Any comics explained fans will know that DC does linewide reboots, marvel does not - so this makes sense!
A POV. Not sure I agree that the DCEU needs to be the DC version of the MCU.
It’s like the comics: DC’s efforts to turn its books into Marvel-like books never worked for me because Kirby, Lee and Ditko started with relatively rounded characters and DC’s were strictly two dimensional with only the rarest exceptions.
Similar with the movies and TV: what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other. It’s not just the approach but the people behind the approach that needs to be copied. Maybe for now, Warner should focus on just making good movies and forget the uber-franchise thing and just focus on a number of successful franchises. . Warner used to be the gold standard of a studio back in the day. Of course, that management has been replaced by incompetents so here the DCEU is.
Opening for Terrance and Phillip?
LOL I don’t think they’d be playing a jazz club XD
Imagine what this data means for Spider-Man, which was rebooted three times while I was typing this.
I remember reading an interview with Bruce Timm where he said he wanted all Batman stories to be set in the 1940s. That’s why he made his Batman cartoon series with that retro look.
Perhaps DC should abandon the idea of an ambitious shared universe and start making standalone films.
So each hero would have their own stories, like other famous characters such as Robin Hood, Dracula and Jesus Christ.
And Batman could live forever in a noir punk universe, Superman could be in a sunny version of the 1950s, Flash in 1960s and so on.
DC has a lot of good material to make movies. These movies could be like Graphic Novels for the theathres, without the need tô be linked tô several different movies.
Wow. That is the best explanation of the economics of the situation I could have imagined.
Thank you.
I don’t know… Maybe Marvel has been leaving breathy, “Just seeing how you’re doing” calls on Jason Momoa’s voicemail. I mean we ALL do that, but if Marvel did it, that would be awkward.
I love Spidey in that helmet
100% agree. Shazam is a strip club isn’t funny or appropriate. Had to walk out of the latest batman because I didn’t do my research and wasn’t expecting to expose my kids to torture and psychological terror.
philipstorry’s take is a good one on the subject. I would add this:
At the time the DC animated universe started with Batman-The Animated Series in the ‘90s, you had lightning in a bottle. Like the synergy of Lee, Kirby, Ditko and a handful of other dynamic creators creating comics’ Silver Age, the guys who were handed the Batman franchise were the right talents at the right time. Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, Dan Riba, et al. were frustrated animators champing at the bit to create something amazing, and they stepped up to the challenge. They managed to distill 50+ years of DC comic book lore, both the Art Deco style sense of their peer animator Tim Burton’s “Batman” movie and the 1940s Fleischer Studio “Superman” cartoons, and the cheap-but-fulsome Asian animation houses available then into an alchemy that delivered the goods. For my money, BTAS is the best version of Batman ever, in any format, because it took the best of what had come before, and boiled it down to its essence. And while not appreciated by those creators, one important part of that alchemy was the restrictions on the subject matter placed there by the broadcast standards of the day. I’m a firm believer that restraint engenders creativity. That tradition has been carried forward into subsequent, mostly successful, animated projects for DC/Warner.
However, in the weird world of Hollywood, animators are animators, and moviemakers are moviemakers, and never the twain shall meet (they’ll point you to “John Carter” or “Tomorrowland” to prove to you why that’s true, though there are counterexamples if you look). About 7 or 8 years ago, I attended a panel at Comicon featuring many of the BTAS creative team. I wanted to ask them why, oh why, the suits at Warner didn’t come crawling, BEGGING the assembled panel to become the Kevin Feige-esque brain trust to shepherd Warner’s DC movie universe to greatness. Those BTAS guys just get what makes good superhero storytelling. But I knew the answer: Hollywood pigeon-holes creators. Crossover is exceedingly rare, and it’s a real pity.
Hope you went back and got them…?
When you get down to it, Marvel’s approach is designed to benefit the capitalists at Disney, not the creatives or the audience. A “shared universe” is a marketing strategy.
but as a kid i loved having to buy issues of series i never read just to get the ending of some arc i had already been reading for months. especially when it involved super pricey annuals
Warner Bros. Pulls Back on DCEU: Shared Universe No Longer Top Priority
…so, uh. That headline is from 2019. Is there a reason we’re talking about it like it’s new information?
Its new to me
I heard Albert Brooks interviewed about a novel he wrote, and he mentioned how freeing it was to be able to have the story do what he wanted to without having to be burdened by cost considerations for filming.
CGI has been a huge part of making superhero movies better, I wonder if as their costs come down, it will allow lower and lower budget movie makers to do interesting movies, in superhero and other genres.
Kinda.
Here’s a really good short which shows how good special effects can be when done by amateurs:
That was TWELVE YEARS AGO.
But that’s mostly explosion/particle effects and simple 3D modelling/lighting. Realistic effects involving humans can require motion tracking, very involved texture work for fabrics, advanced calculations for realistic hair movement, and more. These things are somewhat available to amateurs and low budget productions, but require much more work than simple particle effects and explosions.
When CGI is existing alongside the physical world, there can be a lot of coordination and support required for it. It’s not just the rendering, it’s the logistics of prepping the filming you’re going to enhance with that rendering. Notice how in the video above the two characters don’t move much, and the environment was plainly chosen as a simple static background. Judicious use of slow motion gives a sense of movement that isn’t actually there at points, but overall it’s a quite static scene. Clever film-making, but doing the same thing with moving actors would probably be much more expensive. Not in the rendering, just in the logistics for it.
And logistics is one of those things that rarely gets cheaper…
Here’s some of the things I think WB could to do with their DC properties without copying everything from Marvel’s work.
-
Stop making characters unlike what they are and perceived as by the public and comic writers who’ve worked on them in the past which means don’t make them do things out of character (ex. Superman trying to kill Batman because Lex said so rather than asking Batman for help).
-
Don’t focus the big event. I think it’s been smart that Feige has only teased Thanos over the years rather than going head long into it before going ahead with the huge beat down with him. Basically let the characters grow and breathe.
-
Focus on less well known characters which writers can cut their teeth on to get an idea what should be the core tonal direction for the DC films. Ironically, I think the best live action work for DC has been Doom Patrol. So maybe focus on Booster Gold and Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes or even Ted Kord)?
-
Give your heroes a life outside of being heroes which means giving them problems both as heroes and people that aren’t just bad guys threatening to destroy the world. In this case, Doom Patrol did this well in the first season which I feel is a good template for WB to go by. Although this might seem like a contradiction of my first point but it comes down to having characters challenged and growing to overcome them. For example, if Man of Steel 2 was written instead of BvS then I would’ve hoped the screenwriters would’ve focused on Supes/Clark having to deal with say PTSD from the trauma post-Zod since that would be a reasonable reaction for anyone. He’s still a person and thus would need to process what he did and the fallout from it. But Snyder and WB missed that opportunity for challenges and growth which Doom Patrol has done well by contrast which is why I bring it up.
-
Don’t hire edgelords to write or direct. I don’t think this needs exposition like my other points.