REVIEW: Wonder Woman Can't Save Dull "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"

[Username taken]

http://community.comicbookresources....-or-BvS/page16

This it the poll and the arguments against and for both movies.

Personally, I thought BvS would make more because it was supposed to be a pop culture event.

Now people are comparing to freaking Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Come on guys..

[AcesX1X]

Oh most people understood the plot of BvS, audiences and critics just felt it was stupid hence the massive drops at the box office and poor ratings.

Iron Man 2 still can't be compared with BvS because neither Iron Man nor Black Widow nor War Machine are pop culture icons (at least Iron Man wasn't at the time). Heck, all the other characters you mentioned debuted in that movie.Not to mention the fact that Iron Man 2 didn't cost as much as BvS in budget and marketing. Iron Man 2 was a smaller project that BvS. BvS was intended to be an Avengers 0.5 (hence the name Dawn of Justice) and the addition of the Justice League members (Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg) pretty much confirmed that. Iron Man 2 didn't have as many Avengers members popping up in it, heck there was no Avengers yet at the time.

It's funny how people are applying some severe mental gymnastics and are completely walking back and what they said before. There were polls here and arguments here saying that BvS would make more than Civil War but now that BvS didn't perform as well as we thought it would, people are waking back their comments. I think it's better to own up to one being wrong than completely changing the argument to fit their point of view.

oh are iron man not a pop culture icons now? could have fooled me!

the only "gymnastics" being performed are you, making up unrealistic expectations for character with absolutely zero basis in reality.

yes, superman, batman, and ww are pop culture icons. yes, the movie which largely mirrors iron man 2 in both plot and character structure OUTSOLD iron man 2 by over 200mil.

do general audiences love superman batman and ww more than iron man or black widow since the rise of mcu? personally i would like to think so. but you seem to be convinced of that, so i challenge you to PROVE IT or stop desperately clinging to it!

you made the claim that bvs is akin to avengers. it's not. that's completely false. if anything, it's like iron man 2. a solo sequel tasked with the job of opening the larger universe for more films to come. end of story.

fact of the matter is, by your standards, bvs should be outselling practically every film out there on icon status alone.

well, fact check: DESPITE horrible reviews by critics and constant assault from the dark corners of the internet, bvs continues to perform and has outsold EVERY mcu movie to date except the two avenger movies and iron man 3.

and all this is DESPITE the fact that it's not even family friendly, which bars a significant portion of a potential audience -- unlike mcu which RELIES on family friendly to turn a profit!

for a "failure" with pop culture icons, this movie is doing surprisingly well.

please take these phoney comparisons to GotG and thor elsewhere. BvS left them both in the dust a long time ago.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

A number of people are proclaiming how Superman , Batman and Wonder Woman are huge iconic characters and should have a guaranteed box office of $1 billion. But if we examine this the only real $$$ character has been Batman the last 30+ years.


Superman - The character after 2 big films in the 1970's then limped into the 1980's with 2 very bad sequels. The last one Superman IV was considered a box office failure and did $36.7 million in today's adjusted for inflation calculation. (It did $15.6 million in 1987). Anyhow the film pretty much put the kibosh on Superman as a film character awhile. Warners did wanna try a Superman film as we know in the 1990's around the Death of Superman with Tim Burton involved. It died out after money was spent.

After this Superman basically existed in cartoons and comics. There was a Superboy series soon after that fans liked , then The Lois & Clark TV series ran 4 seasons which was nice. But beyond it , the character never made it to the big screen for 19 years. It was brought up constantly how to reboot Superman as a movie series. It wasn't til Bryan Singer would do his Superman Returns film did we get a movie. Yet it too under-performed a good deal. The movie did $391 million worldwide and Singer claims Warners told him later , it would have been great if it did another $100 million.

There was a slow reaction on doing a sequel at that time as Singer promised to do his "Wraith of Khan" deal with Zod appearing perhaps. But Singer went on to film another project with Tom Cruise and Warners didn't seem in a hurry to do another film. In fact once he returned he was told , ehhhh were not interested in another film. Were rebooting this in a few years.

By 2013 , Warners released an edgier Superman as we saw with Man of Steel. Its here Warners felt finally they would have a film do huge. Except.....it only did $677+ million worldwide. Which was more than the last 3 Superman films combined. (all adjusted for inflation). But still it was a far cry from what people expected.



Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman had a big presence in animated cartoons in her time but never had a movie after years of talk about it. There was talk she'd show up in a World's Finest film possibly but that never happened as we saw during the whole "Superman 90's/early 2000 movies that never happened" phase. Linda Carter gets credit for her making Wonder Woman explode as a character in that TV series in the 1970's , but after it the character went to animation and we never have seen her in live action. We did get a short lived pilot attempt at a WW series on CW back in late 2000's. But they passed on it.

So when people mention "Oh it had Wonder Woman...." just look at them and go ....yes it had Wonder Woman. A character that sadly hasn't had the film and media presence the last 30 years as a Batman or Superman. Sorry that is the truth.



Batman - Here you can say Batman is a media and box office machine. Where as Superman faded from films for nearly 20 years , Batman emerged and kept things running. From 4 Batman films from 1989 to 1998 , to them rebooting the series in 2005 ....the character got 3 more films from that. In total Batman from 1989 to 2012 had 7 films and had the Clooney one not been so badly received box office and critical wise ...there likely would have been 9 or 10 by that point.

You can argue that Batman himself became a $$$ machine and after the reboot Batman Begins did $371+ million , the series took off. Was the Ledger death helpful for it ? It helped for sure and added more to Batman's mystique and we saw the next 2 films do over $1 billion box office.



Warners saw the writing on the wall here quickly. Batman as a whole is a money making machine. A lot of the films high points was Affleck's portrayal of Batman and they quickly locked him into a solo Batman film. A lot of credit why this film is doing nearly $200 million more than Man of Steel seems to be the Batman effect. Which likely will carry over to Affleck's solo Batman film next.

[Username taken]

It isn't the total box office that counts, it is the profitability. Yes, those 9 films were less than BvS, but since most of their budgets for those were also smaller, they were likely more profitable. In addition, Marvel has an end game, so if one film is less profitable, they have others that will potentially be more profitable.

BvS as a start to Warners End Game scenario may not be the starting point they were hoping for.

Exactly.

It all boils down to profitably. There's a reason the Blair Witch project is the most profitable movie ever without it being the highest grossing ever.

[Username taken]

A number of people are proclaiming how Superman , Batman and Wonder Woman are huge iconic characters and should have a guaranteed box office of $1 billion. But if we examine this the only real $$$ character has been Batman the last 30+ years.


Superman - The character after 2 big films in the 1970's then limped into the 1980's with 2 very bad sequels. The last one Superman IV was considered a box office failure and did $36.7 million in today's adjusted for inflation calculation. (It did $15.6 million in 1987). Anyhow the film pretty much put the kibosh on Superman as a film character awhile. Warners did wanna try a Superman film as we know in the 1990's around the Death of Superman with Tim Burton involved. It died out after money was spent.

After this Superman basically existed in cartoons and comics. There was a Superboy series soon after that fans liked , then The Lois & Clark TV series ran 4 seasons which was nice. But beyond it , the character never made it to the big screen for 19 years. It was brought up constantly how to reboot Superman as a movie series. It wasn't til Bryan Singer would do his Superman Returns film did we get a movie. Yet it too under-performed a good deal. The movie did $391 million worldwide and Singer claims Warners told him later , it would have been great if it did another $100 million.

There was a slow reaction on doing a sequel at that time as Singer promised to do his "Wraith of Khan" deal with Zod appearing perhaps. But Singer went on to film another project with Tom Cruise and Warners didn't seem in a hurry to do another film. In fact once he returned he was told , ehhhh were not interested in another film. Were rebooting this in a few years.

By 2013 , Warners released an edgier Superman as we saw with Man of Steel. Its here Warners felt finally they would have a film do huge. Except.....it only did $677+ million worldwide. Which was more than the last 3 Superman films combined. (all adjusted for inflation). But still it was a far cry from what people expected.



Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman had a big presence in animated cartoons in her time but never had a movie after years of talk about it. There was talk she'd show up in a World's Finest film possibly but that never happened as we saw during the whole "Superman 90's/early 2000 movies that never happened" phase. Linda Carter gets credit for her making Wonder Woman explode as a character in that TV series in the 1970's , but after it the character went to animation and we never have seen her in live action. We did get a short lived pilot attempt at a WW series on CW back in late 2000's. But they passed on it.

So when people mention "Oh it had Wonder Woman...." just look at them and go ....yes it had Wonder Woman. A character that sadly hasn't had the film and media presence the last 30 years as a Batman or Superman. Sorry that is the truth.



Batman - Here you can say Batman is a media and box office machine. Where as Superman faded from films for nearly 20 years , Batman emerged and kept things running. From 4 Batman films from 1989 to 1998 , to them rebooting the series in 2005 ....the character got 3 more films from that. In total Batman from 1989 to 2012 had 7 films and had the Clooney one not been so badly received box office and critical wise ...there likely would have been 9 or 10 by that point.

You can argue that Batman himself became a $$$ machine and after the reboot Batman Begins did $371+ million , the series took off. Was the Ledger death helpful for it ? It helped for sure and added more to Batman's mystique and we saw the next 2 films do over $1 billion box office.



Warners saw the writing on the wall here quickly. Batman as a whole is a money making machine. A lot of the films high points was Affleck's portrayal of Batman and they quickly locked him into a solo Batman film. A lot of credit why this film is doing nearly $200 million more than Man of Steel seems to be the Batman effect. Which likely will carry over to Affleck's solo Batman film next.

Good points.

Superman isn't a box office Juggernaut like Batman but he's still a solid money making machine. Batman has been a money making machine for a long time though. Batman, Batman Returns and Batman Forever were the biggest movies domestically in each of their respective summers and each beat the OW record.

At the end of the day, no matter how popular a character is the movie needs to connect with people. I would argue that if Man of Steel and Superman Returns had a better reception they would have made more money because both had solid openings (Man of Steel similar to BvS had a hard drop in its second weekend but that movie had a lot more competition than BvS).

Wonder Woman on the other hand isn't a very popular character outside of comics. A lot of people know the name Wonder Woman but don't really know much or even anything about the character, she wasn't going to make a big difference with the box office of BvS.

[inisideguy]

At the end of the day this movie is over 850 million dollars and was terribly reviewed. Which shows the box office power of these characters. I honestly see nothing but a brighter future for the dc movie universe. I think its 6th all time for cbms right now and could end up 5th. Of course we all forget the original superman movies and batman 89 and cant really compare their box office to these more modern films. I mean worldwide this thing is well over 500 million. And it didnt do great in china. If it has a decent performance there its a billion dollar movie. Two snyder DCU movies have now made more than 1.5 billion dollars at the box office. And thats considered an underperformance by many. But good lord with suicide squad and wonder woman coming out in the next 12 months how can anyone not see a bright future. Everybody keeps using the marvel movies as a measuring stick. If one franchise is doing better than another that does not mean the other is not doing well. Star Wars has always made more money than star trek. But I think there has been like 12 trek movies for gods sake.

[Username taken]

At the end of the day this movie is over 850 million dollars and was terribly reviewed. Which shows the box office power of these characters. I honestly see nothing but a brighter future for the dc movie universe. I think its 6th all time for cbms right now and could end up 5th. Of course we all forget the original superman movies and batman 89 and cant really compare their box office to these more modern films. I mean worldwide this thing is well over 500 million. And it didnt do great in china. If it has a decent performance there its a billion dollar movie. Two snyder DCU movies have now made more than 1.5 billion dollars at the box office. And thats considered an underperformance by many. But good lord with suicide squad and wonder woman coming out in the next 12 months how can anyone not see a bright future. Everybody keeps using the marvel movies as a measuring stick. If one franchise is doing better than another that does not mean the other is not doing well. Star Wars has always made more money than star trek. But I think there has been like 12 trek movies for gods sake.

Exactly.

The movie's performance still shows how popular these characters are. If BvS was better it would have made much more.

At the end of the day, there's enough space for good movies and there's no reason for both Marvel and DC to not both be successful.

[inisideguy]

Exactly.

The movie's performance still shows how popular these characters are. If BvS was better it would have made much more.

At the end of the day, there's enough space for good movies and there's no reason for both Marvel and DC to not both be successful.

Yea. I mean when SS squad comes out and it makes oh I dont know 500 or 600 million or more you will have three DC movies making over 2 billion dollars. Now in what universe is this not doing well? There are maybe 5 franchises in movies right now that can pull this type of bank. If that. Marvel, Star wars, FF,DC and avatar if they ever actually make another movie. This is elite company. CBM fans are funny. Harry Potter had 8 movies I think and not everyone topped the other at the box office. They had some lower ones and higher ones. But there are these insane expectations when it comes to this stuff. If the next FF movie doesnt make as much as the last one of is not as highly reviewed no one is going to come on and say omg its the end of fast and furious! I will have to edit that I forgot about Jurassic Park and Transformers. Those are two monster franchises. Hell Transformers might be the actual biggest money making Franchise of them all next to Star Wars.

[The New Black]

Here's that analysis I was talking about. It's a Forbes article covering the financial histories of the Batman and Superman movies, and a good bit of other information on how much the two characters, and Wonder Woman, are worth for WB.

Of course BvS was going to make money for its studio, that was never in question, no matter how people slice it today.

However, we all know it didn't make as much money as it should have been doing, all because of how mediocre the movie in itself actually is.
A movie this big shouldn't have been mediocre or okay-ish at all - GOOD to EXCELLENT should have been the general consensus around it.
Instead, the majority of people who've seen it are navigating in mediocre - okay-ish waters when it comes to it.
How is that satisfying for DC and WB ?
Of course it's not.
Studios only care about the money they make, and it's obvious money was left on the table with this movie. Right now, it litterally is making money despite being so flawed it was universally panned for it: can't get more frustrating to know a GOOD movie would have reached who knows what numbers for WB...
Especially when your direct concurrence just managed to do it (Deadpool/Fox), or seems to be taking that road (CW/Marvel) right before or after your own movie.

Yes, Marvel made less money with Thor, Captain America, or Iron Man or Ant-Man.
So what ? Since when Batman and Superman shouldn't make more money than the three of them, or Ant-man ?
Thor, Captain America or Iron Man were nowhere near the level of public recognition and appeal when their movies came out than BATMAN and SUPERMAN. None of them were pop culture icons like those and WONDER WOMAN either.
Let alone Ant-Man...
They had a launching pad way steeper than the Trinity had here, yet they still made a lot of money, and their movies were well received by moviegoers and critics.
Because of how entertaining and generally good they were.
Which is all that matters to someone who just paid her/his ticket for a movie: whether or not the movie will deliver and actually be GOOD.

At the end of the day, a bad movie is still a bad movie, all the money in the world won't change that.
F4ntastic could have cracked a billion, this movie would still be a massive disappointement, plagued as it was.
Of course BvS is not F4ntastic level of bad, or Green Lantern level of bad, but it's not what I would call a good movie either: I personnally took issue with the pacing of the movie and its general structure, some jarring creative decisions regarding the characters' adaptations and some of the acting performances that were honestly underwhelming.
All this threw this movie off and that's why it sits between mediocre and okay-ish for a lot of people, me included: it should have been so much more. Overall, it disappointed me. I knew the moment I stepped out from the theater there was no way I was going to go see it again. Some of my friends felt actually cheated once out !
And at some point, studios can't serve subpar movies to the audience and expect said audience to come back afterward. Which is the goal here for them, after all. Get the audience to come back to see the next movie, so they can snatch those €/$/£ again and keep the ball rolling....

Catwoman was universally panned. Batman vs Superman is not.

Marvel's movies are far from universally praised. Iron Man 2, Thor 2, and Ant-Man have been called the safe movies following the Marvel movie formula, scaling things back (budgets/risk and MCU developments) to tide fans over till the next event movie comes out.

[People Of The Earth]

A number of people are proclaiming how Superman , Batman and Wonder Woman are huge iconic characters and should have a guaranteed box office of $1 billion. But if we examine this the only real $$$ character has been Batman the last 30+ years.


Superman - The character after 2 big films in the 1970's then limped into the 1980's with 2 very bad sequels. The last one Superman IV was considered a box office failure and did $36.7 million in today's adjusted for inflation calculation. (It did $15.6 million in 1987). Anyhow the film pretty much put the kibosh on Superman as a film character awhile. Warners did wanna try a Superman film as we know in the 1990's around the Death of Superman with Tim Burton involved. It died out after money was spent.

After this Superman basically existed in cartoons and comics. There was a Superboy series soon after that fans liked , then The Lois & Clark TV series ran 4 seasons which was nice. But beyond it , the character never made it to the big screen for 19 years. It was brought up constantly how to reboot Superman as a movie series. It wasn't til Bryan Singer would do his Superman Returns film did we get a movie. Yet it too under-performed a good deal. The movie did $391 million worldwide and Singer claims Warners told him later , it would have been great if it did another $100 million.

There was a slow reaction on doing a sequel at that time as Singer promised to do his "Wraith of Khan" deal with Zod appearing perhaps. But Singer went on to film another project with Tom Cruise and Warners didn't seem in a hurry to do another film. In fact once he returned he was told , ehhhh were not interested in another film. Were rebooting this in a few years.

By 2013 , Warners released an edgier Superman as we saw with Man of Steel. Its here Warners felt finally they would have a film do huge. Except.....it only did $677+ million worldwide. Which was more than the last 3 Superman films combined. (all adjusted for inflation). But still it was a far cry from what people expected.



Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman had a big presence in animated cartoons in her time but never had a movie after years of talk about it. There was talk she'd show up in a World's Finest film possibly but that never happened as we saw during the whole "Superman 90's/early 2000 movies that never happened" phase. Linda Carter gets credit for her making Wonder Woman explode as a character in that TV series in the 1970's , but after it the character went to animation and we never have seen her in live action. We did get a short lived pilot attempt at a WW series on CW back in late 2000's. But they passed on it.

So when people mention "Oh it had Wonder Woman...." just look at them and go ....yes it had Wonder Woman. A character that sadly hasn't had the film and media presence the last 30 years as a Batman or Superman. Sorry that is the truth.



Batman - Here you can say Batman is a media and box office machine. Where as Superman faded from films for nearly 20 years , Batman emerged and kept things running. From 4 Batman films from 1989 to 1998 , to them rebooting the series in 2005 ....the character got 3 more films from that. In total Batman from 1989 to 2012 had 7 films and had the Clooney one not been so badly received box office and critical wise ...there likely would have been 9 or 10 by that point.

You can argue that Batman himself became a $$$ machine and after the reboot Batman Begins did $371+ million , the series took off. Was the Ledger death helpful for it ? It helped for sure and added more to Batman's mystique and we saw the next 2 films do over $1 billion box office.



Warners saw the writing on the wall here quickly. Batman as a whole is a money making machine. A lot of the films high points was Affleck's portrayal of Batman and they quickly locked him into a solo Batman film. A lot of credit why this film is doing nearly $200 million more than Man of Steel seems to be the Batman effect. Which likely will carry over to Affleck's solo Batman film next.

Somehow, I feel like a movie with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman should make more money than a Batman solo, not the other way around.
Especially given how the movie was sold as the two characters being equally prominent, not just as Superman n°2.
The fact that it made more than Man of Steel was actually expected by everyone.

Be that as it may, I don't see why Superman and Wonder Woman are not worldwide pop culture icons all of a sudden. Because they didn't have a string of $$$ movies released ala Nolan's Batman, they're not ?
Heh, it doesn't take much by that standard.

[CliffHanger2]

Somehow, I feel like a movie with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman should make more money than a Batman solo, not the other way around.
Especially given how the movie was sold as the two characters being equally prominent, not just as Superman n°2.
The fact that it made more than Man of Steel was actually expected by everyone.

Be that as it may, I don't see why Superman and Wonder Woman are not worldwide pop culture icons all of a sudden. Because they didn't have a string of $$$ movies released ala Nolan's Batman, they're not ?
Heh, it doesn't take much by that standard.

Fame isn't necessarily the same thing as popularity and fame doesn't always translate into interest. People know these characters yes but even batman struggled on the big screen years after Burton left up until TDK. Superman faded in the movies after the early 80s, WW didn't even have a presence until now. This is a post Avengers, post Deadpool market. That being said 850 mil in a month could hardly be called an under performance by anyone. The movie is actually doing better in markets where people are not as familiar with the characters which makes sense in today's saturated superhero market.

[CliffHanger2]

At the end of the day this movie is over 850 million dollars and was terribly reviewed. Which shows the box office power of these characters. I honestly see nothing but a brighter future for the dc movie universe. I think its 6th all time for cbms right now and could end up 5th. Of course we all forget the original superman movies and batman 89 and cant really compare their box office to these more modern films. I mean worldwide this thing is well over 500 million. And it didnt do great in china. If it has a decent performance there its a billion dollar movie. Two snyder DCU movies have now made more than 1.5 billion dollars at the box office. And thats considered an underperformance by many. But good lord with suicide squad and wonder woman coming out in the next 12 months how can anyone not see a bright future. Everybody keeps using the marvel movies as a measuring stick. If one franchise is doing better than another that does not mean the other is not doing well. Star Wars has always made more money than star trek. But I think there has been like 12 trek movies for gods sake.

I don't think it's just the popularity of the characters there's a lot of people who actually like the movie and have repeat viewed it.

[inisideguy]

Fame isn't necessarily the same thing as popularity and fame doesn't always translate into interest. People know these characters yes but even batman struggled on the big screen years after Burton left up until TDK. Superman faded in the movies after the early 80s, WW didn't even have a presence until now. This is a post Avengers, post Deadpool market. That being said 850 mil in a month could hardly be called an under performance by anyone. The movie is actually doing better in markets where people are not as familiar with the characters which makes sense in today's saturated superhero market.

Thank you. This whole well they are famous so it should do better is silly. Hunger Games was more famous than american sniper and was just coming off a 450 million dollar movie. American Sniper beat the next hunger games at the box office. No one knew what Avatar was and it brought in more money than any comic book movie with famous comic book characters ever. Deadpool wasnt famous and he beat the last two spiderman movies at the box office and no one is gonna tell me spidey isnt more famous.

[inisideguy]

I don't think it's just the popularity of the characters there's a lot of people who actually like the movie and have repeat viewed it.

Well that to. I might be wrong but has any movie ever done this well with this release date? Maybe Fast and Furious?

[People Of The Earth]

Here's that analysis I was talking about. It's a Forbes article covering the financial histories of the Batman and Superman movies, and a good bit of other information on how much the two characters, and Wonder Woman, are worth for WB.



Catwoman was universally panned. Batman vs Superman is not.

I don't know how you call a movie this poorly received by critics then.
My understanding is that the majority of critics were disappointed in this movie, and the majority of moviegoing audience found it mediocre to okay-ish.
On a personal level, between friends, family and colleagues, the same sentiment prevails, even worse in some cases: as I said, some of my friends actually regretted going to see it in theater.

Marvel's movies are far from universally praised. Iron Man 2, Thor 2, and Ant-Man have been called the safe movies following the Marvel movie formula, scaling things back (budgets/risk and MCU developments) to tide fans over till the next event movie comes out.

I doubt any of those movies generated the same level of disappointment than BvS just did at the times of their release.
Beyond that, it's not a matter of "safe formula" like you're suggesting.
DC can go grimdark if they want (in fact, isn't that exactly what they've been doing with Superman?), as long as it's well executed, tightly done, people won't mind, quite the contrary.
Nolan's trilogy achieved critical success for a reason.