I said that from the very beginning. He is in house to WB/DC and more than proved himself in building the DCAU. He sure seems to understand what makes the characters work.
Other than bringing in Bruce Timm, WB should also be trying to resurrect Dwayne McDuffie.
In the interest of fairness, I should have specified that I am talking about the MCU movies. I deliberately excluded movies from Sony, Fox, Lion’s Gate, etc. because Marvel has no control over what they produce. I concede that if we include any film starring a Marvel character, then there are many terrible movies.
This list essentially proves my point. If I were DC, I would want to bury films like Jonah Hex and League in the deepest, darkest hole I could possibly find. Of all the movies you mentioned here, Watchmen is the only one I consider even watchable. (No pun intended)
[QUOTE=GuanoLad]
Ordinarily that’s largely true, many directors are just hired guns whose job is just to translate what they’ve been given. But Zack Snyder has been given a lot more influence on the whole run of the DC slate, taking much of the role that Kevin Feige does for Marvel. Both his movies are heavily stylised like his past work, such as 300 or Sucker Punch, and all the DC movies that are not directed by Snyder, Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman are following that stylistic lead. He seems to be the face and spokesperson for the DC movies right now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he has a lot of influence on where the stories go.
[/QUOTE]
I agree with this completely. Right now Snyder is at the helm for the entire DC film effort. If Snyder was taking his lead from DC’s editors, that would actually imply that DC is even more lost than we think.
Recently, yes. But some really crap films came out with Marvel characters, and DC made some really good and even great films there.
Just that DC loves that hack Zack and 'dark & gritty" too much.
1986, Howard the Duck. One of the worst films ever made.
1989 The Punisher
2005 Elektra.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
2015 Fantastic Four
Vs
1978 Superman!
1989 Batman
2008 The Dark Knight
I . . . had actually forgotten this movie existed.
I was thinking, what, you ran out of genuinely bad movies to mention, and thought you’d toss in the one where he serves in Japan during WWII and then becomes a mountain man up in Canada before a young woman who can glimpse the future comes to him for help? That one wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad; it was better than either ‘Hulk’ movie, or the 3rd X-Men flick; why not mention those?
But, of course, you’re right. (It’s retroactively even worse now, since we know what Ryan Reynolds must’ve begged to do in a supporting role that played to his strengths, but noooo, let’s spend more time on the fat guy and not-Nightcrawler.)
I think the person who made that statement was talking about Marvel Studios movies, not just movies made with Marvel characters.
DC by a nose, and one pinched closed at that.
I was a big DC comics kid back in the Silver Age. Never saw anything interesting about the Marvel comics.
As far as movies, it’s DC’s crap winning out over Marvel’s even worse crap. And most of the credit to raising DC even that high is Batman Returns. But it can’t erase the stench of a lot of other crappy movies.
Well, then you have 1997- Batman & Robin, the WORST movie ever made. A film so bad that Marvel could start releasing crap for a decade and still top DC films on the strength of that 1997 piece of crap.
Doesn’t even get close to Howard the Duck for badness.
Let me put it this way.
The best portrayal of Superman in a movie in the past 35 years was in The Lego Movie.
Maybe. But have you seen Justice League Unlimited? They did a couple of direct to DvD movies.
I’ll give you there hasnt been a great live Supes since Christopher Reeves.
Wrong. He thought the Deadpool in that movie was shit. And was practically blackmailed into doing it.
“It was a very frustrating experience,” Reynolds recalled. “I was already attached to the Deadpool movie. We hadn’t at that point written a script yet. [Origins] came along and it was sort of like, ‘Play Deadpool in this movie or we’ll get someone else to.’ And I just said, ‘I’ll do it, but it’s the wrong version. Deadpool isn’t correct in it.’”
The video in that article wouldn’t work for me so here it is on youtube.
Wrong. HtD is a classic.
No, it’s much, much worse.
Is “Howard the Duck” a bad film? Yes. The writing’s bad and because technology hadn’t yet allowed film makers to make a more appealing lead Howard, could only go as far as a man in a duck suit. And perhaps the most egregious error, IMO, they missed the entire point of Gerber’s interpretation of the comics’ satirical point of view.
BUT
“Batman & Robin” was the fourth in a series. They had at least three different films to work off of. They weren’t creating anything new. They had characters that were well known to both comic fans and non comic fans alike (unlike HTD which was relativity unknown). There was no reason to produce such a miserable and insulting piece of crap that they did.
At least with HTD you can view it for a laugh. As you view B&R you feel as if you’re wasting precious moments of your life.
No, see, I was aware of that; I read it on CRACKED.com before posting; and, I ask you: if you can’t trust CRACKED.com, then who can you trust?
I’d just figured the logical next step would’ve involved him showing up for work and doing his job and taking any and every opportunity to say, hey, how about we do a take where I maybe improvise a little? I’ll just, y’know, throw in a little touch that occurs to me while I’m in character, and totally not something I’ve been planning and rehearsing in front of the mirror and stuff.
I figured he would’ve pleaded for any chance to play Wilson the way he had in mind, given that he was – well, willing to do this movie to someday get said chance, right? So what’s a little begging compared to that?
I suspect if Batman and Robin came out today, it’d have a different reception. BaR was deliberately going after Batman '66 style campiness, at a period when “Dark and gritty” was the only thing anyone wanted out of a Batman movie. Since then, there’s been a big revival of interest in Batman '66 - they finally released the show on DVD, they started selling merch related to that incarnation of the character, Adam West in particular got a lot of cache for his voice work on shows like Family Guy, and they published an utterly charming Batman '66 comic for a while there (although I think that’s since ended), and the show’s influence has been showing up in other books, like Batgirl. The film, as made, still doesn’t work, but in hindsight, you can see a way that it might.
Compare with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Catwoman, or Elektra? Batman & Robin looks like Kubrick next to that rogues gallery of awful films.
DC says the sixth issue of a team-up with his MAN FROM UNCLE contemporaries is set to hit the stands next month.
Yes, but they missed camp by a bit, sad to say. Yes, the old school Adam West Batman was very cool for it’s day- and I’d rather have camp than dark & gritty.
You’re right about those three films, too.
I can’t wait for Marvel’s MCU Phase 4, starting with a Howard the Duck/Thor road movie.
Stranger
Here’s the thing - this is flat wrong. I understand where you might get the impression, but it’s simply incorrect.
Batman (1989) had some grim aspects to it, being a Burton film, but much like his other works there’s actually a slightly cartoonish element even to the grimmer aspects. Color, both visually and metaphorically, is well-used. Batman Returns was weird, but not especially grim. If anything, it took relatively grim subjects but treated them too lightly, and in a way that many people found off-putting. Also, many parents wanted to take their children to the movie and that… didn’t go so well. Batman Forever was a very light film, and unfairly belittled by comic-book fans. But it sold very well in and out of theaters and proved to be a popular entry that could be marketed to families. This is the movie that aspired to, and successfully hit, camp. Nobody with a clue walked to the fourth Batman movie thinking they were getting gritty anything, except possibly the popcorn.
Batman and Robin was a disaster. The entire movie was filled with lame puns and the attempts at camp fall utterly flat. The movie has could be described as “humor,” provided that you were an alien who had only vaguely heard of the subject and didn’t understand the concept. The special effects were insultingly bad and poorly mixed, with some images intending to seem “realistic” and others “silly,” but not in any way that held up. The real blame has to lie with director Joel Schumacher, who to his credit acknowledged that.
Howard the Duck is bad, but it’s only bad; the pieces just didn’t come together. More than anything, they couldn’t quite settle on how adult to make the film. Sitting through it is a chore because the film just doesn’t hit the comedy. Sitting through Batman and Robin is a joy, because there’re entire layers to its badness. it’s so atrociously awful that you can have parties and drinking games out of it. Howard the Duck is a footnote. Batman and Robin is a legend.
BAT CREDIT CARD!!!
I agree with everything you wrote except:
Howard the Duck is bad, but it’s only bad; the pieces just didn’t come together. More than anything, they couldn’t quite settle on how adult to make the film. Sitting through it is a chore because the film just doesn’t hit the comedy. Sitting through Batman and Robin is a joy, because there’re entire layers to its badness.
I was given passes to see Batman and Robin from Warner Brothers (I was doing work for them at the time) and even though I got in for free, I felt I was being cheated. I don’t buy the “it’s so bad it’s good” bit. I wanted to leave that theater half a dozen times. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t enjoyable and wasn’t worth anyone’s time or money.
Whenever I hear people slam small, poorly made films like Plan 9 From Outer Space as the “worst film ever” I have to object. Movies like that had no budget and little or no talent involved, both behind and in front of the camera. So it’s bar is extremely low. But a film project like Batman and Robin had all the money and talent to work with and they made… that?
That’s why, IMO it truly is the** Worst** film ever made.
And to bring it back to the real reason of the original OP, it’s a big mark in the loss column for DC movies.