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[DCEU] launched a streaming service which has Young Justice S3
Harry Dresden
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The DEU moves forward. Optimism in the project continues to plummet post-not! Guardians of the GalaxySuicide Squad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1j7qWUQjog
Please be good. Though even if it is the DCEU brand is going to difficult to overcome - so well done, WB. Save us Gal Gadot-chan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvJaSmunY7Y
Goofiness is in full swing, and had this been made earlier it wouldn't be as big a tone switch. Because there is no tone consistency in this universe. Tone consistent is for those movies cinematic universes who have competent people running them (X-men, Marvel etc).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRcSA6fWZQ
And Deathstroke somewhere? They're going to step up their game to compete with Arrow-verse Slade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYBfbppa4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1j7qWUQjogPlease be good. Though even if it is the DCEU brand is going to difficult to overcome - so well done, WB. Save us Gal Gadot-chan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvJaSmunY7YGoofiness is in full swing, and had this been made earlier it wouldn't be as big a tone switch. Because there is no tone consistency in this universe. Tone consistent is for those movies cinematic universes who have competent people running them (X-men, Marvel etc).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRcSA6fWZQAnd Deathstroke somewhere? They're going to step up their game to compete with Arrow-verse Slade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYBfbppa4M Harry Dresden on
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Wow, he does. He looks exactly the same, like I would believe that they just stole the model whole cloth. Eh.
As for Batman killing people with guns, that could maybe possibly be an interesting what-if story. Not the way to introduce him in your new shared universe, obvs.
Not much else to say except :heartbeat: to all the folks who suffered through the whole shit buffet so I could pick out the morsels worth eating.
Even when it comes to the tiny world of cinematic universes, the fundamental truth of cinema remains: neither cast, nor crew, neither subject nor style, etc; no proxy exists for quality. The only measure of quality is quality.
The reason the DCEU is bad is because the movies are bad. If they were great movies with inconsistent tones, it would be a great universe and we'd all be talking about how DC mirrors the comics industry by giving space and freedom to diverse, talented auteurs to put forth individualistic takes on similar narratives in a truly shared world.
Marvel, on the other hand, succeeds financially (but almost never creatively) because it is easier to build a brand around consistency (and familiarity) than quality. Marvel is the Dreamworks to DC's would-be Pixar: confident but conventional, a franchise generator in the Ray Croc sense, selling audiences the same movie over and over again in a dreary grind toward the inevitable soft reboot.
Between DC and Marvel, I'll take DC--at least their movies are colorfully, vibrantly atrocious, where Marvel's weaker efforts tend toward an idiot soporificness that dulls the mind and strangles the spirit.
Tone consistency is important, it isn't the end all be all of film quality. I didn't think I'd have to point the obvious out. There have been numerous threads where myself and others have gone over the problems the DCEU has struggles with. You could literally with a multi page thesis on how bad they are from those conversations.
Tone consistency is important in tying the movies together, otherwise it looks haphazard. Tone also is more obvious with the DCEU since they seem to go back and forth on what type of characters they want them to be (Batman and Superman), with no explanation in between installments. This effects verisimilitude, along with their terrible world building.
Tone consistency is one advantage Marvel got right when building a brand, you know what you're getting and this stretches across their portfolio. The Arrow-verse does this right, too. We don't know exactly what we're getting with the new movies, what we do for sure is that the chances of it being bad quality are very high.
Agreed.
That'd be less of a problem, yes. But it'd still stick out unless handled appropriately.
I sense a mocking tone in your last sentence. Diversify is welcome, Marvel does it pretty well actually. Unfortunately whenever the DCEU tries it utterly fails since the people making it don't know what they're doing or misunderstand the concepts.
In your opinion. The movies are critically acclaimed, they aren't the Transformers movies or PT. Yeah, some of them aren't great, you know no one in Hollywood hits 10/10's out of the park all the time. Marvel manages to do this with amazing consistency not seen since Pixar.
It's true they do have a formula but they're not all identical. The movies with similar shapes (Iron Man, Ant man and Dr. Strange) have many things unique to them. All the Cap movies are very different in tone and formula to each other, Thor movies are kinda bleh, GOTG was a huge risk and a genre breaker (so was Dr. Strange). Winter Soldier is not the same movie as Guardians of the Galaxy.
Except that's the standard there are no high quality DCEU film yet. They've had 3 attempts they shouldn't be this far off the formula, especially when they've got numerous examples of how do this super hero films properly - including from their own catalog (Dark Knight trilogy).
Yes, Marvel fails to hit it out the park all the time, that's unavoidable. What about their quality efforts?
Yep, they're bad. But not because of tone. This is like saying DC's real problem is their Best Boys just aren't the best. Maybe it's true, but it's so far afield from the actual disease that it ends up being a meaningless diagnosis, like when you have cancer but the doctor is like "I notice you're not sleeping well, that's probably why you feel so bad." No, it's the cancer.
Great cinema can be haphazard--Tim Burton's Batman is a far cry from Donner's Superman, that doesn't make them bad movies or a poor pairing.
These cinematic universes are basically huge TV shows, right? Most of the time you do want consistency in your shows--each episode should basically look and feel like the one before. It's Cheers or The West Wing... But every once in a while a show comes along that throws consistency out the window and is all the better for it--Community, Louie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Consistency can come at the expense of surprise, of excellence, and of radically tailoring each episode's approach to its subject matter.
It's a brand advantage, but who cares? Marvel has to care about Marvel's bottom line. I just want good movies.
No mocking. I don't mean diversity of race and gender (that's a different conversation); I mean diversity of voice. My ideal DCEU would be a place for different auteurs to leave their stamp on the series. David Fincher's Batman, Guillermo Del Toro's Green Lantern, Katherine Bigelow's Superman. Or whatever. Marvel flattens all voices into one style; I'd love to see a place where creators are, in contrast, supported and freed to do their best work.
Dreamworks has consistency. Pixar has (or had) consistent excellence.
Conventional wisdom is that Guardians was a big risk. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Anybody who thinks that space opera does badly at the cinema has been asleep since 1977. Anybody who thinks mainstream audiences would balk at a sci-fi action film forgets that 1) superhero movies are for nerds and nerds love sci-fi, 2) everybody is a nerd now. There's really no universe in which an even barely competent sci-fi action comedy with the word Marvel on it (not to mention starring one of the most bankable, likeable actors since Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones in space) wouldn't make a bunch of money and be well received. It only looks like a risky bet next to the safest bet ever laid, Iron Man 35: RDJ Says More Quips.
And Dr. Strange? Yeah, nobody ever got rich making movies about wizards.
Sure. For what it's worth, the thrust of my argument isn't that DC is great. But the comparison must be made because these two entries are the only CUs out there. My argument is simply that "a good CU needs to be X," especially where X is something Marvel arguably suffers from, is a false idea. We don't know what cinematic universes need yet because the form barely exists. My argument is that just because that guy over there is skinning cats and this guy over here is failing to skin his with a dull spoon doesn't mean there's only one way to skin cats.
Marvel is McDonalds. It's tasty, it's popular, it's usually decent enough when you're hungry, and you know exactly what you're going to get every single time.
DC is the food court restaurant in a failing mall that changes hands every two months. Sometimes it's a crappy pizzeria, sometimes it's a really awful cheesesteak hut, and you suspect the roaches are the same either way. But one of these days it might become a great hole in the wall Chinese restaurant, and that's never going to happen at McDonalds.
But ultimately what I want is more than two restaurants. Because I love superheroes and I want to see them done well, and right now I see two competing brands each with different crippling problems holding them back from greatness.
Tone is merely one of the reasons why they're bad. It's a problem they have, not the reason. They don't get a free pass with tone because they have serious issues elsewhere.
Burton's Batman isn't supposed to exist in the same world as Donner's Superman, which was my point.
Cavill's Superman and Affleck's Batman are a poor match thematically. Superman's meant to be a contrast, they're so similar they barely have a reason to fight in the movie.
Your tv example is flawed, this isn't just about an episode this is a man series and spin-offs. Angel's tone fits in with Buffy's, Frasier's does with Cheers, Voyager does with TNG, JAG does with NCIS etc. They all fit seamlessly in the same world. It's not jarring to think those shows exist together, it does when Suicide Squad occurs after B vs S. The shoddy world building contributes to this.
So do I, and plenty of people do care. DCEU needs as much edge as they can get to compete with Marvel.
That's an advantage Marvel tried years perfecting and it paid off, WB would be wise to do the same. It's good business to build a reliable brand.
I wasn't talking about race and gender diversity. Yes, they have diversity, except this isn't a strength when their product is terrible. When it's done terribly in bad movies all it does is add another layer of incompetence. Considering WB is a major movie studios that has been in the movie bit for literally decades that's a big blow to their reputation when they're getting beaten by the newest kids on the block who bet their entire company on Robert Downy Jr. (who was a massive risk at the time, as perfectly cast as he was). What's worse is that this gap has been steadily growing over the years, rather than narrowing. How embarrassing for WB.
I wouldn't say the DC movies are the best works for anyone. WB aren't disciplined enough to make the auteur director style work for this universe, instead it reeks of throwing everything at a wall and hoping something sticks. There is barely any plan, and what they do have quickly shifts. Sure, marvel does this to an extent, but that's it. To an extent. I can;t recall them ever completely shifting their slate once when it was told to the public. The DCEU has.
So does Marvel.
Conventional wisdom is that Guardians was a big risk. Anybody who thinks that space opera does badly at the cinema has been asleep since 1977. Anybody who thinks mainstream audiences would balk at a sci-fi action film forgets that 1) superhero movies are for nerds and nerds love sci-fi, 2) everybody is a nerd now. There's really no universe in which an even barely competent sci-fi action comedy with the word Marvel on it (not to mention starring one of the most bankable, likeable actors since Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones in space) wouldn't make a bunch of money and be well received. It only looks like a risky bet next to the safest bet ever laid, Iron Man 35: RDJ Says More Quips.[/quote]
Conventional wisdom was right. That Marvel did that right didn't mean it wasn't a huge gamble, this is how the movie industry works, too. Every movie is a big gamble, nothing's 100% safe. If that weren't the case why weren't Green Lantern and Catwoman successes?
Star Wars doing well is not proof the whole genre isn't risky. Sci-fi and space opera have had periods where they weren't safe, this occurs on tv as well. I could write a list of all the movies in those genres who were flops or who were low budget knock offs that don't put a dent in Star Wars profitability. Trek's been on the brink of collapse for years, pre-Abrams.
No movie is guaranteed to be a hit by the genre alone, otherwise there wouldn't be as many flops or low selling movies, not everyone can make a blockbuster and many blockbusters fail.
DC got lucky with Nolan, and they've been trying to replicate his success ever since. To bad they completely misunderstand how he did that, and that his formal shouldn't be every super-hero DC has.
Everyone didn't start off as a nerd, but you know why they are? Marvel. They made super-heroes cool, Nolan's Batman also contributed.
Chris Pratt wasn't a bankable dynamo when he got the role, he was known for Andy Dwyer from Parks and Rec. Marvel made him a star, and it re-ignited RDJ's career, too. Same for Chris Evans, and Chris Hemworth. Marvel makes stars, the DCEU not so much.
Iron man 3 was a safer bet, which took many years of practice and risks before it was safe. Iron Man sure wasn't, and if it had failed Marvel would have been taken in by the bank. Avengers was another massive risk that could have easily failed.
Constantine was a flop. Oz, the Great and Powerful barely broke even. The Last Witch Hunter flopped.
The first Dr. Strange movie was this
No one remembers this movie.
Harry Potter is the exception, not the rule for fantasy movies.
Your comparison lacks the full scope of how far ahead of the pack Marvel is, and it's not Marvel's fault DC's the only competition. Though Fox is doing ok, they've been trying to branch out with their own CU and has showed tremendous promise with Deadpool. DCEU can't say that.
The current form has barely existed, however we have a lot to draw upon not only from Marvel itself (their CU has been around for nearly a decade), connected universes have been around for decades in media like tv* and the WB has a successful history with super-hero films since the 70's. There's absolutely no excuse they should be behind this badly.
When you're talking about "hands changing" do you mean directors? Because that's what Marvel does too, yet they're not in a rut like DC is. If its upper management there's been some rumbles about people moving in (like Johns), but overall everything is in place. Snyder remains intrinsically linked to molding the DCEU, and has his tendrils in all the movies - like Wonder Woman. Snyder is not kicked out of the DCEU, even if his position isn't a stable as it used to be post-B vs S, nor is Affleck taking over any time soon.
You're free to disagree, but when has the DCEU not been a dumpster fire? "Sometimes" implies they actually do good stuff occasionally.
The thing is that DCEU should be up to the task of competing head to head for Marvel. They have access to the same tech, an industry full of people capable of making solid super-hero movies, their casting is brilliant, they're the Empire in this scenario not the plucky rebels. What's holding them back? The metaphor should be modified to McDonalds declining badly, while jumpy upstart Mighty Joe's Chicken stole all their business. Kinda funny how this happened identically in the comic industry.
The irony is that the DCEU has the same strengths to compete with Marvel in film if they utilized their IP's right, those universes have more in common than not. RE: Arrow-verse.
How is Marvel holding back DCEU's greatness? And how is Marvel in any way in that position?
DCEU needs to be like Marvel because there are many elements that would suit that which marvel does right. The two universes are like two brothers, WB could do exactly what Marvel does and have the same successes. Instead they're reactionary and contrary, trying to be edgy, want to relive the 80's and 90's, and secretly badly copy Marvel while praying nobody notices their similarities.
* Star Trek, and Law and Order being some of the big names who pioneered this. On the movie front Star Wars has done this with two trilogies and managed a successful premiere to a third + more
I'm just saying, I don't think tone is actually a problem at all here. But you have specific reasons for disliking the tonal inconsistency beyond just not enjoying the movies, so fair enough.
Obviously not literally, but they certainly could, I think.
Are we still talking tone? Are they too similar thematically and too different tonally?
Like, the big tonal discrepancy in the DCEU so far is Suicide Squad versus everything else. Batman v Superman doesn't feel like a film divided, tone-wise; the Batman parts feel like Batman and the Superman parts feel like Man of Steel and, as you suggest, both of those tones are essentially the same grim, mopey Snyderism.
As for why they don't like each other, it's partly because grim egotistical badasses rarely play well together, and partly because their conflict is largely engineered by the villain. They gotta versus because that's the movie, but the story wants them to be inherently predisposed to best bud status (which is why a few minutes of conversation does the trick). I agree that this is dumb, but even on the back of the terribleness of Man of Steel you could have made a good Batman v Superman movie. If anything the two films are more tonally consistent than they should be, which is part of why I go "huh?" when you make that complaint.
I think this is stretching the analogy. Marvel is not like JAG and NCIS; it's closer to something like Game of Thrones, where multiple plotlines with different central characters coexist in one world until they collide in the finale (the next Avengers movie). (Sure, Game of Thrones needs consistency, but it also needs variety, and it would need more if we only got two episodes a year.)
Moreover, there are plenty of spin-off shows that benefit from radical differences in tone, aim, or format. Glee spun off a reality show. The Animaniacs is a skit show that spun off into single story shows like Pinky & The Brain and Freakazoid (with all three having wild differences in approach). Closer to home, B:TAS and Batman Beyond exist in the same universe but are very distinct in style. And as a Law and Order connoisseur, there are significant differences between most of its entries; the original is a strictly restrained classic "issues" drama, SVU shifts from one form of overt pulp to another, Criminal Intent was a Sherlock Holmes show, etc.
WB has plenty of money, and anyway, quality is a great way to make bank. Just look at the Nolan Batman movies versus the Snyder Superman films.
The DCEU blows, but the solution to this is not to take on one of Marvel's troublesome limitations. Or rather, I would prefer if they succeeded at the more difficult task of making good movies than if they settled for making more consistent movies.
Nuh-uh, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.
Obviously no film is totally without risk. But the conventional wisdom said Guardians was a bigger risk than usual because of its genre and subject matter, that there was a chance audiences would reject a film set in space and featuring silly elements like a talking raccoon. Much hay was made over this. Check out this Variety piece, for instance:
The entire mindset that produced this article is fundamentally ridiculous. "People said the last 9 times John did this, it was a terrible risk, but they've been wrong every time. Probably they're right about this one, though." The current studio mentality is a tremendous distortion based on the idea that pre-existing brands make less risky movies, no matter how poorly made the film or how unpopular or terrible the original brand. But they live in a world where Green Lantern failed because it was one of the most awful, hollow movies ever made by a studio, and where Inception made $800 million because it was great.
Likewise, the oft-repeated idea that genre or subject matter holds an audience back is always, always, always bullshit. I can't think of a single big, marketed movie that was rejected by audiences because it was too weird or because they'd never met the characters before the trailer.
In fact, even if all of those CW concerns were true, the fact is that Marvel's built a successful brand that people trust. They could damage that trust by releasing a movie people hated, but that movie would still do pretty well. (People hated Batman v Superman, but BvS still made... $900 million.)
You can list failed movies in a particular genre, but that doesn't disprove my point, which is that almost no genre prevents a movie from being successful (just as no genre ensures it).
Or how about the original Batman, which was the top grossing movie of 1989? How about X-Men, or the Maguire Spider-Man films? Marvel is more symptom of this trend than cause.
McDonald's is much farther ahead of the pack than a single crappy mall restaurant, so if anything my comparison exaggerates the Marvel/DC divide.
I'm talking about directors. Marvel can swap out whomever they want, the fact remains that their directors are constrained. McDonald's food doesn't taste any different when there's a new chef in the kitchen.
Broadly speaking, it sounds like what you want is for DC to be Marvel with different characters. I think that's a bad thing to want for a few reasons.
One, Marvel is Marvel with different characters. Eventually they'll have twice as many franchises going as they used to. Enjoy those numbers and stop looking for replication outside of that company.
Two, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and it's better for everybody if Marvel's competition explores different ways to make superhero movies instead of the genre being hyperfocused on matching some arbitrary ideal.
Three, Marvel ain't so hot and there's room for smart people to blow them out of the water. I'll take Nolan's Batman movies over anything Marvel's produced, or indeed over everything Marvel's produced.
What I don't want is for our options for big budget superhero movies to be Coke & Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King, different shades of black Model Ts. That doesn't serve anybody except stockholders, and I'm not one of those. I want McDonalds and a great steakhouse. I want Coke and Fizzy Lifting Drinks. I would be far happier letting Marvel do its thing without complaint if I had a better, wilder alternative to enjoy. If DC is gonna continue to be trash, maybe that needs to be Vertigo or whatever that equivalent is. But it should be something, and for now, hoping DC will grow up without learning too many rules is my best bet.
Marvel's not holding back DC at all, and I can only assume DC is failing because they're a bunch of damn morons--they understand that the way to success is to hand over creative control to talented filmmakers, but they're bad at recognizing talent, as indicated by their decision to put Zack Snyder in charge. The answer to that is to empower better filmmakers, not to stop empowering them at all. DC's overall approach is too controlling, not even necessarily because they're exercising too much control (that's Marvel's problem) but because they're dumb and use that control to make bad decisions. The ham-handed Suicide Squad retools are a perfect example. The problem with SS in terms of the DCEU isn't that it's tonally out of whack, it's that the fight over what tone it should be ended up muddling the film's intentions.
Edit: If I were DC I'd be focused on two things:
1) Hiring smart people to make good movies
2) Figuring out ways to take advantage of Marvel's weaknesses - jump on gender/racial diversity early, hire Wes Anderson to do whatever he wants, focus on great villains, etc
Ignoring that whatever their faults the Marvel films are fun and are populated with characters that get the audience to like them. Dr. Strange has as bog-standard a plot as you could ever hope to see, but its characters are likable and it knows how to do a lighthearted scene. By contrast watching BvS or Suicide Squad is drudgery: those films demand emotional investment without providing any justification for it, and when viewers quite reasonably decline to give it The Tale of Two Marthas falls flat.
I don't demand every action film be Inception, you know? Superhero films don't need to function as high art to entertain me, but they do need to make me not actively hate all the characters.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
all it would take to fix BvS is like a few extra scenes and some extra dialogue
but Snyder misses the forest for the trees because he focuses on action shots, not world building
But the mall has mandated that no matter who takes over the restaurant, they have to keep the same chef, who insists on always smearing vegemite on everything he makes, whether it's pizza, steak, tacos, potato salad, noodle soup, or cheesecake.
Obviously not literally, but they certainly could, I think.[/quote]
Fair enough.
Too similar in tone.
MoS is very dark and grounded, while B vs S is WarHammer 40k grim dark. I'm not saying Batman and Superman are tonally different in the same film, that's another subject (which effects its tone being grim dark) all 3 movies have different tones.
Why they don't like each other before Lex arrives isn't properly explained, though. We get Batman's side, not Superman's. He shows up, threatens Batman to retire because ? and that's all we get. How we get to the versus aspect was very badly set up at every angle.
I'm not just talking about tone here, I'm talking about why the films are bad and how sometimes those choices effect the tones.
They could have made a good B vs S movie with what they had, but they didn't.
Marvel isn't a single IP, it's several. It's Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Avengers - separate and together. That they have are shared plot line (which isn't always the focus), misses that fact. GoT is a single IP with a large cast. Marvel also does more with its tv branches, too - it's not just two "episodes" a year.
Pinky and Brain and Freakzoid may have different humor, though P & B are nearer to Animaniacs in style, they're not totally unlike Animaniacs to be connected to it. It would be if a spin-off was Batman TAS. That'd be a tonal switch which would confuse people.
Beyond shared a lot of the same tone, humor and animation style as TAS, and so did Justice League. They even had the same people making it!
L & O may have slight differences yet there was significant overlap in how the shows were produced, scripted and tone wise. There is no doubt all these shows occur in the same universe. Criminals Minds and CSI do this, as well.
Nolan's Batman movies are over. WB do have plenty of advantages, yet they're playing catch up to Marvel when it should be the other way around. They have no excuses. What they don't have is a perceived quality brand like Marvel has.
I'd be ok with that too, I don't have much hope they can do that without a serious shake up up top, their corporate culture is changed, and they focus more on the DCEU with a single vision (ala Fiege).
My argument is not solely about consistency, it also includes quality. This needn't be one or the other.
How so?
Every Marvel film they make it a big risk, some more than others. That they managed to do the impossible again and again is a sign of how amazing they are, I can't recall another study having this many hits so consistently and they're not losing steam. What's even more impressive is that they only began in 2008, they haven't been making movies for decades like WB or Fox.
My argument about genre was about how no genre is safe unto itself, it doesn't matter what the genre is. Every movie carried tremendous risk for studios. That marvel was able to make a successful movie with Ant-man despite the chaos behind the scenes was very impressive.
Inception also had the benefit of an all star cast, a big budget and Christopher Nolan. No every film can boast that.
They have been wrong every time, however that says more about Marvel than them. They should have had some flops by now, yet nope. Their weakest efforts were in Phase 1, and once Avengers kicked off they went into overdrive, they finished refining how they do things and now they're practically unstoppable.
Genre also come and go in waves, sometimes genre fade or cycle back. Super-heroes and the genre have done this over the years. What's popular a decade ago, might not be popular now as a genre.
That a studio did something right every time doesn't mean everyone should throw out common conceits to how the business works. Just because Marvel did something isn't proof everyone can do it.
Or how about the original Batman, which was the top grossing movie of 1989? How about X-Men, or the Maguire Spider-Man films? Marvel is more symptom of this trend than cause.[/quote]
They laid the ground work, and their efforts eventually faded. Marvel's got the staying power they didn't, aside from X-men. '89's Bat mania was long gone from public consciousness when Nolan took over the franchise.
Except it ignores the Marvel are the new kids on the block, WB has been a movie making juggernaut for decades before Marvel appeared. Marvel started off as a single mall restaurant, they weren't always this head of the pack. Phase 1 had its ups and downs, Iron Man was great, but it was a lightning in a bottle incident which they were never able to replicate. Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk did ok, they weren't the quality we're use to seeing from them post-Phase 1. It took a long time for them to get where they are now.
WB's swapped directors who didn't go with their vision, as well. Flash is had his third director by now, and they're still searching. Yeah, there are more restrictions on Marvel's side - I don't see this as crippling. And it's not like their directors don't get to be able to put their own spin on things, Gunn was encouraged to do this and it's always easy to tell which director/s did what movie. You're underestimating the variety the MCU has to offer, which is well above what the DCEU has produced.
Marvel and DC's characters in the comics have always been very similar from the concepts to how they're written. This includes the cartoons, too. They copy each other's gimmicks, marketing and characters shamelessly. This practice has bought both of them lots of success in comics, and outside them. This is why Marvel has multiple not! Batmen (Black Panther, Moon Knight, Daredevil etc), not! Death stroke (pre-Kelly Deadpool) and DC has Supreme Power (Squadron Supreme), and so on.
1) What I want is for the DCEU to get their ducks in a row, and paying attention to how Marvel does this can get them there quicker. Which they're already doing, poorly. They don't have to replicate what Marvel's doing 1 = 1, what they don't need to do is being reactionary and contrast them because reasons. If they actually had a game plan the was able to match Marvel's while doing something different it'd be a different matter but they don't. They're lost.
2) Yes, and the DCEU is nowhere near at being to do that properly.
3) Marvel's the leading studio on super-heroes, have been for quite a while. On a quality and number of movies front. There is room for people to blow them out of the water, except WB/DC hasn't proven they're capable of doing that. I agree Nolan's Batman movies are superior to Marvels, and his time is over.
Marvel and DC have always had that relationship as companies, and it's bled into the studio system. I don't see how we can get away from that mindset. Following Marvel's example (properly) is a way for them to do that IMO. Frankly, I'm surprise they haven't, since copying the competition is an age old technique in business. Certainly Hollywood.
They can do both options - unfortunately they haven't shown they're able to either well. They're probably too controlling with directors below Snyder, which if true sets a bad precedent for movies like Wonder Woman, and Flash. I agree with your analysis of Suicide Squad.
The problem seems to be the management, who decides who gets hired and how much power they give to directors like Snyder. As well as not giving themselves an out with Snyder if he failed B vs S. That contract to let him shoot Justice league immediately was bound to blow up in their faces if anything went wrong, now they're stuck further into the sunk cost fallacy. Until this gets sorted out the DCEU is doomed. Marvel does give its directors power IIRC, they're just not an auter company like WB is. WB's style might work better as separate franchises, rather than combined universes.
Tone is minor problem, not the sole reason that I think they're failing. Consistent tone can be a strength when it's used correctly.
I only want an aquaman movie
Yes, James Wan is directing.
Momoa 4 lyfe
-re: why does Superman already hate Batman?
My impression of Superman is that he has exactly the kind of arrogance Batman has in the comics, that sense of "only I am powerful enough to save people." He doesn't seem to like the military (as with the end of MoS) and I don't think he respects Batman's vigilantism. I agree this is poorly conveyed in the movie, though.
-re: the television metaphor
I still think Marvel's universe works more like a TV show with different subplots than it does like a shared universe of TV shows--for one thing, shared universes in TV seems like a relatively new thing (unlike shows and spinoffs), the prominent examples being the Marvel Netflix shows and Dick Wolf's endlessly expanding set of Chicago procedurals, and they seem inspired by Marvel's film universe rather than the other way around. Marvel's movies seem to work more like, say, the show Skins, changing perspectives episode by episode to focus on individual character arcs even while the overarching plot moves forward.
-re: why Marvel is off-topic
There is a dedicated thread to Marvel and I try not to go in there because I'm the resident MCU skeptic here and I consider that kind of rude. It's off-topic here because this is the DC thread. I think comparing the two to point out what DC should or shouldn't do is on-topic, but getting into an argument over whether or not the MCU is consistently high quality is basically just straight Marvel-talk. (Plus, I've been over this stuff many times on the forums before, I feel like my opinions are pretty clear at this point.)
-re: the crux of the argument
I don't think we're wholly in disagreement as to what DC should do. If there has to be a choice between "continue to be a garbage fire" and "become Marvel-lite" then yeah I guess they should be reverse-engineering Marvel to get back on their feet. I just think that's a false dichotomy. If we're blue-skying, DC should become its own awesome thing in its own awesome way. If we're being realistic, DC is just going to continue to be a garbage fire, full stop. Either way Marvel is mostly irrelevant.
The problem with baman v superman is that it is entirely predicated on these two characters slugging it out when the actual premise should of been the two of them pooling their respective abilities to deal with a problem and ultimately learning from each other (superman learns to think situations through more clearly while batman gets a shot of optimism).
Holy shit , let's not overlook this! This is amazing rofl, holy cow, could this be the first instance of a movie where the porn version DIDN'T have the superior porn staches?
Dr Gettin some Strange
Hell, if Lois pieced together Clarks's trail, why didn't the world's greatest detective?
And Clark never wandered through Gotham?
(This is early universe ignoring stuff, like how no one knew what shield was in Iron Man 1 despite the Trislelion sitting there in the 80's)
And the writer is a virtual unknown who is supposedly writing the new Tomb Raider, Sherlock Holmes 3, M.A.S.K. and ROM? Who's only credit is a 'thanks' on a short and supposedly was added to the Transformers 5 writing room? I guess she co-wrote a script that was on 'The Black List' in 2012 or something, but...huh? I went to go find anything about her, but I only really found this:
I'll reserve full judgement, as I did for Man of Steel...and BvS...and SS...and...
edit: this would be the perfect time to try and link DC animation to the DCEU by using Paul Dini, since he knows the Sirens concept pretty darn well.
I get what you're saying, but the DC movies just tend to be so unpleasant. Like the whole is worse than the sum of its parts, to the point where I'm actively repulsed by the idea of re-watching even a portion of it. I can't even get onboard with the idea that they're taking risks. I just think that Snyder has decided to go with dark and edgy, as opposed to Marvel's more upbeat tones, and that's about all there is too it.
The problem is that snyder (being a massive hack) doesn't know how to actually go about creating an original film concept; outside of suckerpunch literally everything in his filmography is an adaptation of someone else's work and oftentimes misses what made the original special.
Like take MoS. You have the most Iconic superhero of all time, the one that acted as a template for decades after and has consistently sold issues every month for nearly 8 decades. This should be an easy film to do, but because Nolan made a starkly realistic batman trilogy with washed out colors, Zack came to the conclusion that what people really wanted was a starkly realistic Superman and that he'd feed some of his personal views on the genre that are clearly influenced by watchmen ("heroes shouldn't be able to save people!").
And in the end you wind up with a character that is wrong at the very core of his being because Snyder just aped the works of other actually talented storytellers.
Even a washed out Superman who can't manage to save everyone and has some PTSD from the whole deal would (or could) have been interesting. Instead we had someone who looked bored and/or miserable, but not much else going on there. He wasn't suffering from the expectations that people put on him that even his powers couldn't live up to, he just seemed to be acting like he was stuck in a crappy job that he never wanted and can't get out of.