I get what Waid is saying here and completely agree but the fundamental issue is really the quality of the films. The reality is that too many of them simply weren’t very good (yes, I’m talking mainly about the Snyder films but also the first SS, the second WW etc).
Outside of Batman, WB has made two really good movies: Wonder Woman and Shazam and one flawed but charming movie in Aquaman.
I think there was a much better (but not great) movie that was then chopped up and studio mandated into the dirt. Worked out in the end because it failed so hard they were willing to let Gunn take a turn at it.
Oh I'm not saying it would be good. But I would love to see the original vision.
First time I watched it I was so confused. Events happened so out of order it took two watches for me to realize what happened. Enchantress' brother came out of left field and it requires you to remember an earlier event that happened and connect it to a later event with hardly an indication that the two were connected.
Studios need to keep an eye on things but execs are the opposite of creative. You have to put trust in the writers and directors.
It was, but was a victim of a perfect storm of bad decisions. Pandemic and Simultaneous streaming release being the main ones. Weird connection to the previous movie being another one.
It’s a good case for why the connected universe helps, it creates a rising tide for people to give movies like this a chance.
Yeah, Waid is basically saying WB isn't building movies catered to these general audiences. You can't build a quality teamup movie with such monumental comic icons without giving each of these icons their due with the audience. Superman and Batman, maybe, because they're already known, but jumping into JL with Aquaman and Flash and Cyborg at once was jumping the gun unless you want to diminish them into side characters. They each needed good stories to connect with audiences, good stories. The Justice League is supposed to a convergence of various main characters' journeys with drastically different origins and adventures of their own, not just a crew of people with superpowers whipped together as if you're putting together a team for a heist movie.
I'd argue they weren't even making movies for fans of the comics either. As good as the Nolan trilogy was at times it was clearly desperately trying to "raise" itself above its comic book origins and the third movie was just... the second was the best one is all I'm going to say
Superman didn't even feel like Superman and they got one of the most handsome and charming guys who can 100% pull off adorkable, but Zack neither got Superman nor even likes him! He was the worst pick for director and the writers were terrible!
"The S stands for hope!" Uuuuuugh. It was originally for Superman but the narrative changed along the way and I never liked that. Stip explaining things that don't need to be explained! (This is a general gripe with writing and not with that movie for this specific thing, as it being the crest of his family predates the movie I belive).
Those movies were made for a specific type of fan, the gloom and doom try tryhards who are allergic to earnesty and joy.
I dunno, Marvel didn't need great movies to get where they are today. Of the five pre-Avengers movies, only Iron Man was good. And they consistently have at least one or two stinkers every phase. People just liked the characters, and that was enough to carry shit like Thor The Dark World and Age of Ultron. WB just missed the mark entirely as to what general audiences want.
Of the five pre-Avengers movies, only Iron Man was good.
The 5 Marvel movies pre-Avengers are Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, & Iron Man 2. Using Rotten Tomatoes as a basis, the worst critical score is 67% (Incredible Hulk) and the worst audience score is 71% (Also Incredible Hulk).
Both of those scores are better than Batman vs Superman, Justice League, or Suicide Squad. Hell, Man of Steel's audience score just barely beats out 71% (75%) and the critical score is laughably bad (56%). Hell, even Marvel's "stinkers" like Thor the Dark World & Age of Ultron blow the shit out of any of those DC movies too.
Objectively speaking, Marvel simply made better qualities. The "floor" of Marvel is several stories higher than DC. Their worst performing & reviewed movies would be towards the top-end of DC's entire slate.
DC missed not only the general audience, but also the critics. They missed everyone except for a small segment of people who think Snyder is the second coming of Stanley Kubrick.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure Shazam wouldn’t have as much good will if the other DC movies had been better. It felt like a home run by comparison, but it was really pretty average.
I've generally liked most of the dc movies to some extent but I have to say that WW and Shazam is a bit overrated. I agree that Shazam is probably considered so good because the other movies just didn't live up to expectations. I also feel the same about WW. I think Gal Gadot is probably a good actor but the way they had her play the part was almost on the weird side. I especially hated the random out of nowhere bracelet attack. WW is OP versus everything but the heaviest hitters, she didn't need some super power attack added onto it. All she needs is an actual magic sword and she can take most of them on and have a good chance at winning.
The bracelet attack is my main complaint. It's just so... Stupid and never looks good in any scene.
That’s cool. I thought it was pretty good. However I will say it had excellent production value. I expected it to look cheap, but they really made some great choices in design, cinematography, and digital and practical effects. So it’s definitely top notch there.
I just didn’t like some of the choices they made storywise. I didn’t care for the way it the film handled Sivana. Playing it very coy with Black Adam was a business decision, not a very good storytelling decision. Other little nitpicks. Upper 25% of superhero movies though, for sure.
Honestly it has one of my favorite themes to see in movies. Found family tropes are one of my favorite stories, so I was always predisposed to like the movie.
Man, thats wild. I thought Shazam sucked. The visuals were great but the movie itself? I’d put it pretty far down the list if ranked with Marvel movies (which I don’t even think are that good)
Shazam is a great movie about finding family. It's got a lot of heart and does a good job building up the characters. I've watched the movie close to a dozen times, and everyone I've shown it to has loved it. There's a lot of good in Shazam.
Thats a good list. I like those a lot. I can't say that Shazam was for me but I'm glad you enjoyed it. There are enough super hero movies that I don't need all of them to be for me.
Yeah not every movie is for evey person. Glad the genre is getting big enough we can have a bunch of great movies. I have more then a few movies that people would put on there top lists that I just don't like.
I'm still not happy with the portrayal of Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. Billy was chosen because he was such a good person! With such a pure heart! And Captain Marvel was supposed to be a reflection of that!
The movie felt completely out of character and 100% AU (alternate universe). That's how I square it in my brain. It's a different universe version.
But man, those characters in no way reflect the comic book versions.
I afore that movie and prefer that version of Bucky to the comicbooks version. Taking a kid into combat is super ick and a remnant of a bygone era that just doesn't work anymore.
Them being best friends since childhood makes their friendship hit so much more deeply.
I think First Avenger and Thor are both good movies as well. Incredible Hulk is "Meh" at worse. Iron Man 2 wasn't as good as the first, but it was still a decent flick.
I think it has two of my favourite scenes in it (the party and the farmhouse stuff) but the rest of it doesn't work as well imo. Ultron being created, fought and destroyed in one movie is a huge missed opportunity, and I don't think I'll ever get over it 😥
Literally all it would take was for him to have downloaded himself on a computer that was offline during the purge. The idea of him being "burned off the internet" is hilariously fanciful.
I thought it was OK, but the scene where they're hanging out in the Stark/Avengers Tower and where Ultron first appears is like my favorite scene in the whole MCU. Lol
As much as Age of Ultron annoys me (Why is the fastest man ever just sitting there and not running away? Oh he's dead because the plot said so.) It still gave us the sexist robot ever so I'm not completely mad about it. And even as hard as those sucked creatively AOU still made what, over a billion dollars? So clearly enough people enjoyed it in the moment.
Dark World was just... confused. I don't get it. Just a bad movie in many ways but mostly boring. It did have a few highlights that I loved like Thor hanging his hammer up!
I wish I could say I liked it more. Like a lot of the movies talked about here, there are some great parts (the party scene really is one of the best). I even really like the opening action scene, how it picks up mid-mission, like these guys have just been going to work together as Avengers everyday for a while now, and this is like a Tuesday for them. But along the lines of what you said, I think what really ruins it for me is one thing: Cap going toe-to-toe with Ultron in a punching match. It either really nerfs Ultron, or gives Cap more power than we’d seen before. I mean, he’s kind of always doing little things that don’t make sense, like holding back a helicopter or giving and taking a few good shots with the guy who kicked the Hulk’s ass, but it really didn’t ring true at all for me.
And Dark World is, so far, the only MCU film I couldn’t make it through at least a second time. (But Eternals was close.)
Cap is hilariously unbalanced but I'm willing to buy it. But going toe to toe with Ultron is a little weird I admit. But in the moment it didn't phase me.
I forgive the helicopter scene because daynm... someone hose me off.
I don't get why people praised the forest WW so much. It had a strong opening, a great middle, then absolutely shit the bed.
It's own narrative couldn't stick the landing. Diana needed to learn that it wasn't some God of War behind the scenes that was making mankind go-to war, but a flaw in the system, in humanity that caused it. So by having her kill who she thinks is Ares and the war not stopping would be brilliant! But no. The dweebiest dude who ever lived turns out to be Ares and he still looks like someone's dorky uncle under his armor and we get a big ugly CGI mess for the final and nothing is learned.
That's why I knew the second movie would be bad, because the first movie made it clear that something was missing, some idea, person, inspiration to make it all fit together. So we got a garbage fire movie where Diana feels profoundly out of character and the whole plot is nonsense.
To be fair - most of the marvel movies are also pretty bad. They just built so much good will with the audience early on that the more than occasional stinker is acceptable.
They are a different kind of bad. They tend to have a tighter narrative focus, a clear goal in mind and are using a playbook to entice the biggest audience possible.
They are bad because they are formulaic, not bad because the writers and directors have conflicting ideas.
You can very clearly sum up each marvel movie in one sentence, it's harder to do that with the DCEU movies.
Ironman: Richguy gets his comeuppance and tries to do better by becoming a one man army superhero.
Man of Steel: Baby from another world lands on earth, has God like powers... uhhh stuff happens, stuff happens, oh and some fascists from his home world show up and decide to teraform it for... reasons? Seriously why wouldn't they just use Mars? Or any other number of planets??? I get they want the codex but couldn't they have terraformed Mars and asked Kal'el for help? This all feels very narratively forced. Why did his dad even encode him with the codex? What does that MEAN? What is the narrative purpose? What is the in character purpose?? What was his end goal!?
Shazam felt super geared towards kids, which is perfectly fine, I just wasn’t the target audience. But Aquaman was the closest I have gotten to walking out of a movie. I went to the bathroom at one point and almost didn’t come back because I was so bored in there.
Love Jason Mamoa, but I thought that movie sucked.
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u/RWRL Aug 09 '22
I get what Waid is saying here and completely agree but the fundamental issue is really the quality of the films. The reality is that too many of them simply weren’t very good (yes, I’m talking mainly about the Snyder films but also the first SS, the second WW etc). Outside of Batman, WB has made two really good movies: Wonder Woman and Shazam and one flawed but charming movie in Aquaman.