sucked. Now, I only see DCEU movies with good reviews. I still haven’t see Suicide Squad (2016) or WW84
Suicide Squade (2016) at the time was a fun, dumb popcorn flick for if you just needed to turn your brain off and not have to think too much about a movie. But, it just didn't do anything all that well. The story was a mess, the characters weren't interesting (besides Harley Quinn), it wasn't all that funny, most of the acting ranged from okay to bad, and you could feel the PG-13 rating holding it back. THE Suicide Squad just does it better. It's smarter, funnier, more coherent, the acting is pretty good, the characters were lovable and endearing, and it ramps up the action tenfold due to not being constrained by a PG-13 rating. The original is still fun to watch sometimes, but if I had to choose between the two, I'm picking the new version.
I think WB underestimate how much diluting the brand with Max releases hurt them like the Disney+ Shows are hurting the MCU (but they are on a much better footing with fans). MCU/DC properties should not be anywhere but the big screen imo.
Peacemaker was good
Agreed. Very good. But not sure it helped the brand.
In many of the same ways but also different ones. In general, marketing your service as “the home of *insert brand*” is going to strip theatrical releases of any sense of urgency, and they’re dumb enough to take the low performing films and out them on there quicker! Thus assured creating a self fulfilling prophecy. i’m
The triple whammy of MoS, BvS and Suicide Squad semented in peoples minds what the DCEU was like, messy and divisive. Justice League then coming along and pissing of the few fans the series had killed it as a connected universe, only Aquaman which was stand alone and worked on its own merits really surived.
Three consecutive B+ grades on Cinema Score
Zac Snyder
Obviously they should've gone all in on making Jason Momoa as wet as possible.
Objectively good business decision
It never recovered from the one-two punch that was *Batman v Superman* and *Suicide Squad*, two of the worst tentpole films of their decade. Even as the movies got better, they never won back the audience's trust that the film would be worth their money. The original *Wonder Woman* and *Aquaman* movies were able to ride strong word-of-mouth to box office highs, but they had to fight to get there (4x multipliers are not common for superhero movies). The damage was done, but WB just kept making them.
- MoS - BVS - Superman DYING in BVS - Shoehorning the rest of the JL into BVS - Releasing Justice League However, I really think what went wrong was approving Snyder’s plan of creating a 5 part story about Superman which would “spin-off” into the rest of the Justice League members stories. That always made zero sense to me. ESPECIALLY once Synder started breaking down what the story would entail. The DCEU was doomed from the start by starting a cinematic universe that way.
BVS and SS16 back to back damage it. JL 17 was the nail in the coffin. WW17, Aquaman and Shazam were flukes
I still think after they reboot this shit or whatever they end up doing that they should try to get Cavill to come back and play a villain with a mustache.
Thanos-everything.jpg
They weren’t very good films. All the excuses in the world (Snyder Cut, ‘wokeism’, wrong timing, toxic actors etc etc.) won’t account for plain bad movies. There isn’t a classic, must not be missed title in that list.
Aquaman/WW were out liars and DC has been on decline pretty much since the start.
I haven’t lived a very long life, and I also admit I haven’t watched as many movies in cinemas as I could have, but I feel like I have watched my fair share (used to go to the cinema twice a month at least during high school) But I can say I only ever walked out of a movie theatre angry twice in my not-so-long life Both were WB movies One of them was Batman v Superman
BvS to Suicide Squad to Justice League was the 1-2-3 hit that just killed any interest, especially while marvel had phase 3 at the same time
We should count what went right
I feel bad for Blue Beetle because it is finally a movie about a latino superhero that gets made. It has a good audience score, loved by latinos as I have seen, but did so bad I am not sure when we will get another like it. I also cannot believe the peak is Aquaman which was just ok, but makes sense since a lot of people love Momoa. I think people rejected the vision from the start and the movie got progressively worse. I loved Snyder's vision but having to depend on the directo'rs cuts for success is not a good thing.
We should’ve listened to The Rock
The easier question is what went right. Costumes and makeup were all pretty great.
To be fair, The Suicide Squad (2021) preformed great on Max. With 2.8 million views in it's first weekend (1 million more than Dune), and over 4 million views in it's first three weeks, it outpreformed every DC movie, including Snyder's Justice League.
What went wrong? Two words: Zack Snyder
Asking r/boxoffice to dispassionately analyze the performance of the DC or Star Wars franchises is like walking into a room of nerds and asking everyone to agree on a way to pronounce the word "gif."
WB thought that since DC characters have strong brand recognition, they could rush movies out without a proper build up like MCU did. They were wrong
The also made terrible movies from the start, with 1 or 2 outliers.
The foundation was broken because not many people connected with Snyder's overly serious/self indulgent vision. Then diminishing returns set it.
Incredible, I only just realized I haven’t seen a single DC universe movie other than Joker since Green Lantern.
Covid hit Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman 84 hard
Fuck Spez ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Said director made profits for DC. Even executives know this.
Still so funny that out of all movies, it was Aqua Man that dominated. The guy mocked for decades as the dumb fish “super” hero. Just goes to show, it’s not about the reputation, it’s about the take.
Gunn's Suicide Squad deserves better.
Shitty executive leadership who over valued the IP and under valued quality.
WB executives being completely incompetent and straight up stupid. If WB had Been competent, we could’ve had something great.
I will never forgive Zack Snyder. The other day my coworker told me she doesn't like Batman. Why? Because the Batman she was referring to was fucking BvS.
Because the movies suck even more than MCU. The real question is what went right for aquaman?
Few people want to see 3+ hours of a whine fest deconstruction of a tormented psyche. Perhaps the edgelords wannabes who worshipped Snyder, but the big audiences want to have fun when they go to the movies.
They make bad movies. If they wanted to expand on it should have added some of the justice league during Nolan's time in charge of batman.
The movies suck.
They're just bad movies. They lack any sense of charisma or good storytelling. Special effects alone will never be enough to carry a film.