I’m not sure if this is an earnest refutation or not, but DC/WB has largely embargoed their “bigger”/film characters from live-action roles in the past decade or so. That’s why the Arrowverse never had an official Batman (loved Kevin Conroy’s getting to be an alternate version) and it was such a big deal for Superman to show up on Supergirl, although sparingly. But it was disappointing what we never got Wonder Woman.
That’s thankfully going to be changing in the near future, though. I’m not looking forward to James Gunn’s DC run, but I’m looking forward to my girls possibly getting to see more Wonder Woman on TV.
Should I then say “perceived as bankable” then, for clarity’s sake? Because it ultimately comes down to the powers-that-be believing only until now that they wouldn’t profit off of a Flash film and refusing to take the risk.
The other way to look at it from a movie producer’s point of view is “Why have we been sitting on one of the most widely-known superhero properties in history for so long? We should have made a Flash movie decades ago!”
If they’d made a live-action Flash film in the late 90s/early aughts they probably could have let visual effects carry most of the movie since audiences were still wowed by “bullet-time” action sequences back then.
I’ve heard good things in the reviews, but I am reluctant to show any support for a movie showcasing such a POS as the star. Ezra Miller should be shunned from polite society, not given a blockbuster movie to star in. How hard would it have been to recast?
I remember. One of the best things about the show is that they brought in Mark Hamill as the Trickster, a move that I believe was largely responsible for his subsequent decades-long turn as the voice of the Joker.
I continue to be surprised that this wasn’t axed for tax purposes when Discovery purchased Warner.
I honestly believe that they could make a Flash movie that could be a breakout hit. Because in 2006 if you told me that Iron Man was going to be an A-list Marvel character I’d have laughed. And the Flash is at least as interesting a character as Iron Man was then. I love the Flash and I think it could be done.
But this movie just feels like the wrong way to do it. Iron Man worked because it was a stand alone movie about Iron Man. Every trailer for this film makes it out to be a confusing time-travel, multiverse spanning film about a character we don’t even really know yet and makes you think that you at least have to have watched Justice League to be up to speed if not the past 30 years of DC superhero movies.
I’ve been using Netflix DVDs to watch all the superhero movies since the first Iron Man (the last one I actually saw in the theaters), and with the end of it, I’m asking myself if I’m going to bother tracking any of the DC or Marvel movies some other way. I suspect the answer is “no.” I’m probably suffering from superhero fatigue (I gave up on all the DC tv shows years ago), but particularly in this case, I saw the trailers for it and don’t feel much of a need to see the actual movie. They Snyder movies were a turn-off for anything similar. A couple hours of pointless video-game quality CGI fight scenes doesn’t appeal either. (In this respect, modern superhero movies seem very weird to me - even when they do scenes with actual stunt actors, entirely practical, there’s so much overlay of CG for costumes and re-lighting and touch-ups that it all looks fake anyways.)
It felt so similar to everything that’s come before, to me. A stiff Batman in a heavy suit awkwardly fighting gangs of thugs interspersed with buildings blowing up (which seems to be the formula since the Burton movies), with the occasional car chase… I’ve seen it. That ends up swamping out any novel elements for me. Batman in general feels so played out, I don’t see what could be done with a movie that would be interesting. (Maybe if they went the route of a classic Hong Kong/contemporary Thai/Indonesian martial arts movie - a detective story with high-skill fights and parkour… but I don’t see that ever happening.)
The CW DC shows were explicitly blocked from using various characters WB planned to make movies out of (e.g. Blue Beetle), and also forced the removal of characters on the shows (and the sudden termination of plot lines) once they decided to make movies using them (e.g. the Suicide Squad).
And that only ramped up once the Snyder movies were clearly over - I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not.
Seems like the “multiverse” as a comic book movie element exists purely for fan-service rather than for plot purposes or world-building. Which doesn’t seem like it would be great when you’re trying to build an audience…
Wouldn’t it be great if they did that instead of trying to make what they consider risk-adverse decisions? Aside from when they are obsessed with just one thing, even to the detriment of production or the quality of film? (Examples: the WB guy who was obsessed with putting a giant mechanical spider in or the Sony guy whose favorite character is Venom.) DC has so many fun characters they’ve up until now been afraid to put the mainstream spotlight on, and it comes down to how many 0’s they expect to find to the left of the decimal point in the end.
Phase 1 of MCU was so risky. They led with Iron Man because it was no big deal if that brand flopped, he didn’t have mega-fans anyway. Not all of it paid off, looking at you Thor 1.
Heck, the 00’s X-men was risky, and laid the path for modern superheros.
But, as ever, the shareholders seem only interested in this quarter’s returns, so lets crank the handle on cheap low-risk.
It was a well calculated risk. No telling if it would work in live-action, but at least the X-Men were a hot property around that time due to a very, very popular animated series and merchandise galore. But adapting them and especially taking away their distinctive outfits could easily have become, “Who are these people supposed to be?” Not a big fan of that decision, but it paid off for them amazingly.
Agreed. Origin stories so far have made the best superhero movies. Even the recent Daredevil show that was relatively successful was the best during the slow burn first season that was all origin. Once he put on the Power Rangers looking suit and the personality disappeared behind the stiff tactical-textured suit and bug-eyed mask, it kinda lost all it’s personality.
Obviously non-origin movies have also worked as flukes here and there, but it’s much harder, and at least for Iron Man, their fun is in conversation with the memories of the origin movie…
I know that most people say that Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk doesn’t count, but it had Stan Lee and Louis Ferrigno cameos, so that makes it part of MCU canon to me.
