BvS made jokes.
‘You don’t want to pick a fight with this person.’
‘I thought she was with you.’
‘I figured. The cape.’
YMMV on if they were successful jokes.
I really don’t think the tone of the movie, or its supposed lack of humor is a problem at all. It was just a poorly-told story. That’s it (in my opinion). That’s the problem.
I’m not sure if you and I watched the same same five out of the last seven Batman movies…
But, honestly, though, I’d hate to have to helm a Batman or a Superman story, especially in this day and age. The characters are so iconic, so larger than life, have so much of a history—I’d even say baggage, in a way—with such successful, nostalgic adaptations in the past, and people get so wrapped up in their involvement with the characters, that it’s going to be impossible to live up all of the audience’s expectations—and they’re seemingly apt to regard any shortcoming as a killing insult…
I think Mohammed is the only religious figure it’d be harder to make a movie about. And I think that’s actually for fewer, if more acute, reasons.
The thing with a franchise though is the success of each movie is ultimately measured by how much it makes you want to watch the next movie in the series.
Look at the Matrix series. The Matrix made $463,517,383. The Matrix Reloaded made $742,128,461. So was The Matrix Reloaded a bigger success? No, because The Matrix Revolutions only made $427,343,298. After Matrix the franchise was moving up; after Reloaded it was moving down.
In DC terms, Batman and Robin was the nadir. It almost killed the Batman franchise. Batman Begins did okay but it restored the reputation of the franchise. The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises grew from there. Batman v Superman is now riding on the reputation established by the Nolan films. But will the people that have watched Batman v Superman going to want to see Justice League?
Maybe?
As per this here thread, apparently SUICIDE SQUAD is getting tweaked hard to be more entertaining; if that’s true, then it’s not implausible that “we heard you loud and clear, and we’re gonna give you what you want” will be the order of the day for, as well as the explicit sales pitch for, the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.
(I mean, if they are so tweaking SQUAD, then that’s what that means, yeah?)
Plus maybe get a sunk-costs thing going on, where folks who shelled out cash to see BvS get told, hey, who was the one guy who defied expectations to absolutely nail some tricky bits of characterization? It was Affleck, wasn’t it? Well, let me just say that Ben Affleck is here, and he has some big important things to say about the making of this film and what it gets right – and if they piggyback all of that on a charming Wonder Woman flick that hits it out of the park, then, yeah, I guess.
Well, that sure sounds like fun!
Tons. And one of the things I liked is that you can see how the relationships between team members have evolved, without it being yelled in your face. You know, the human bits.
Why, yes, it opened here last week, why do you ask? 
Jesus! Prison rape??? Yes, DC needs to ditch Snyder now.
In fact, IMHO the single funniest moment in the movie is a shot of two men smiling - a moment that can only exist following solid character work.
In a practical sense, he could be describing something like the TV show, Spartacus, which was quite popular. People do like a lot of sex and violence, at the end of the day.
But I’d agree with the general consensus that they also like humor and relatable characters. If you just have sex and violence without those, you’re missing a fairly big aspect of the recipe.
As a reminder, no spoilers from other movies in this thread.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Zack Snyder has his head so far up his own ass that he’s confused style with substance, and while his ability to create interesting visuals is certainly impressive, he should be directing music videos, not things with plots and characters.
Of course, things could be worse… They could let Cannon Group take another swing at it.
Yes, we’re all aware of FANT4STIC.
What I will defend Zach Snyder about is I think I see what he is going for in the DC movies and I like the general idea. He is trying to ask the question of what if these heroes were real? What if there was a guy who could do what Superman can do? Or does what Batman does? How would society react? How would that person react? Those are interesting questions to ask and that tone is the main reason I enjoyed BvS.
I honestly think we are overdue to a “true” Superman movie. A Superman that is a good person who always does the right thing because it’s the right thing. People keep saying that’s boring but the character has endured for 75 years so I beg to differ on that. But if you aren’t going to do that, at least he chose an interesting direction to go in.
ETA: Regarding the recent Fantastic 4. I won’t defend that as a great movie but I will say it’s underrated because it also went into an interesting direction but just failed on execution.
I am a Superman fanboy. I even liked Superman Returns. But I hate Zack Snyder’s vision of Superman so I did not see Batman v. Superman, but I did watch Man of Steel. I think he fundamentally doesn’t understand the character and it shows in his movies. Until WB kicks Snyder to the curb, it’s going to be a a rough road.
It’s certainly good to see that DC is listening to what the fans want, and trying to change their movies to match it. But there remains the question of whether they’ll succeed. I could easily see, for instance, them misinterpreting a desire for more lightheartedness, and ending up with silly farce (after which, of course, they would say “Well, we made it more lighthearted, and nobody liked that, so let’s go back to dark”).
Or maybe they will get it right. I hope so. But I’m not getting my expectations up.
I would dispute his ability to create interesting visuals. That ability seems limited to painting everything black.
Those are interesting questions. But “Just like Ayn Rand predicted” is not an interesting answer.
Exactly. And I want to see that approach done well, not abandoned for action comedies. I’d rather they bring in directors more capable of handling the concept, not mimic what the other company’s doing.
Questions are nice, one supposes. Bu that’s about the lowest bar possible. Anyone can “raise questions”. You have to have something worthwhile to say about the question. Again, Justice League asked this very same question, explored the darker side of the heroes, and looked at how other people might respond to the kind of threat that superheroes represent. And that was a cartoon show with a fraction of the budget and audience, with a much larger cast.
However it drew upon well-established personalities. We’ve never had an introduction to these characters as they are presented in this series of films. Man of Steel managed to run for over 2 hours and failed to tell us a single thing about Superman. I don’t know what he values, who he really cares about, or why he does anything. The audience should never be forced to rely on some outside media to have a basic understanding of the characters.
That seems – overly broad.
You don’t know, from MoS, that he really cares about his mother?
You don’t know that he values his privacy (which is why he takes out that satellite when insisting that he’ll be doing this on his own terms), but that he values saving lives more (which is why, over and over, he abandoned his ‘keep a low profile’ ways to save lives, as we saw on that oil rig)? And that, after he saved lives on the bus, his father advised him in the strongest possible way to help folks only when he can keep people from realizing that Clark Kent has godlike powers? And that’s why he wants to get a job where no one looks twice if he’s in dangerous places while asking questions, the better to learn where he can help people next? And that his reverence for life is so strong that he’s reluctant to kill even to save lives?
And that I carefully said “reluctant” there?
And that he grew up knowing that making himself known to the public would change the world for better or for worse, and that he put off that responsibility by helping in secret until he had to openly save his adopted world from genocide?
And that he’s also quite taken with Lois Lane?