DCU: Batman: The Amazonated Series
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
In classic DC Comics tradition, shit has gotten dumb and unwieldy, and a decision was made to reboot everything. But since those productions won’t start for some time yet, we gotta burn off the slag still in the pipeline. Here’s the upcoming slate for said slag:
Shazam: Fury of the Gods
Aquaman 2
The Flash
Blue Beetle
The first on that list arrived this week and ate shit coming out the gate; Shazam 2 earning a very meager $30 million in the North American market. Was it the boring ad campaign? All the target demo still being in school? Being, like, goddamn terrible? Yes, probably.
We have two years until the Gunnverse kicks in, so until then, hold on to your butts.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods
Aquaman 2
The Flash
Blue Beetle
The first on that list arrived this week and ate shit coming out the gate; Shazam 2 earning a very meager $30 million in the North American market. Was it the boring ad campaign? All the target demo still being in school? Being, like, goddamn terrible? Yes, probably.
We have two years until the Gunnverse kicks in, so until then, hold on to your butts.
Atomika on
+2
Posts
She's a pearl necklace saleswoman
They steal her fur coat and pearls just come tumbling out of every pocket
That could be interesting with a bunch of money and production thrown at it, and good writing and direction.
There going to be good writing and direction, Right?
Ani?
The Shazam sequel came out this week?
Holy shit.
It's like Dunkacino, it's a whole new game.
!!
But for movie execs that have to have ALL of the money, not just some of the money, I guess that figure might be seen as disappointing. Every movie that's not Avatar and doing $billions is a 'flop' now I guess?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Most movies that are described as 'flops' are actually quite profitable for the studio in the end, even if it takes a long lead time from leaving theatres to Blu-Ray sales and streaming deals etc.
So it's kinda bumming me out that signs seem to point to the second one being sent out to die. I mean, who knows if it's any good, but didn't the first one make bank?
Also I enjoyed Shazam, but I still haven't watched it with my kids because of the stupid board room scene that was way the fuck too intense for what otherwise would have been a good family flick.
Haven't seen 2. Levi going kinda anti vaxxer nutty has turned me off there, kinda like how Wright kinda ruined Black Panther 2 for me.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It's much worse than that, he's also a fan of Jordan Peterson.
Stop ruining things for me, Hollywood!
Yikes...and he said that on joe rogan of all places which is almost as bad in itself. As someone who has loved him since chuck i am now a sad panda.
Quantumania is being unironically called a flop all over the place and it made half a billion dollars. Shazam never had a chance. It's the same shit that sent Activision on that roller coaster ride that had people looking for a leveraged buyout at the bottom - it's not enough to make money, it's not enough to make more money than last year. Anything less than more money than last year *and* by a bigger margin than last year's gains is a job destroying failure. Growth must itself be growing.
Personally I sum up the state of the DCU entirely in the sheer amount of recrimination being leveled by everyone at everyone. It's not the YouTube dudes talking out their ass, it's actual people involved using official channels to throw shit at each other in public. People know that mistakes have been made and that it's too late to unmake them, and there's no overriding direction to keep the whole thing moving through them.
This is the part where my brain just gives me the finger when I try to wrap my head around what the hell is even going on.
I mean, if it were just suits who want to make all the moneys and more money isn't enough, it has to be all of it; I can get. It's fucking stupid, but I can get what the motive and narrative is.
But it's not just them, and as you say, it's not just the usual youtube and such faces that have personal narratives to sell on how movies that broke 10 figures were "flops" and the leads are totally getting fired. It's broader, "normal" media, journalists and such, just carrying water for the idea that movies that were way over the line into profit, beyond costs and advertising and such, are "flops". What is there to be gained from that?
Is it just shitty tribalistic bullshit? Like, maybe <movie> didn't do so hot in the states, but still made tons of cash overseas; does that not count? Is it somehow harmful to the industry in a way that I'm not aware of that makes them feel like they have to downplay successes?
We're waaaaaay past the point of the US being the largest share of any given major release.
I just don't understand what the game is here. Any given DCEU film; man of steel or BvS or whatnot, made at least twice what a lot of the pre-Avengers Marvel movies did. Man of steel was like 650m, BvS was 850m, Aquaman was over a billion, Wonder Woman was up there with BvS. Sure, Justice League didn't do Avengers money but it was still over 600m. Regardless of the quality of any given one, from the outside it's difficult to not look at it and feel like the people in charge are fucking nuts. Money in the bank, asses in seats. Not perfect, room for improvement, sure; but they were making the money to fix it without having a massive freakout and changing direction every other year. And to this day, when the Cavill stuff was going on with the shuffle at DC/WB, his outings as Supes were regularly referenced as if they were functionally bombs, but that isn't even remotely true, and I seriously can't understand what the motive is behind pushing that narrative, particularly when it's been years since he was in the role, and it takes about 3 seconds to see how much the movies cost and how much they made.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The posted box office is how much money was spent on tickets, not how much the movie studio makes. There's an arcane profit sharing system that varies from region to region, and often depending on time of viewing (first week is massively more in favour of the studio than a couple months later).
So a theatre in the US selling a ticket opening day is apparently multiple times more profitable than a theatre in Australia selling a ticket for the exact same price on week 5.
It's why studios hype the shit out of things rather than rely on word of mouth. They want those first weekend profit shares.
So it's possible a movie that makes double or even triple it's budget, breaks even or loses money. And in a world where a lot of movies lose money, breaking even is considered a failure (as they need profitable movies to subsidise those that don't)
I doubt it made much difference. Most people already had low expectations for the DCEU by the time the first Shazam movie came out.
Here's the trailer for the first movie. The focus is mostly on the character of Billy, dealing with issues that lots of people in the real world have to deal with.
Here's the trailer for the sequel, which basically tries to be the 1990s Power Rangers movie. I don't really give a shit about anything that happens in this trailer at all. Even the "dramatic" moments seem super contrived.
It's marketed as a completely different movie for a completely different audience.
I always question reports of "a lot of movies lose money." Mostly because due to Hollywood accounting, Freaking Star Wars, the biggest movie franchise in existence, has yet to turn a profit.
A Hollywood movie makes as much money as the accountants want it to make.
Oh sure, a lot of movies that don't make money do make money.
See the David Prowse issue. Return of the Jedi not profitable? Get fucked, Hollywood accountants.
But there's also a lot of movies that don't make money. Not because they're massive flops, but just because making a movie is expensive even on the lower end, and some movies are just bad or don't find an audience.
I'd have liked the movie more if the character had done more then just murder piles and piles of nameless goons before the X-men JSA got jobbed out to him in the stupidest way.
Marvel is humans playing at being Gods. DC is Gods playing at being humans.
Which perpetuates the "Batman problem" where you need to go extra hard at making him seem like he belongs. And every creator goes too far. I love the character but I don't think he fits. Trust me, I love me some fucking Batman. The reintroduction of the "The" is my favorite thing lately. Batman is a name. The Batman is a description of a creature.
The one where he hacks the world ending bombs on Apokolips and blackmails Darkseid works. It can be made to work when written well.
Really the best thing they can do (and which they won't) is a 10 year moratorium on the character and just let us get some fresh blood up on the big screen; there are like 70 some odd characters that have been part of iteration of the justice league at some point or the other that have never been given a fair opportunity to appear on screen.
<pornography joke>
Now I just wanna photoshop PocketSand.meme from King of the Hill but it’s Martha Wayne and pearls. Sadly I don’t know photoshop.
I didn't like the latest Batman.
But I also didn't like the Nolan trilogy, either.
I liked Michael Keaton's Batman.
And I liked Gotham, even though it was merely Batman-adjacent.
To me, Gotham and Smallville are basically the two best DC things ever. Everything else kind of sucks. When they are being comical (pun intended) without going overboard into too much camp, I like it. Too serious? No. Too Adam West-y running from sharks and for like 3+ minutes with a lit bomb? No. But Gotham was great and Smallville nailed the monster-of-the-week format in a similar way to Buffy, so I loved it.
Not to mention that with production delays and suchlike, we may end up getting 2 Batman movies in the same year with different Bat Men
As much as I like TDK Joker I can't say I've rewatched TDK more than twice in full apart from youtubing the Joker scenes, and TDKR was just a disappointment I've never watched it again. The Batman isn't perfect, it features clunky exposition like "killing X with a frickin' carpet tool" at the time its conveniently needed, and that's not the first time it happens in the film, and it's got the blandest Catwoman imaginable, but it has a vision and it sees it through and I do find it enjoyable much more than it isn't. Needed maybe another couple of passes to tighten some things up.
That would mean, for me, the best batman movies are
- Whatever is most recent
- Keaton and Keaton II
- Dawn of Justice League (a 1.5 hour edit of both BvS and JL that I will have made at some point)
- Nolan 2
- Nolan 1
- The Batman
That list isn't likely to change in the next five years unless something just fucking kills it
(animated shit left out on purpose, that's it's own thing and of course it's great)