No, they can’t hear our complaints because they don’t post on SDMB. Otherwise, your comments about the amount of money they’re making are entirely irrelevant–this is not a discussion of why they’re not making a profit, it’s a question of why folks here don’t like their movies.
It’s like a thread on the low quality of McDonald’s Hamburgers, and you respond by telling us how many burgers they sold. Both accurate and irrelevant.
It works for Marvel because they moved to a darker tone. They have an emotional range.
Snyder hasn’t figured out that unrelenting dark and gritty is just as bland as unrelenting happiness and light. The dark moments in a movie that’s half dark and half light feel a lot darker than the darkest moments in a movie that’s all dark.
One good movie, one great movie, and one awful movie don’t compensate for other unpleasant films.
His movies are miserable. And he couldn’t properly direct action if the fate of all DC depended on it.
Well, I liked Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad but Man of Steel was awful and I agree the DC movies are not done as well as they can be. There are a couple of reasons:
This recent go around of movies was birthed because WB saw dollar signs and said “I want some of that sweet, Sweet Marvel Money”. You are already two steps behind when that is the motivation.
The movies to date were all guided by the same creative voice (i.e Zack Snyder). Marvel was smart enough to make their movies feel different from each other. DC does seem to be learning this slowly though.
The Powers that Be seem to be running from the characters instead of embracing them. Superman is supposed to be a little bit square. It’s okay to make him that way. Also DC’s settings are fictional unlike Marvel. Instead of taking advantage of this and showing us amazing images of Cities that Never Were, they make them just look like Generic City Number 5. It feels like a waste of potential.
What Marvel did is very hard to do. It’s easy to point to success in hindsight but there are a thousand ways this could have all gone to crap. Iron Man could have tanked, killing everything before it started. Avengers was almost an impossible movie to do well an they got one of the only people who could do it and he knocked it out of the park. And even Marvel is not perfect. The Thor movies are just okay. Avengers 2 was muddled and much less successful creatively than the first one. Civil War felt a little tired to me. It is easy to have it all come crashing down.
All that said, DC is not completely lost and it feels like they are improving. Wonder Woman looks good and I enjoyed the little of Justice League we have seen. Plus it feels like they are trying to fix what was wrong with their version of Superman. We’ll see.
Oh its a thread about the folks HERE? That’s not what i got out of the OP.
He said why does it get critical and fan rejection. And for a film that was rejected by fans it made a SHIT TON of money. Hence my point about its income. Maybe it wasn’t as widely rejected by the fans as the OP thinks.
The “fans” are already shitting on Justice League. So why is it going to make a lot of money? Who are these miserable bastards throwing their money away?
Yes yes, thank you for pointing it out.
But this IS a thread for the people here, because we’re the people here discussing it.
This narrative that DC movies are failing doesn’t have much connection to reality. They haven’t been critical darlings and they don’t make Avengers money. But they make bazillions of dollars and, outside of internet fandom, most people enjoy them just fine.
Do I think they’re as well-executed as they could be? Nope. But they’re hardly failing.
This. DC only looks like a failure because they are only raking in slightly below Marvel money, which is pretty ridiculous. It’s the same phenomenon that we saw with the spiderman films, they were actually more successful than most Marvel movies and people still thought they were bombs for some reason.
The OP said nothing about box office. The question is why “DC/Warner Brothers movies just seem to always be met with critical and fan rejection.”
My opinion is that Warner sees the properties as simply names and costumes. Marvel realizes that they include several decades of **stories **as well, and works to adapt them to the movie medium, rather than throwing them out and going off in whatever direction. Captain America and Iron Man were reasonable modernized updates of the origin stories that fans know so well. Man of Steel may have been a decent alien invasion epic, but it wasn’t a Superman story.
(I still haven’t seen Batman v. Superman, and don’t plan to until it comes to basic cable – or until my public library gets the DVD. Bad enough I spent money on tickets for Man of Steel. Not repeating that mistake.)
I admit that I don’t read Superman comics, but isn’t it pretty much “No matter what, evil guys just can’t get anything over on SuperMarySue!” ?
Doesn’t seem like that makes for compelling movies.
That’s exactly what I liked about it. I much prefer watching a genre movie featuring superheroes than a ‘superhero movie.’ Dark Knight was a great crime movie, for example. I liked that it was DC’s initial approach to their universe, even if they didn’t nail the execution.
I’d so much prefer if they kept going in that direction and worked on getting it right. They’ve apparently decided on going the ‘more like Marvel’ route, though, in hopes that their box office is more like theirs too.
A lot of people happy to see quippy Batman in that Justice League trailer. I am not among them.
Hope.
Marvel sells movies that have hope in them. From the color palate to the humor to the plot.
They still can’t hear you over the sound of all the money.
DC is later to the “huge expanded universe” party but in terms of raking in lots of coin it’s working just fine. People are excited to see “Wonder Woman” and it will make jillions, as will Justice League and whatever comes after that.
And let’s be honest, there is an element of
DC CAN make a great movie given that “The Dark Knight” exists, and “Batman Begins” was pretty good, too. You’re looking at a relatively small sample of films; the fact DC blew it with SvB and Suicide Squad proves little. For all we know Justice League will be great. IT’s hard to predict these things, even knowing who the creative team is.
Most Marvel movies actually haven’t been THAT great. Some have been terrific, for sure; many have not, and my prediction is the overall quality will decline as they keep pumping them out.
Two of the Marvel characters are iconic. The rest? Nowhere near as much even in the Anglosphere, and “who?” outside of it.
Nah, nothing like that. Superman can be in tons of interesting stories; it’s just that he’s a harder character to do well and Hollywood pushes against what’s hard to do.
I think on the Marvel side The Hulk is similar (in the sense that he is harder to write a movie about, not in character) thus we have yet to see a fully creatively successful Hulk solo movie.
Superman has been in continuous publication for over eighty years, and has been massively successful in literally every form of mass media in existence. And yet, people still have this weird idea that it’s not possible to tell interesting stories about the guy. 
It isn’t that it’s hard to tell interesting stories about Superman. It’s that it’s difficult to tell intelligent stories about Superman. Too often, writers have to “forget” one or more of his powers before the story contains any meaningful drama.
Also, “Superman Marries Lori Lemaris” and “Superman Kills Batman” and “Jimmy Olsen Gets Superman’s Powers” and guff of that nature.
(John Byrne’s reboot of Superman was the best thing ever to happen to Big Blue. And I say that as someone who mostly detests John Byrne; his hatchet job on Wonder Woman was one of comics’ worst atrocities.)
A good box office is the opposite of fan rejection.
I think it is generally accepted that DC does a better job on TV.
Sure there is the teen/20something relationship element on the CW shows (Smallville, Arrow, Flash, and soon Supergirl) but they are pretty good IMHO.
There is also Gotham which has some good stuff.
They range in darkness – from dark to light I’d say Gotham, Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl (though the last two are pretty close).
Brian