DC Animated Original Movies Discussion

[Vakanai]

I guess I'm not really trying to justify my own love for the movie or winning an argument so much as just finding it inexplicable that two fans of the same comic would have such dramatically different takes on an adaption and everything in it. So I guess I'm just trying to understand? I don't mean to fault you for your opinion.

I guess that's fair. Just felt like you were implying that I was wrong for hating this movie. I love the comic same as you, I just hated the adaptation on every level. It's like, what I would have been happy with is if they took the approach that they did with Frank Miller's stories when they adapted them, but instead what I got was the approach they took when adapting Justice League War in quality, but the faithfulness to the source they took when adapting Batman: Hush. Justice League War was imo the worst movie of the previous animated universe, and Hush changed too much for a lot of fans. This is where I'm at. I'd have minded the changes less if I felt the movie was fun to watch, I'd cut the disappointing style/tone/etc more slack if the actual adaptation part was fun, but too me it committed the unforgivable sin of being too boring and mediocre while also being too different for my tastes. I don't like the art style, it doesn't grab me, I'm just neutral to it. The voice work didn't work for me, Ackles just sounded wrong - I know that you disagree, I guess it's just subjective, but it just didn't work for me. The pacing felt long and plodding. But a lot of what I wanted to see adapted was cut. I felt they pushed the relationship with Catwoman too far too soon. The differences they chose were too jarring that it took away from what was faithfully adapted. There was just nothing there that worked for me. Like, I could forgive every single problem I have with this movie alone, but all together it's too much to overlook. I could probably forgive them all together if I at least had fun or enjoyed myself, but I didn't.

And the worst thing? This is my favorite Batman story. It will never get adapted ever again. So the one adaptation of my favorite Batman story is a couple of movies where maybe I enjoyed 3 minutes of it all put together. It just soured me so much.

Somewhere in the multiverse this was treated like how they made Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, and I had a blast and rewatched it like 10 times already. But this is the earth where they made a movie that I just wasn't able to enjoy on any level. Not even in the "it's flawed but kind of alright I guess..." level. Like I didn't have to get a perfect adaptation, I didn't have to love this movie, I'm not that difficult, there's a lot of ways it could have played out where I still liked it on some level. But...I just can't. There is nothing here that I liked.

You can disagree or argue further, but if all you want is to know how we could be so far apart on this movie, that's probably the best, clearest answer I can give. It was both too dull/boring and too different for me, when one or the other is forgivable but not both, and there was a slew of little petty nitpicky I could get over if there was something that I liked to balance it, but there just wasn't.

And I really tried giving it a chance just because I went into Man of Tomorrow expecting it to be crap and it turning out to be one of my favorite Superman movies.

Like, I could say that I felt like the movie did the build up to Two-Face spectacularly but you would probably disagree .

Well, you're not wrong there - I do disagree.

I feel like that was more of a denouement than a climax because so much else culminated and hit the fan during the fight at Falcone's rather than in that scene, which was more cleaning up loose ends and wrapping things up and too after the fact to be a climax in my opinion.

To each their own. No surprise but if that's the climax then I also didn't like it very much either. Like the rest of the film, it was just one more thing that didn't work for me.

I agree Batman wouldn't do that, especially after what happened with Alberto. I feel like it's actually a stronger ending and shows character development for Batman in that he actually solved it even if it was too late to actually matter in the end, showing there was a cost to him having to learn to be the World's Greatest Detective since it took all the Holiday Killings and poor Harvey's livelihood for him to (hopefully) reach that point. I don't think he would've let her go or let her burn the evidence but I guess for me there was enough ambiguity as to whether he let her go or had her turn herself in. But it doesn't really matter one way or another because Harvey's broken and everyone Holiday wanted dead was dead.

To each their own. I disagree of course, but it really doesn't matter why I disagree. I gave this film a chance, and I wish I hadn't. I regret watching it, and I would be happier if I hadn't and just pretended like it never got made. The only good thing that I can say about this movie is that it ruining my favorite Batman story at least means no other Batman movie, no matter how bad, can ever be as big a disappointment to me. As far as Batman movies are concerned, I'm untouchable now. Bad Batman movies in the future will benefit simply by not being this movie. There's no other Batman story I love as much, so there's no other Batman movie they can make that I could hate as much.

That's the only thing that I can say that's positive about it. I can't be this disappointed another time. Least with Batman. But it's like a monkey paw situation. Before this movie I was really hoping that Superman Smashes the Klan would be adapted someday too. Now I'm thinking I'm better off just having the book. I don't want WBD/DC to adapt their comic book stories ever again. I genuinely just want original stories from now on. Too much can go wrong with adaptations. A bad original story can't affect your feelings for the source material in the same way. I'm thinking I will only watch adaptations to stories I either haven't read or don't care for at all.

[Jabare]

according to Mr. Semper's official Twitter:

"The new GREEN LANTERN movie "Beware My Power" is probably the most dramatically exciting thing I've had the pleasure of working on since I was the producer and head writer of the nineties SPIDER-MAN animated series. Truth!"

[Aahz]

At the point in the Trailer where they asked John Steward how he got the Ring, I was kind of thinking of this explanation

[Confuzzled]

according to Mr. Semper's official Twitter:

He was the head writer of 90's Spider-Man? All the more reason to be excited!

[Confuzzled]

This was a fun underrated flick.

They really put ZERO effort in marketing this. My friend and I came across this on HBO Max and assumed it was a low-budget mid/late 2000's flick that flew under our radar but were then surprised to see Wonder Woman in her DCEU battle skirt pointing to the film being a fairly recent one. Honestly it made for a great weekend afternoon watch. I feel bad for the team that worked so hard on this only for WB not bother to promote it at all.

[Johnny]

The funny thing is this came out a few years before Gal Gadot was even cast as Wonder Woman so I'm still curious about how they mixed up some of the character design choices. Batman with a more classic look, Superman with a New-52 inspired look, WW with a cape and centurion skirt before it was cool. lol Cyborg's design giving him some more skin was a plus too, while this has to be the first time I can remember seeing Aquaman with the trident in animation. It's a really fun movie.

[Aahz]

They really put ZERO effort in marketing this. My friend and I came across this on HBO Max and assumed it was a low-budget mid/late 2000's flick that flew under our radar but were then surprised to see Wonder Woman in her DCEU battle skirt pointing to the film being a fairly recent one. Honestly it made for a great weekend afternoon watch. I feel bad for the team that worked so hard on this only for WB not bother to promote it at all.

IIRC that movie was produced for some Toy Line, and sold along the figures in Toy stores.

[Frontier]

according to Mr. Semper's official Twitter:

John Semper nostalgia .

[Thezmage]

IIRC that movie was produced for some Toy Line, and sold along the figures in Toy stores.

IIRC part of why there was no follow up is that nobody was interested in making the toy line. IIRC there were no toys for this one.

[Frontier]

IIRC part of why there was no follow up is that nobody was interested in making the toy line. IIRC there were no toys for this one.

And I think the Unlimited line not doing well is why they stopped making those movies...

[Confuzzled]

The funny thing is this came out a few years before Gal Gadot was even cast as Wonder Woman so I'm still curious about how they mixed up some of the character design choices. Batman with a more classic look, Superman with a New-52 inspired look, WW with a cape and centurion skirt before it was cool. lol Cyborg's design giving him some more skin was a plus too, while this has to be the first time I can remember seeing Aquaman with the trident in animation. It's a really fun movie.

That's wild. I checked and technically it came out a month after Gadot was confirmed to be playing Wonder Woman but her costume was still not designed. This movie came out in January 2014 and the first look at Gadot's Wonder Woman was revealed later at the Comic Con of the same year in July. Could it be possible that this is what inspired the DCEU costume?

[Frontier]

Did Jason Fabok do the Battle Skirt before or after the Gadot costume reveal?

[John Venus]

They really put ZERO effort in marketing this. My friend and I came across this on HBO Max and assumed it was a low-budget mid/late 2000's flick that flew under our radar but were then surprised to see Wonder Woman in her DCEU battle skirt pointing to the film being a fairly recent one. Honestly it made for a great weekend afternoon watch. I feel bad for the team that worked so hard on this only for WB not bother to promote it at all.

I remember when news of this first broke on CBR. A FAN noticed a poster then reached out to the producers who then gave an interview. Literally zero effort at all was made to market this.

[Gaius]

That's wild. I checked and technically it came out a month after Gadot was confirmed to be playing Wonder Woman but her costume was still not designed. This movie came out in January 2014 and the first look at Gadot's Wonder Woman was revealed later at the Comic Con of the same year in July. Could it be possible that this is what inspired the DCEU costume?

Did Jason Fabok do the Battle Skirt before or after the Gadot costume reveal?

Wonder Woman in a Grecian Hoplite-inspired battle skirt goes back to Perez as an on-and-off costume that would pop up in main books or elseworlds (ex. Rucka wanted to redesign her outfit to be more hoplite-inspired but was vetoed). As well as also being a general fanart thing one could find when people brought ditching the swimsuit or what she would look like in a movie.

So it's not surprising that's how the films went. I remember rumors around the time the costume was supposedly Injustice-inspired and lol, thank God, the Devil, Primus, The Presence, and The One-Above-All that didn't happen.

[Batgrayson]

Did Jason Fabok do the Battle Skirt before or after the Gadot costume reveal?

I remember Fabok saying his WW's design for Darkseid War was one he made a couple of years before BvS, for his portfolio, so he was really surprised to see Gadot's costume was almost identical to his design.