Pattinson/Reeves Batman Movie (Formerly Affleck Stand-Alone Film)

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by IMJ

It's true. I remember back in the pre-internet days a trailer would pop up for something you had no idea was coming and the three week wait for it to open seemed like a lifetime.

The longest "perceptual wait" ever for me for a movie was as a kid with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because it was hyped on Entertainment Tonight on T.V. before there was ever a trailer. And then I found the novelization at a Jewel/Osco and the center pages were glossy photos from the movie.

It was torture.

Man, I know I take the internet for granted, but I do miss walking into a theater and learning up an upcoming movie from the poster on the wall.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

Man, I know I take the internet for granted, but I do miss walking into a theater and learning up an upcoming movie from the poster on the wall.

The same thing happened to me when I went to see TMNT 3. We walked past a Super Mario Bros movie poster and it just didn't compute that it was supposed to be a legit Mario Bros movie. It looked so out there, I thought it was a play on words, like maybe the main character was also called Mario and they were running with it or something. But then we saw the actual Super Mario Bros movie trailer before the movie started and found out that was actually a thing that was happen. But that was the first time I ever heard about it. Like I didn't see any news, ads, magazines or whatever about it til weeks after that night.

The internet ruined a lot of things, the need for information, now, Now, NOW!!!! I would love to watch a movie in the theater and be surprised by a trailer for idk.... Battletoads the movie or whatever just completely random and out of nowhere.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Right here. Me. I'm saying that. But the things is, even if they gave Ezra Miller a solo Flash movie devoid of big guest stars it still wouldn't be a real Flash/Barry Allen movie, so it doesn't really matter to me. It's like yeah, whatever. Let's bring in Keaton Batman and Affleck and stuff.

Eh. For me, we still know so little about this version of Barry Allen - we can assume and infer some things from what we've seen, along with other things from comics and TV - but we've been told very little about his origins or day-to-day life. ZSJL used him to great effect and filled in a few blanks but nowhere near enough to have a fully-formed image of Who He Is.

I don't need a full-blown Rogues movie, as some people out there have said they want. But at the very least, I'd want a movie focused more on Barry himself than what this movie looks to be.

This movie's premise would be better served as the third, or even second Flash movie. Not the very first one ever. How weird is it gonna be in 50 years when people look back on it and realize "The first Flash movie ever made wasn't even a Flash movie"? Could you imagine if Chris Reeve's Superman had taken up half of the screen time in Batman '89, for example? Of if the first Superman movie had him sharing top billing with Adam West's Batman? People would've screamed bloody murder.

Ah well.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Could you imagine if Chris Reeve's Superman had taken up half of the screen time in Batman '89, for example? Of if the first Superman movie had him sharing top billing with Adam West's Batman? People would've screamed bloody murder.

Ah well.

IDK, it's hard to say. In both those cases Chris Reeves and Adam West were bigger and more than known than at the time newcomer to the roles Chris Reeves and Micheal Keaton. Back then people were even doubting if 'Mr. Mom' could play Batman similar to how people a few years back doubted 'the gay cowboy' would be good as the Joker.

Fans might have eaten it up back then, but I do think us looking back at it today would have been disappointed that the very first movie of those character had them as guest stars of their own movies.

But you see, Flash doing this Flashpoint movie should have been his second or third movie, in the same way I wish we got a Man of Steel 2 before BVS.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

But you see, Flash doing this Flashpoint movie should have been his second or third movie, in the same way I wish we got a Man of Steel 2 before BVS.

I get it but I don't entirely agree. People keep saying that as if a MoS at that point actually would have served any truly essential narrative purpose, rather than just be padding in between "event" movies like some of the MCU sequels were. That's my biggest issue with the idea that there "HAD" to be a MoS 2 before BvS; it almost certainly would have either been a huge step backwards in scope from the first MoS, OR it would've been a complete rehash, and placement-wise neither would've been altogether very satisfying, I fear.

I can definitely see how maybe a Metallo movie would have worked on a narrative level, one where both Lex and the Kryptonite could be introduced, and then weave THAT stuff into BvS, thus making that movie more streamlined. However, with the stakes of the first MoS being truly apocalyptic with literally the entire world at stake, I feel like doing Metallo (or any other "smaller scale" villain) would be seen by the audience as a bit of a step backwards.

But that's moot, anyway, because all I've ever heard about a potential MoS 2 was that the villain would most likely have been Brainiac. Which means it would have been almost the exact same movie as the first MoS, another big alien invasion movie. And then you'd have people saying it was a pointless rehash of the first, and they'd be rather correct.

As a huge fan, I definitely see where having some more onscreen time to establish Cavill's Superman before the events of BvS would have been useful. But timing- and placement-wise, WB was kind of stuck. Not that either the Metallo movie or the Brainiac movie would've been bad at all, they probably would have been quite good in and of themselves. But they wouldn't have fit incredibly well within the structure of where WB wanted the DCEU to go and how quickly they wanted to get there.

To me, it always felt like they all sat down to decide "What do we do next with Superman?" and laid out a bunch of potential options, and in the end, they went with the one that was the most uniquely interesting and which also moved the larger story forward the most efficiently.

It feels to me like MoS2 would be more narratively useful Now than Then, to be honest. There's a lot more to explore on a personal level what with him coming back from being dead and everything. You could get away with doing a "smaller" movie with the character now than you could have back then.

Like yeah, they definitely could've done one Back Then and that would've been fine, but it probably wouldn't have accomplished a whole lot from a storytelling standpoint. It wouldn't have gotten them closer to where the larger story was going any faster, y'know? I certainly wouldn't have been mad about it but I can totally see why they skipped over it.

I'm more mad that they're so dead-set against doing a sequel NOW, though. People want one, Cavill wants to do one, and they just refuse out of pure spite. Back then, there were valid (if questionable) reasons to skip over a straight sequel. There's no excuse not to make one NOW.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

As a huge fan, I definitely see where having some more onscreen time to establish Cavill's Superman before the events of BvS would have been useful. But timing- and placement-wise, WB was kind of stuck.

[Leo656]

I'm open to suggestions as to how doing any version of MoS2 before BvS would've been anything more narratively essential to the "JL vs. Darkseid" throughline of the DC films than Ant-Man 2 was to the MCU's Thanos one.

Again, it would've been a nice thing to have. But it 100% would've just been padding and/or a MoS1 rehash.

At best, you'd get a movie with a few more "cats in trees" scenes to settle the whining of certain people. At worst, you'd have a movie that was either pointless and/or repeating all the first one's story beats.

But again, keeping in mind that the main point of the exercise was to get to the JL vs. Darksied plot, and that any type of MoS2 would have to facilitate that in addition to being its own story, by all means explain to me how MoS2 gets us there any faster without just repeating the first movie and/or being a needless detour.

Once more, as inarguably the biggest Superman fan on this board, not saying I'd be mad at them if they'd done one. I'd honestly be just fine if they'd done ten of them by now. Just saying from an objective standpoint, it was "pointless" in the grand scheme of things to do it at that time. They could have but didn't need to. "Wants" and "Needs" are not the same thing.

If I'm WB, and my endgame is to do a JL vs. Darkseid movie as soon as possible, and it's already been set in stone that that "We're not doing 50 movies to get there, we're doing Five," I don't especially want to spend $250 million+ on a side movie that doesn't get us any closer to that main storyline. Just because Disney made 80 movies to get the Avengers vs. Thanos movie doesn't mean everything needs to follow the exact same formula. Most of those movies were also narratively "pointless" in service to the larger story being told. They're fine if you love the characters but they're not "essential" to the larger narrative being told.

Seeing as how WB is always a lot more "economical" in its use of resources than Disney, once again it's not at all surprising they decided to only focus on the movies they felt they "had" to make at that time in order to establish the primary characters and push the larger story forward. Like they could've made "Shazam!" in 2016, too. And that, too, would've been pointless at that specific time since it didn't push the "JL vs. Darkseid" narrative forward. Thus, they waited until after Justice League to do that movie, so it wouldn't be "wasted space".

You may have done things differently, and that's fine. But it doesn't really change a whole lot. After all, we've got no proof whatsoever that MoS 2, whatever movie it would've been, would have been any more successful either critically or financially than MoS 1 was. Or "Superman Returns", for that matter. I'm not convinced Superman "sells" as a movie character anymore, since everyone has far too divisive of an opinion about how the movie "should" be done and none of them can agree. We've had the "Chris Reeve Homage" movie and the "Straight-Up Comic Book Adaptation" movie and both of them missed the mark because fans collectively can't agree on what a Superman movie should be and never will.

So nah, they didn't "need" to do MoS 2 back then. Best Case scenario, they make it and it's a perfectly fine but "pointless" movie that does okay box office but gets middling reviews for not doing anything the first movie didn't do. There's no way it would've made a TON more money than MoS1, since Superman isn't actually that popular anymore. At WORST, it gets ignored and/or vilified and the entire DCEU project gets scrapped years earlier than it actually did.

Again, if I'm WB, and it's my money... I don't NEED to make MoS2 in 2016. It doesn't actually do a lot to help my bottom line, and could actually have hurt it if it misfired.

Not doing it NOW, though? That's the real crime. There's literally nothing stopping them either narratively or creatively, aside from the fact they think "Black Superman" will sell better. That's gonna be quite the rude awakening for them.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

[CyberCubed]

Good trailer. Was the black woman in the first few scenes of the trailer the same black woman who is Catwoman? Because the first black woman was dark skinned and the Catwoman scenes is a fairer-skinned black woman, so I'm not sure if they were the same actress with a haircut.

[Autbot_Benz]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Good trailer. Was the black woman in the first few scenes of the trailer the same black woman who is Catwoman? Because the first black woman was dark skinned and the Catwoman scenes is a fairer-skinned black woman, so I'm not sure if they were the same actress with a haircut.

no she wasn't

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Autbot_Benz

no she wasn't

I figured, but having two black women in the same trailer was confusing to me.

[Andrew NDB]

Alfred and Bruce are the only good white guys. All the other white guys are evil, and all the other good guys are black.

No?

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Alfred and Bruce are the only good white guys.

Even Alfred is depicted as having a shady past that he hasn't told Bruce about.

[AquaParade]

If there being "only two good white guys" bothers you, I think you need to step away from the hate-mongering clickbait articles for a bit, man.

What's the proposed angle? The main character is a white guy who is going to be glorified more than anyone else in the film.

Like, even if you start counting main cast members, I don't see any outcome where it's suspicious that only two white guys are "good". Especially when the main one is the hero of the film. How many people are we even talking about? Where is the Venn diagram?

I think it's important to be able to stay sane in the crazy culture war we are in, without losing yourself in it or becoming paranoid. Once you start counting the white and black fellows of every movie trailer, you're just as lost as the crazies.

[Andrew NDB]

I'm not reading anything or getting bothered, I'm just doing the math and find it interesting. You're the one getting bothered.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

That woman Bruce talks to in the beginning will likely have an important part in the plot. Calling it!

[frank_one]

The trailer is good, I don't care about skin colors.

[Andrew NDB]

I do like the unbridled sort of rage that permeates everything in the trailers. This Batman really looks pissed! It's different.

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Even Alfred is depicted as having a shady past that he hasn't told Bruce about.

Meh, that can only mean Reeves is probably using Geoff Johns' "Batman: Earth One" background for Alfred. Where he is like some kind of seasoned ex-Marine, Sean Connery in the Rock type.

Probably because Geoff Johns pushed it on him.

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

That woman Bruce talks to in the beginning will likely have an important part in the plot. Calling it!

Could it be Leslie Thompkins?

[The Terror of Death]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Even Alfred is depicted as having a shady past that he hasn't told Bruce about.

I believe someone mentioned it in this thread before, but it looks like they might be taking the sins of the father stuff from the telltales videogames. Bruce's father had shady dealings with Falcone and the mayor of Gotham. Alfred was aware of it but was too afraid and or loyal to confront Thomas about it. He was going to eventually quit but after Thomas was killed, he decided to stay and raise Bruce.

[Sumac]

Can't say I am impressed.