David Ayer and Margot Robbie helming all female villian DC movie

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I'm the same way, really. For example, people put "Mask of the Phantasm" into rankings with Batman movies and I'm always the guy sitting here (maybe not aloud) that says, "OK, but that's not a real Batman movie."

Exactly.

I fvcking love Under the Red Hood, but it's not a real Batman movie. It's a cartoon.

[Autbot_Benz]

DC movies needs their own Kevin Feige someone who actually cares about these characters and wants to actually put in the work to bring them on screen perfectly. So sick of these Half Assed DC Movies.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Autbot_Benz

DC movies needs their own Kevin Feige someone who actually cares about these characters and wants to actually put in the work to bring them on screen perfectly. So sick of these Half Assed DC Movies.

They thought they had him with Geoff Johns.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

https://media0.giphy.com/media/uJp3vdtHgDvCE/source.gif

Get woke, go broke.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Autbot_Benz

DC movies needs their own Kevin Feige someone who actually cares about these characters and wants to actually put in the work to bring them on screen perfectly. So sick of these Half Assed DC Movies.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

They thought they had him with Geoff Johns.

He hasn't even DONE anything.

Seriously, DC/WB need their own cinematic universe guru. Fvck, does Feige have an understudy or something they can hire away from Marvel?

Or maybe assemble a committee of well-received comic teams (Tomasi or Scott Snyder from Batman... I'm not a big enough reader of the other Big 7 heroes to name any creative teams for Wonder Woman or Superman or et al). Put them on a committee, and assign a couple of really good filmmakers to the committee as well.

Come up with a gameplan for each main character / group of characters (Bat family), and then work on translating it to film with the filmmakers.

ANYTHING other than this schizophrenic back-and-forth anything-goes bull$hit.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

He hasn't even DONE anything.

Seriously, DC/WB need their own cinematic universe guru. Fvck, does Feige have an understudy or something they can hire away from Marvel?

Or maybe assemble a committee of well-received comic teams (Tomasi or Scott Snyder from Batman... I'm not a big enough reader of the other Big 7 heroes to name any creative teams for Wonder Woman or Superman or et al). Put them on a committee, and assign a couple of really good filmmakers to the committee as well.

Come up with a gameplan for each main character / group of characters (Bat family), and then work on translating it to film with the filmmakers.

ANYTHING other than this schizophrenic back-and-forth anything-goes bull$hit.

And also stick to your guns and stop backtracking and rewriting just because either the fans complain or because Marvel did so and so and it worked so let's somehow copy that. I mean Joker made big money but you don't see Marvel in a desperate dash to make a character study Norman Osborn movie called Goblin or whatever.

[Andrew NDB]

Snyder plans a "Man of Steel" trilogy. "Man of Steel" comes out, some people are upset that Superman killed someone and kissed Lois in a blast zone.

WB: Oh noes! Forget about the "Man of Steel" trilogy... we need Batman to save things, right now!

Snyder puts out BvS. People don't like a lot of things about it.

WB: Oh noes! You're lucky you already had JL in production or we'd halt it! Eh, you know what? Let's halt it anyway. Get Whedon and have him reshoot 90% of it!

WW comes out. Everybody likes it.

WB: Yay! OK, let's get WW 2 on the way in 10 years.

Suicide Squad comes out. It's very divisive but everyone mostly likes Harley Quinn.

WB: Harley Quinn cinematic universe it is! Let's spend a whole bunch of years discussing what form the next Harley Quinn movie will take and how we can completely remove all sex appeal from it.

JL comes out. Nobody likes it and Superman's lips are creepy.

WB: Oh noes! So much for the DCEU. Well, we still have Harley. I sure hope Aquaman isn't hurt by this!

Aquaman comes out. Everybody mostly likes it and it makes a lot of money.

WB: Yay! OK, let's get Aquaman 2 on the way in 10 years. What's that, Geoff? You want us to do "The Trench," too? OK.

Harley Quinn comes out. Nobody really likes it and it loses a lot of money.

WB: Oh noes! So much for the Harley cinematic universe. Let's do ________


You know what I mean? Just bizarre, kneejerk choices every step of the way.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Spoiler:

Snyder plans a "Man of Steel" trilogy. "Man of Steel" comes out, some people are upset that Superman killed someone and kissed Lois in a blast zone.

WB: Oh noes! Forget about the "Man of Steel" trilogy... we need Batman to save things, right now!

Snyder puts out BvS. People don't like a lot of things about it.

WB: Oh noes! You're lucky you already had JL in production or we'd halt it! Eh, you know what? Let's halt it anyway. Get Whedon and have him reshoot 90% of it!

WW comes out. Everybody likes it.

WB: Yay! OK, let's get WW 2 on the way in 10 years.

Suicide Squad comes out. It's very divisive but everyone mostly likes Harley Quinn.

WB: Harley Quinn cinematic universe it is! Let's spend a whole bunch of years discussing what form the next Harley Quinn movie will take and how we can completely remove all sex appeal from it.

JL comes out. Nobody likes it and Superman's lips are creepy.

WB: Oh noes! So much for the DCEU. Well, we still have Harley. I sure hope Aquaman isn't hurt by this!

Aquaman comes out. Everybody mostly likes it and it makes a lot of money.

WB: Yay! OK, let's get Aquaman 2 on the way in 10 years.

Harley Quinn comes out. Nobody really likes it and it loses a lot of money.

WB: Oh noes! So much for the Harley cinematic universe. Let's do ________

You know what I mean? Just bizarre, kneejerk choices every step of the way.

Throw in Shazam! and you've perfectly nailed the last 10 years in the DCEU.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

Throw in Shazam! and you've perfectly nailed the last 10 years in the DCEU.

If the rest of the DCEU had any kind of successes then when Shazam came out it just would've been that awkward, fun, forgettable flick like Ant-Man.

But instead it's DC's big save. Crazy.

DC has had good casting, bad planning and poor execution. What they need to do is just make a JL 2, call it "Justice League: Crisis" and in the first act wipe out the DCEU Earth and as of the second act keep all of the original cast but transition it to... I dunno... a DC Earth that resembles the comics and use that as the excuse for your brighter Superman with Cavill, a Batman that reaches out to people less with Affleck and then everyone else. The end. fix it that way.

But they won't. It's a disaster and going forward the DCEU will dry up as Wonder Woman and Aquaman run their course, and something-something will happen with Pattman.

[Andrew NDB]

And people really act like if something like "Flashpoint" comes out and makes everything nice and neat again... that WB won't invariably just f*** it all up again in a movie or two, and throw it all out again.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

And people really act like if something like "Flashpoint" comes out and makes everything nice and neat again... that WB won't invariably just f*** it all up again in a movie or two, and throw it all out again.

I agree. At this point, Cavill - a great Superman, first played the character 7 years ago. By now he should've starred in three Superman movies and 2 JL movies along with a few cameos.

But as you pointed out earlier there is all this weird waiting for DC movies, which is crazy because Warner Brothers should be taking Marvel to town with cranking out movies - they've been doing it for 100 years now.

By the time we have a Man of Steel 2 (which won't happen, anyway), Cavill is going to need legit steroids to keep up his size for the role.

Meanwhile we've got that ridiculous Lois and Clark show coming, which I hope no one watches. But they'v got Brandon Routh who was the most popular part of their awful Crisis Crossover and they could be giving him a Superman T.V. show that might've turned out to be one of the most popular iterations of Superman ever.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by IMJ

I agree. At this point, Cavill - a great Superman, first played the character 7 years ago. By now he should've starred in three Superman movies and 2 JL movies along with a few cameos.

Yep.

But as you pointed out earlier there is all this weird waiting for DC movies, which is crazy because Warner Brothers should be taking Marvel to town with cranking out movies - they've been doing it for 100 years now.

Compare it to Marvel. They announce a movie. It shoots in a year, comes out the year after that and it's generally good. WB, even when they have a hit (WW, AM, Shazam), they don't know what to do. They go into the other kind of panic mode, and probably over-scrutinize everything.

By the time we have a Man of Steel 2 (which won't happen, anyway), Cavill is going to need legit steroids to keep up his size for the role.

I'd still give it... 30% odds, at this point. It wouldn't be called "Man of Steel 2," of course. But just straight up "Superman" (1)? Maybe.

I don't know if Amy Adams is going to make it, though...

But they'v got Brandon Routh who was the most popular part of their awful Crisis Crossover and they could be giving him a Superman T.V. show that might've turned out to be one of the most popular iterations of Superman ever.

Of all the options available (particularly if it's that or "Lois & Supercuck"), yeah, it would've been the soundest... though I don't know how crazy I'd be about seeing Donnerverse: the ongoing series. With wacky Lex, camp, etc..

[Leo656]

The thing is, anyone they'd appoint to be the "overseer" of DC Films or whatever couldn't possibly please everyone, just because of how fractured the general DC fanbase is on a good day.

There's people like me who care mostly about the comics (and very little about anything that is Not The Comics), and care a lot about seeing that material presented faithfully when adapted. But then you also have people who grew up on the cartoons, which don't really have all that much in common with the comics outside of some very superficial veneers, and they insist that the material THEY recognize is what should be the foundation for the films. Some people don't care about fidelity at all and "just want an entertaining film" even if it bears so little resemblance to the source material that it should be called something else entirely. And you even have some people who think everything should be like "Super-Friends" because "It's all just silly kids stuff anyways." Whose vision takes precedence? Which fans' wants and needs should be prioritized? Every "camp" of DC fans has their own opinion on what's "proper" and they generally don't budge on it. So there's simply no way that any one person could successfully run the film brands and make every single fan happy. It's impossible. I feel like it worked with the MCU because a ton of the audience for those films had no preexisting knowledge of affection for those characters until they saw the movies, and the movies were still faithful enough so that people who did know the characters wouldn't be put off by anything that was changed. So all it took was having someone Up Top who kinda knew how all the films would add to and borrow from each other, and then keep all the moving parts moving in the same direction.

DC fans tend to take the material just a little bit more seriously, and they're more prone to throwing a fit when they don't get Exactly What They Want, as we've seen multiple times. That makes the job a lot harder for anyone who'd be given the "overseer" role. If it were as simple as, "Keep it straight and faithful to the comics," well... then MoS and BvS would have done much better business. But while they pretty much didn't include anything that wasn't from the books, albeit some of it in condensed or streamlined fashion to better serve movie storytelling vs. comic book storytelling, they seriously underestimated the pushback they ended up getting for the tone - a completely subjective thing which nonetheless derailed the entire project they'd mapped out. They DID have a plan, and people put in charge specifically to see it executed, but once it wasn't universally praised, they do what WB always does and hit the Panic Button immediately.

The fact is, pretty much the only two guys working in comic book films who've ever even read a comic book, let alone worked on any, are Geoff Johns and Zack Snyder. But those guys have way too much baggage to be given the job of overseeing the entire DC films project, even if they know the material they're adapting like the back of their hands and therefore would be, on paper, the "right people" to do it. So if not someone who actually knows this stuff, then who? Someone who knows nothing at all about the comics but knows how to make decent, "fun", all-ages action movies which would probably end up looking very little like the source material in the end? Again, not sure that's what DC fans, in general, would respond all that well to. See the backlash for BoP and how they ruined any character who wasn't Harley Quinn. People DO care about fidelity, at least sometimes. Again, it seems to be more of an issue with DC fans in general; Marvel fans seem a lot more casual about this kind of thing.

As I've said many times, I don't think that any of the things which worked for the MCU would automatically work for WB/DC. Everything about them is different, including a much more fractured fanbase that's a lot harder to please, and that I think is ultimately the root of the problem, along with the general incompetence of WB. The only way there'd ever be anything close to a cohesive film universe for DC, is if someone was put in charge and told "Do whatever you want, just make this thing work," and then WB actually stepped back and let them do it. But that's not what WB does; as Andrew pointed out, the only thing they know how to do is overreact. They overreact when things go well, they overreact when things go poorly, but it's ALL they ever do. WB would simply never, EVER just let someone map out a solid plan of films and stick to it until the end. It's just not how they do business. They should, but they don't, and I don't think they ever will. Again, too many competing voices, too many camps of fans who have nothing in common yet all demand that their tastes are the only ones that deserve to be catered to.

It's just a really hard job, and the guys with objectively the best skillset for it on paper don't always see eye-to-eye with the fans on what's "proper". That's why they always think they've hit a home run with each of these movies until they read all the caterwauling on the internet after the fact. "But we did everything we were supposed to do!" Boy, if only it were that simple...

[Andrew NDB]

If you asked me who I think would be qualified and be the right man to be the Kevin Feige for DC/WB... jeeze, I really have no idea. If Grant Morrison was maybe 25% more down to Earth with his material I'd say him, but I can't... but I'd still want him in the room with whatever think tank emerges.

He's a little bit older now, but maybe Paul Levitz? He was at the forefront of DC through some of its strongest years before Didio and his goons rolled in, and in the trenches writing great stuff for decades before that. I haven't heard a bad word said about him ever.

[Leo656]

Levitz is a good name to throw in the ring, but again, maybe too much of a comic book purist for some people?

I mean, I know a lot of people who refused to even see Justice League because John Stewart and Hawgirl weren't in it. I know it's because they grew up watching them in a cartoon show, but seriously; across every single incarnation of the JLA, they've got like ten minutes of active roster membership combined. There's about a dozen characters who "deserve" to be in a Justice League movie before those two C-listers, BUT, a lot of people were pissed anyway because it's what they grew up with, even if it's wrong.

Levitz takes DC canon VERY seriously, so I'm not sure he'd be flexible enough to accommodate the broader fanbase. As I said, that's generally the problem on the DC side. Geoff Johns knows the canon - there's really nothing in the GL movie that isn't hard canon, it's faithful as hell but just tonally a bit of a misfire - but "knowing the canon" doesn't seem to be enough for some people who identify as DC fans. Or Zack with MoS; I can pretty much recite chapter-and-verse what every single frame of that movie was cribbed from, so "fidelity" was not that film's issue, but people apparently wanted brighter colors more than they did a reverent and faithful take on the canon. But who could have guessed that before they got to market with it? They thought making it exactly like the comics was all they had to do, and they did that; then they got yelled at for "problems" that they hadn't even planned on becoming issues.

So Johns is out, Snyder's out... pretty much anyone who KNOWS the DC canon and takes it seriously probably wouldn't be willing to compromise enough to get anything done. Lots of guys would be great for it in theory - What's Mike Carlin up to nowadays? - but in actual practice? Ehhh... Again, which fans do you bend over for, and why, and how far? It's not an easy assignment. I know I, personally, would want a DC "expert" in charge but they've tried that and it didn't work. I know I definitely wouldn't want a neophyte at the helm, but some people claim that's exactly the right approach because then they can just make populist films that are safe and generic blockbusters without being beholden to any source material. I strongly disagree with that, but its certainly some peoples' opinion.

Grant Morrison does way too much acid to ever be Head Guy of anything at all. But I agree, definitely let him in the Writers' Room. Just take absolutely everything he says with a giant shaker of salt. He's a great ideas guy, but... well, if Final Crisis has shown us anything, historically, it's that some things can be even more divisive to DC fans than Zack Snyder movies. And I actually LOVE that whole deal, I will forever maintain that Final Crisis was f*cking brilliant and I'll defend it with my dying breath if need be, but "populist" it most certainly was not.

[MikeandRaph87]

I never understood how Levitz lost his role as the head of DC after about eight years and Dan Didio who is universally hated gets promoted to share the top spot? Paul worked his way up as a writer then as an editor. He knows the characters and even wrote great stories himself. The old guard is getting older and fewer. As much as I would trust Paul I just don't know if at 63 he would do it.

Wouldn't see the movie because John Stewart and Hawkgirl were not in it? Their will they/ won't they was my least favorite part of the Justice League cartoon and I would rather see Hal Jordan. Be grateful that Aquaman did not get the shaft that time around. I also question Cyborg's inclusion, diversity be darned.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

I also question Cyborg's inclusion, diversity be darned.

And it's one thing to include Cyborg... it's another thing to include Cyborg and NO Green Lantern (I don't care if it's John Stewart or not, but the idea of this is preposterous).

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

And it's one thing to include Cyborg... it's another thing to include Cyborg and NO Green Lantern (I don't care if it's John Stewart or not, but the idea of this is preposterous).

I agree. For example in the current Justice League volume it was specifically said that it was what John brought to the table they needed not necessarily Green Lantern. Hal was preoccupied with his mission to stop Mu and Starbreaker's daughter in deep space anyway. Its what is needed in character dynamics and skill sets that go beyond the costume. Martian Manhunter like Barry Allen is bland and not much to him, but his skill set is important for coordinating battle strategies. Victor Stone is okay but I think of him as unneccessary because he would provide what Martian Manhunter and Batman already do. He is a second string Titan. He can serve best in Titans Tower being an information source for Dick Grayson.

[MikeandRaph87]

Anyone else feel that the latest TMNT issue (#103) was inspired by Birds of Prey film? It was like female mutant empowerment with Raphael acting like more a jerk than usual and Hob getting punched out like he should have issues ago. Mike and Leo come out of their funk to look for Klunk (rhythm unintended) but were not thier usual selves. Only male without issue was Donatello, who seems to be suffering from the effects of #44 with his shell aching. It was the worst issue in a good while. Reading it confirmed that Black Mask and Mr. Zsasz as fresh characters in film, its not enough of a draw to get a ticket to this film. It was hard enough reading through a TMNT issue.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

Anyone else feel that the latest TMNT issue (#103) was inspired by Birds of Prey film? It was like female mutant empowerment with Raphael acting like more a jerk than usual and Hob getting punched out like he should have issues ago. Mike and Leo come out of their funk to look for Klunk (rhythm unintended) but were not thier usual selves. Only male without issue was Donatello, who seems to be suffering from the effects of #44 with his shell aching. It was the worst issue in a good while. Reading it confirmed that Black Mask and Mr. Zsasz as fresh characters in film, its not enough of a draw to get a ticket to this film. It was hard enough reading through a TMNT issue.

Why are you posting a review for the TMNT comics here in a movie thread about Birds of Prey? I know you’re trying to make a connection but a lot of people here don’t follow the IDW comics so they won’t get what you’re talking about.