What do you mean, “by now”? D.C. hasn’t put out any Snyder-style movies since they canceled the rest of Snyder’s movies.
It would cost nothing to sell in in DVD form. Now everybody is going to want to see how bad it was.
ROFLMAO.
ETA: To be fair, a good Batman film should be grimdark, and I really liked The Batman. I’m also a fan of Se7en which it really reminded me of.
…regarding diversity: some of the DC Arrowverse shows were well ahead of the game in terms of representation, especially in terms of LGBTQ stories. Legends, Batwoman (especially the latest season), Black Lightning, Supergirl, all had great surface level representation, and Doom Patrol knocks it out of the park.
But what Marvel is doing (primarily since the departure of Perlmutter) is really quite different. Its been a slower evolution, but they’ve laid out the groundwork for a more representative future that won’t really be easily rolled back.
The Phase IV slate included Cate Shorland, Dustin Daniel Cretton, Chloé Zhao, Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler as Diractors, with the TV Shows having Jac Shaeffer, Malcomn Spellman, AC Bradley, Bisha K Ali and Jessica Gao as Head Writers/joint showrunners with Kari Skogland, Kate Herron, Bert and Bernie, Mohammad Diab, Adil & Bilall, Meera Menon, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Kat Coiro and Anu Valia as Directors/joint showrunners.
Its a deliberate decision to bring in diverse storytellers to tell stories through a different, unique lens. It isn’t perfect. And Phase IV hasn’t always been successful. But its been a Phase that has essentially been dominated by non-white/non-male voices for the first time who have been given huge leeway to tell the story that they wanted to tell.
Which is why what happened with Batgirl is so troubling. A film directed by two rising talents (I thought that their two episodes of Ms Marvel were superb) of Moroccan descent, that starred a Dominican-American actress and was to feature their first trans DC character in the movies, is just gone. Never to be seen. Down the proverbial memory hole.
I don’t believe a word about the “previews were bad.” Its just the same-old Hollywood smear machine they rolled out to protect Weinstein until the weight of accusations became too much. The tone of the earnings call was quite clear. They are going after the “male skew.” The movies will be a reflection of the board. And movies like Batgirl just don’t fit the bill. So they wanted to let everyone know that: loud and clear. Which is why they did this pretty unprecedented thing.
What I love about (recent) Marvel, even the movies or shows that aren’t the best, is that I can see myself more often than not reflected in the characters and the story.
I can do that too with many of the DC TV shows (especially my personal favourite, Doom Patrol.) But I’ve never been able to do with the movies. I loved Tim Burton’s Batman because it was full of delightful weirdos. I loved Donnor’s Superman because he fought for truth and justice. I loved Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey because it told new stories in different ways, I loved James Gunn’s Suicide Squad and Peacemaker because that bunch of losers did the right thing in the end.
But none of the other movies ever worked for me. I was never able to relate to Nolan’s Batman. I couldn’t actually finish any of them. The Synderverse is mostly painful to watch. Wonder Woman II featured some racist tropes that meant I just couldn’t finish it.
If they were smart they would hand the keys to the universe to Gunn and tell him to assemble a team and to do his thing. Because the real key to Marvels success is that the people at the top are great-big-nerds who just enjoy making superhero movies. That really is their secret weapon.
I’ll share this clip again from the Kevin Smith/Marc Bernardin Podcast where they interview the Endgame writers and they talk about how Feige told them firstly they were doing “Civil War”, then secondly that they were going to get to play with Spider-man. (Clip set up to play at the right spot)
They just love this stuff. And that love and passion drives everything else. We can see it onscreen, even if what they do doesn’t always work.
But I think they will get a bean-counter in to run the studio, or if they bring in a creative, then they will keep them under tight control. The slides at the earnings call show that they already know what sort of studio they are planning on being, and I don’t think the likes of Adil & Bilall will be getting an opportunity with them again for a long while. We are going to get a more homogenous, less diverse universe than the one that they were heading towards. It will probably make them a lot of money. But I don’t think it will probably be for me.
And by a remarkable coincidence, the new WB CEO has hired himself a leadership team that is almost entirely white men. Which required firing at least one woman to clear the way.
Why is that funny? Batman didn’t kill anyone. And his story arc was one that taught him that he needs to be connected to people, that he can’t be an isolated loner. Grimdark is an atmosphere of relentless despair, cruelty, and violence, In which “heroes” are often little better than villains. It certainly wasn’t like the Snyder version of Batman, which is dark for no reason. This world was dark because it reflected Batman’s own despair, and by the end, the world and he were looking at something brighter.
Se7en is just relentless dark, certainly “grimdark” and joyless, unlike The Batman. Batman doesn’t need to be pitch-black, so to speak, and the most recent movie had a good balance. I somehow felt the Dark Knight movies were more cynical.
I liked the Tim Burton Batman movies, which managed to be appropriately dark, without being grim. I especially liked Danny DeVito’s Penguin.
If it retains subscribers or adds them to the tune of substantially more than $200 million. But does “The Gray Man” do that, as opposed to other, more efficient uses of the money? The early returns suggest no. The film is not well received. Again, contrast that with Bird Box, which cost one tenth as much money and generated ten times the hype, or a series like The Umbrella Academy, which draws loyal viewers and costs about as much for an entire SEASON as The Gray Man cost.
Well…
“Netflix reported the film was streamed for a total of 88.55 million hours over its first three days, which would equal around 43.55 million viewers. It was the most-watched film in 84 countries”
More than 20% of your subscribers seeing something seems popular enough to me. And that assumes everyone watched that film on their own, looks like.
…by critics. Which is not the metric Netflix is most concerned about, I’d warrant.
And had only just over half the viewership in its first week that TGM has had in 3 days…
My point was I’m a paid subscriber, and I’m perfectly happy with Netflix spending my subscription money on a movie I’d like to see. I certainly didn’t see Bird Box, and have no plans to ever do so. I will watch The Gray Man (once my Sandman viewing is over).
Yes, and that describes the tone of the film exactly.
But, that’s generally how Gotham City is portrayed in comics and on the screen, for decades now. So the movie is appropriately grimdark, unlike Justice League. As I said, I liked it.
Bruce Wayne was portrayed in the most grim, joyless way I’ve ever seen him played on screen. I thought it worked though.
It also had the gritty realism attributed to grimdark fiction. Again, for Batman that works. He’s a regular person, no superpowers. He beats people with his fists. It works.
But if a grimdark is defined as. “a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent.” This movie fits. Even if Batman is the one trying to rise above that.
That’s way too broad a definition for me.
No matter what the definition, I don’t like it, won’t watch it and will punish the studio that keeps infecting my comic fandom as a kid with it by withholding my cash from anything they are associated with until they cease/desist/repudiate it and torch every single copy of anything Zach Snyder has touched in the DCUniverse.
I quoted Wikipedia with that one.
It’s worth noting here that the term “grimdark” comes from Warhammer 40K, which features genetically engineered space marines hopped up on super steroids stabbing literal chaos demons in the face with chainsaw swords. “Gritty realism” isn’t really that central to the concept, except in the narrow sense of “unsanitized violence”.
I agree with you about Zack, he is a horrible choice for Superhero films. But Shazam! is 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. "It earned 17x its $62.5 million budget, making it the most profitable (rate-of-return) comic book flick ever. " Forbes. “The Suicide Squad” also did quite well.
And you forget the Eternals stinkeroo , not to mention a couple of the Thor films that were “meh”.
Slight tangent: I read that Affleck is returning as Batman. Do we have two of them now?
…that can’t possibly be right.
Yup, I forgot about Shazam in my earlier posts in this thread. (The Suicide Squad, too, for that matter.)
I honestly didn’t pay much attention to Eternals. But, I agree – in particular, several of the MCU “second” films (e.g., Iron Man 2, Thor: Dark World, Avengers: Age of Ultron) were “meh,” as you say. 
It’s not profits, its ROI; if that stat is accurate, then it’s likely more a function of it having a budget that was a lot lower than most DC and MCU films. Avengers: Endgame, for example, had a budget of between $350 and $400 million.