The Flash is performing below expectations. Some people are shocked

boing
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I don’t know if the ones that have worked were flukes. I think there’s a couple of situations where a non-origin story works. First and foremost, with characters whose origin story is part of the cultural zeitgeist. Spider-Man is the best example of this. When Marvel and Sony teamed up to make Spider-Man: Homecoming, they skipped the origin story, and it was absolutely the right thing to do. Everyone knows that origin story at this point. It had been told in two blockbuster Hollywood films and probably a dozen animated tv series, and a pretty cheesy live action tv series from the 1970s. We didn’t need another movie telling us that Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider, develops superpowers, and then uses them selfishly initially leading to the tragic, avoidable death of his Uncle Ben. Everyone knows that story, even people who don’t watch or like superhero movies. With that character, I don’t think you need to do an origin story. And that movie worked. As did its sequels. I think the same is true with Batman and Superman now. The same may not be true for the Hulk now, but it might have been in 2008 because there was a live action origin story Hulk movie just a few years before that. And then the other kind of movie that’s not an origin story that can work is a sequel. Yes, many sequels have sucked, but some have been amazing. By far the best movie of the Thor series was Ragnarok.

What I think all this shows more than anything is that what really matters is the story, and I’ve said this before. If you tell a good story, people will watch the movie. If you tell a crap story, they won’t. People don’t have superhero movie fatigue. People have bad and mediocre movie fatigue. Quantumania sucked, and it’s box office reflects that. After that movie bombed, all the “superhero fatigue” articles and YouTube videos came out in droves. And then Guardians 3 came out and was great. And the 2nd Spiderverse movie came out and did great. Make a good movie with a good story, and people will gladly pay money to go see it. Crank out formulaic garbage with minimal effort, and they won’t.

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Flash was low A tier to B tier. One way to tell is the changing of the mantle holder. I grew up with it being largely Wally, with Barry having been CoIE’ed out of existence before I started reading actively. He was well known, but the trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were DC’s A-tier for ages.

Iron Man was C-tier in Marvel, which is one reason they allowed the movie to be made. They literally couldn’t sell it. The insane casting of Downey, who basically lived Stark’s entire comic life arc, made the movie. I mean, put Nick Cage in the suit and the movie’s not as good.

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Wow, I didn’t know they were that close.

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Not exactly the best measure (given that direct to video can be as well B-listing) but “Flashpoint Paradox” was one of the best received DCAU movies, grossing 33M$. To compare, most movies did about 3M$, and “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” grossed about 9M (between the two parts). Not comparing to modern movies as the lowering popularity of physical media makes difficult to put real numbers (Superman: Red son, which is EFFING AMAZING, grossed only about 2M$!)

I know flashpoint paradox had more characters than the flash, but is a movie about this character first, so there was definitely interest in this one.

Why they did not hire the DCAU showrunners to do the live action films is an enigma to me (also, a year after they released the Flashpoint paradox they replaced the showrunners and the quality has been… let’s just say irregular).

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Keeping Miller on was a great big, screaming neon sign advertising their incompetence. It’s made too much money so far despite how poor of decision it was.

Gotta try and convince everyone “DC is new” under Gunn, but strapping themselves to abusers instead of bringing on fresh talent.

We’ve got suits trashing scads of brilliant IP for tax write-offs and we still get this garbage surfacing, instead.

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