DCU Movies

[The Kid]

The problem is now general audiences don't trust movies associated with this current crew to be good anymore. The other problem is their versions of the character are all tied to baggage that is controversial anyways. Starting over honestly makes the most sense.

This isn't a few flops. This is a decade of failure. MoS came out and was polarizing. Batman vs Superman came out and was extremely poorly received and did the unthinkable by having Batman and Superman's first live action crossover ultimately underwhelm at the boxoffice. Suicide Squad got horrible reviews, the only good thing to come out of it was Harley, however it also pretty much killed the Joker on arrival. Justice League was a total dud and made less than the 4 films that preceded it, which isn't good for your big team up film. Imagine if Avengers did worse than Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man 2, and Thor?

Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam were the only movies that got good reviews and lived up to boxoffice expectations. Two of them got sequels. Both of those sequels were hated and flopped and destroyed any goodwill the originals had.

Then pretty much everything since Shazam in 2019 has been a dud. Birds of Prey flopped, The Suicide Squad got decent reviews but underwhelmed at the boxoffice, Black Adam after years of promotion flopped, and now the Flash is an unmitigated disaster.

When only 3 of your 13 films are well received and actually live up to box office expectations, it's a junk franchise.

The goodwill is gone anyways. The last 7 DC films have not broken $400 million world wide. Only one actually broke a billion. There's just no incentive to move forward anymore with this version. It's limping along and why would you want to saddle creators with having to try to repair franchises with a bunch of bad decisions attached? You can just start fresh and make a new Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman etc who don't have the stink on them

I been saying this for so long but I think The Flash tanking this way should hopefully make everyone realize this. Idk how people can still be in denial about the DCEU and think its continuity should be continued. It's absolutely hated or ignored by general audiences

[Jabare]

Relatively speaking the Shazam films weren’t that successful.

Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman 2 came out during the pandemic and released on HBO Max with no additional cost. It’s unclear if they would have been successful but it’s a fact we can’t ignore.

We can nitpick what DC should have done or how they miscalculated but they were trying to chase Marvel and still are. BvS while successful did not meet expectations and received a fair bit of criticism (unjustly imo) but people still make those Martha jokes today.

DC has to find away to distance itself from the old universe entirely. Black Adam was the last gasp for any salvation. Good cast, solid cgi, bringing Cavil back and the Rock secured a decent audience. But the script was just bad and the direction wasn’t much better. I thought that film would at least hit $600M but it barely beat out Shazam.

Overall it’s a shame because I think the casting for most of these DC films has been really good but you’ve got to recast everyone at this point.

[John Venus]

We all know that Superman: Legacy will be a hard boot and if anything, audiences have proven they will show up if it looks like a good movie regardless of whether it's DC or Marvel.

In hindsight Warner should have just let Snyder finish Justice League then find a new director for the sequel with the same actors.

I don't think the DCEU was unsalvageable until Hamada came in.

You don't need hindsight to figure out what went wrong with the DCEU. Even when BvsS was announced everyone was saying that WB/DC should take their time and reevaluate their plans. Instead they kept telling Snyder to do more of the same and somehow make Marvel money with even less films.

Apparently Gunn has a Rogues series in the works, so that might be how they introduce a new DCU Flash.

Sometimes it's like Gunn is reading my mind....

This and Amazons are a great way to do some world building and build up anticipation for the Gunnverse version of WW and Flash.

[Maestro 216]

Firing Snyder was a mistake. For better or worse, he was the captain of the ship and had a roadmap of where he wanted things to go. WB should've just hired more directors/producers to work with his ideas and eventually replace him. Rather than leave their IP without a vision or a director for 6 years.

Look at the calendar of events.

2017: Wonder Woman comes out to praise and box office success. Z. Snyder having ghost directed portions of the movie, with Patty Jenkins as lead director.

Snyder is fired before he can put together his JL movie. Despite it being nearly finished shooting. Geoff Johns and Jon Berg swoop in and convince TPTB that DC needs to copycat the MCU. Whedon is brought in to reshoot nearly half a completed movie and he turns Snyder's JL into a clone of Avengers 1. To poor reviews and poor box office. Johns and Berg are fired soon after by the studio. My guess is they promised big returns on going lighter and cloning the MCU. Not to absolve the WB executives who mandated the film be under 2 hours (including end credits) and rushing it out the door to secure quarterly bonuses.


2018: Aquaman comes out. The last film Z. Snyder has anything to do with. It makes a billion at the BO. WB is feeling good.


2019: Shazam comes out. A modest success at the BO and popular with critics. Lost in the shuffle of Captain Marvel and Avengers Endgame coming out in the same Spring/Summer season.


2020: Birds of Prey comes out and loses money. With Sonic the Hedgehog beating it at the BO, before global lockdowns took effect. WW84 comes out to middling reviews and bombs at the BO. You can blame covid, I'm sure lots of people do for the film's failure. But a lot of people really didn't jive with what WW84 was selling.

WB adds to the fire by submitting both BOP and WW84 for Oscar nominations. BOP for VFX and Make-up, WW84 for every category available. Neither was selected for nomination.


2021: After years of WB stating that Snyder's version didn't exist, and that the theatrical cut of the movie was the ONLY version of the film. This sentiment flowing into other WB productions (Animaniacs and Harley Quinn animated series). And after the executives at WB deliberately deleting all the footage Snyder had filmed. WB's then parent company AT&T gives the green light to release the Snydercut. Z. Snyder having saved copies of his film on hard drives he took home after being fired back in 2017.The film comes out on streaming and people love it. The fans, the general audience, the critics and even rival movie directors like the Russo Brothers (Cap America Civil War, Avengers 3+4).

Of the 3 JL type properties that came out in 2021: Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy (cancelled shortly after it was released), Marvel's the Eternals (flop and rotten critic scores) and Z. Snyder's Justice League. Only Justice League was received with positive reviews from fans and critics. WB has what everyone else wishes they had. The genuine article. The Real McCoy. And they decided to do nothing with it. They wasted a moment and opportunity. A "cul de sac going nowhere". One executive put it.


James Gunn's The Suicide Squad comes out and it flops hard. It's a better movie that the 2016 version, but no one went to see it. Speaking personally, I noticed that a lot of people who watched the first one were big fans of the Fast and Furious movies. When the second one came out, they couldn't be bothered. There was an audience there that WB lost the second time around.


2022: Under new management. The Batgirl film nobody asked for gets the axe before release. A tax write off. Even though the film was completed.

Ezra Miller makes his transformation from Flash into Reverse Flash, with a string of various crimes and felonies. WB gets him under control and puts out very little information regarding his status. All the while hyping that Flash movie he's in. They've invested a lot of money into this project. They've got HIGH HOPES it'll pull early DCEU BO numbers.

Dwayne Johnson tries to fill the void left when they fired Z. Snyder. To reshape the DCU movies in his own image, with his own production company. Ambitious plan, and kudos to him for trying. WB left leadership of the films in a vacuum for 5 years at this point. Black Adam underperforms and new management wants a reset of everything. Not that I blame Zaslav. See above list and you can see where things went wrong.


2023: James Gunn is the new head of DC films. He's got his own plans, and they don't involve the Lame duck Flash movie, Aquaman 2 and possibly Blue Beetle movies. The announcement that all films in 2023 don't matter, certainly poured artic water on a struggling brand.

Shazam 2 comes out to middling and box office woes.

Flash is now looking to bomb and all the people who hyped up this film have tough questions waiting for them. Maybe not so tough, since the film universe is being rebooted.


As we saw with the Disney era Star Wars movies, and by JJ Abrams own admission. It really pays to have a plan when you do these multi-movie projects. Looking at the DC films after Z. Snyder left, I get the sense that WB wasn't laser focused on making money. The films they greenlit and funded all run counter to that idea. I imagine some suit at the studio thought all they had to do was just put out a comic book property, any comic book property and it would sell like hot cakes. Oh how wrong they were. Especially in a time when the MCU is losing steam and also having critics and BO troubles. Now should be the time to capitalize on it, but WB is just unprepared to do that. It's a shame and a real f*cking waste!

WB could have beat Marvel to the game with Justice League Mortal.

[Garlador]

WB could have beat Marvel to the game with Justice League Mortal.

I imagine the controversy with Armie Hammer would be rather intense today if they had moved forward.

[lefthanded]

The Flash? No. I think everyone knows the failure of the movie can be blamed on the Ezra Miller controversy in addition to WB hyping the film up to the high heavens only for reviews to say the opposite.

While I was not an Ezra fan even prior to Ezra's criminal actions (Ezra's Barry was knock-off brand Peter Parker) and think that Ezra deserves some jail time, I think making Ezra the scapegoat is overblown. I would argue that even if the controversy didn't exist, the exact same box office performance of the Flash would have occurred.

The general public largely is agnostic to controversies, either due to ignorance or just not caring. Not everyone follows blogs, talk shows, entertainment websites. Ticket buyers didn't care how troubled the Titanic production was. Ticket buyers don't care about JK Rowling's controversial statements (some people would point at the falling box office of the Fantastic Beast movies, but that is probably due to the flip-flopping direction and lack of interest in non-Harry Potter stories). Ticket buyers probably wouldn't care about Armie Hammer's personal life (but since they never cared about him in the first place, the point is moot).

Movies fail all the time, and usually it is due to a combination of:
(1) Lack of interest by people with purchasing power, not just by 'the internet' claiming interest
(2) Poor marketing to the target audience
(3) Quality of the film itself for the intended audience [ie. A comedy can be poor quality for Critics, but as long as the audience for the comedy find it funny, it is fine]
(4) Timing

Ezra's controversy only affects the marketing side of things. What is happening now is just that executives and the media find it easy to point at Ezra as the posterchild for why the Flash failed to succeed with ticket buyers. It is easier to blame the obvious controversy and write that headline, than to explain about all the different factors.

[Jokerz79]

I imagine the controversy with Armie Hammer would be rather intense today if they had moved forward.

Yeah, in retrospect they dodged a bullet there.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

As someone who was a fan of Snyder's trilogy not continuing it was the right call as his ideas post JL were frankly terrible

But the theatrical cut of JL gave them a clean slate no Snyder baggage like Lois the key so to this day I don't understand why we never got a solo Cavill Supes film off the ground instead we got two spin off Batman movies unrelated to each other or the DCEU and another Suicide Squad I am not being funny but does any care about SS compared to those other JL characters? I highly doubt it.

With exception of Miller, ZS cast the JL well. WB dropped the ball so hard, even this Flash film they sunk so much money into it and the film is basically pointless it wasn't even the big reset of DCEU I was expecting

[Gaius]

Firing Snyder was a mistake. For better or worse, he was the captain of the ship and had a roadmap of where he wanted things to go. WB should've just hired more directors/producers to work with his ideas and eventually replace him. Rather than leave their IP without a vision or a director for 6 years.

Look at the calendar of events.

2017: Wonder Woman comes out to praise and box office success. Z. Snyder having ghost directed portions of the movie, with Patty Jenkins as lead director.
!

I'll take "What is a conspiracy theory?" for $400, Alex.

[charliehustle415]

Now we can finally get the true Flash on the big screen: my boy Wally West.

Clean slate this bitch and give us the newer versions of everyone.

[BlackClaw]

In hindsight Batgirl would’ve most likely turned in a profit since it cost $85 million.

[Doctor Know]

I'll take "What is a conspiracy theory?" for $400, Alex.

I defy you to tell me that all the action scenes in WW 2017 and WW84 are shot by same director. Especially considering Snyder's blue filter and trademark slow-motion fight scenes are prevalent in WW 2017 and absent in WW84. It's a well known fact that Snyder helped co-write and produce WW 2017. Him being an uncredited director for certain scenes in the film isn't a stretch. Hell, Snyder has uncredited scenes in Suicide Squad 2016 that he directed.

Now we can finally get the true Flash on the big screen: my boy Wally West.

Clean slate this bitch and give us the newer versions of everyone.

*Pawn starts voice

Sorry, the best we can do is "Wallace West". Current year/DEI, ya know?

Lol

[Jokerz79]

I defy you to tell me that all the action scenes in WW 2017 and WW84 are shot by same director. Especially considering Snyder's blue filter and trademark slow-motion fight scenes are prevalent in WW 2017 and absent in WW84. It's a well known fact that Snyder helped co-write and produce WW 2017. Him being an uncredited director for certain scenes in the film isn't a stretch. Hell, Snyder has uncredited scenes in Suicide Squad 2016 that he directed.



*Pawn starts voice

Sorry, the best we can do is "Wallace West". Current year/DEI, ya know?

Lol

It wasn't the action scenes that made WW good. Fact is Snyder never understood the characters and that was the original problem with the DCEU. For Christ's sake the man recently revealed he wanted to make the Amazons Kryptonians.

[lefthanded]

I defy you to tell me that all the action scenes in WW 2017 and WW84 are shot by same director. Especially considering Snyder's blue filter and trademark slow-motion fight scenes are prevalent in WW 2017 and absent in WW84. It's a well known fact that Snyder helped co-write and produce WW 2017. Him being an uncredited director for certain scenes in the film isn't a stretch. Hell, Snyder has uncredited scenes in Suicide Squad 2016 that he directed.

Even if what you say is true, which is still a stretch, they are by far the worst parts of the movie. Suicide Squad was horrible, and it is not like there are memorable "Snyder-esque" scenes that are standouts.

So you are essentially ascribing the 'credit' of bad Directing to Snyder, which is mindboggling that you want more of him.

[Vordan]

I defy you to tell me that all the action scenes in WW 2017 and WW84 are shot by same director. Especially considering Snyder's blue filter and trademark slow-motion fight scenes are prevalent in WW 2017 and absent in WW84. It's a well known fact that Snyder helped co-write and produce WW 2017. Him being an uncredited director for certain scenes in the film isn't a stretch. Hell, Snyder has uncredited scenes in Suicide Squad 2016 that he directed.



*Pawn starts voice

Sorry, the best we can do is "Wallace West". Current year/DEI, ya know?

Lol

You’re completely delusional. Snyder’s only contribution to WW and Aquaman was casting Gadot and Momoa for BvS and JL. Other than that he had zero involvement. Trying to claim that actually he’s the reason those two movies succeeded is pure Snyderbot cope.