Update: April 8, 2016
JUSTICE LEAGUE Reportedly Will Be More Crowd-Pleasing Than Previous DCEU Movies
Variety's Kristopher Tapley wrote: "When I finally caved for a second viewing of Zack Snyder’s
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, I spotted only six or seven other people in the theater. Even following a
dramatic 69% second weekend drop, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
This is
Batman v Superman, a blockbuster event meant to jump-start an entire cinematic universe, yet in its 13th day of release, the superhero pic mustered only $2.8 million, a number that couldn’t even match Marvel’s
Ant-Man ($3 million) or Snyder’s previous foray
Man of Steel ($4 million). It was a heavily front-loaded release, to be sure: a $166 million opening was a rallying cry for proponents in the face of countless critical pans. But at this point, hitting the magic $1 billion figure in worldwide grosses seems to be out of reach.
If all the recent
release date shuffling and rumored restructuring of the Warner Bros. status quo didn’t make it clear, those numbers certainly should: They’re close to hitting the panic button in Burbank this week.
A report from
The Hollywood Reporter suggest an ongoing culture shift at the studio, with fewer original titles being greenlit as WB doubles down on franchise generators like DC Comics, Lego and Harry Potter. Certainly there’s a fever, what with Disney printing money from the
Star Wars and Marvel hit parade. But the hot seat is getting hotter, as this is the year Warner chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara’s chickens come home to roost.
Ben Affleck was cast in August 2013, and soon enough, he brought on Oscar-winning
Argo scribe Chris Terrio to help turn the project into a thoughtful exploration of the comic book ethos. That was going to be crucial, given that Snyder is obsessed with iconography, a visualist more than a storyteller. Inevitably, though, the film became more of a corporate vision. It was given an utterly ridiculous title that bent over backwards to cram in three keywords — Batman, Superman and Justice (League) — and mandates were put forth to lay the groundwork. But underneath the promotional noise, a real attempt was being made to dabble in DC’s philosophical bedrock and deconstruct the tendencies of comic book cinema.
Nevertheless, we’re left with a movie in which a central character [Wonder Woman] literally sits down to watch trailers for three other movies.
Batman v Superman is bursting at the seams, desperate to make up the ground DC has lost to Marvel over the past seven years. You can almost picture the boardroom meeting: “We need our
Avengers now.”
In truth, the studio had a 40-year head start on Marvel. DC has been under the Warner banner ever since being folded into Warner Communications way back in 1969. Nobody quite saw this brave new world of grossly conglomerated media coming, but with a stronger vision, Warners could have been way out ahead of the game.
And that’s what seems to be missing: overriding vision. When you’re dealing with something as ungainly as an entire comic book universe, a certain amount of oversight — artistically invested, not corporate — feels only necessary. So the big problem, as far as I see it, remains this lack of a central node, someone akin to Marvel’s
Kevin Feige who is intimately attuned to the source material, drawing the various strings together.
Snyder has been making the bulk of the creative decisions. And he has provided the fans with a lot of the imagery they want to see. But as skilled as Snyder is at capturing a striking frame, he just isn’t the guy to pull all of this narrative complexity together.
As for
Batman v Superman, those involved weren’t prepared for the critical knives the film received, but they always knew it was going to be a transitional film, bridging the gap between
Man of Steel (which was produced with no plan in place to expand the universe) and anything approaching the
Avengers mold. But I’m told “Justice League” will be a crowd-pleaser more suited to Snyder’s talents, and that the upcoming two-part event is “extremely kinetic and visual.” It will be far more straightforward than existential in its handling of superheroes."
‘Batman v Superman’: Where’s the Superhero Suit at Warner Bros.?
