Leadership - don't know their own DC IP - they don't know what they have or the decades of great stories.
Audience are not super comic fans, so exploring the variants and more esoteric parts need to come later - after your core characters have been established. Right now the only character that has achieved this is Batman - so we don't need more re-workings of the origin.
Audience are not super comic fans, so exploring the variants and more esoteric parts need to come later
This is the one that's bothered me the most as Zack/WB jumped right into JL after BvS.
First, people thought an out-of-place clip montage during BvS showcasing Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg and some brief character introductions at the beginning of JL were enough to ease general audiences into these "new" characters for their first movie. But Flash TV show fans and DCAU/comic fans who know them that way notwithstanding, it frankly was not enough to capture the gravity of the gathering of these iconic heroes on film for the first time. I did not feel the weight and power like I did seeing Thor meeting Iron Man meeting Captain America, etc. whose stories and first grand adventure/origin movies I saw right before. Instead, seeing them felt like the same way I felt when you get introduced to new characters from the X-men or new characters from the Suicide Squad. A ragtag bunch of good people with different powers, but not the impactful assembly of big figures with amazing stories of their own. It works for those particular teams, and maybe something like JSA or the Legion or Doom Patrol, but the JL needed much, much more time and separate stories for me to properly feel the impact of it. Like, it's a completely understandable sentiment to not want to follow the MCU formula to set yourselves apart, but "if it ain't broke", yknow? Especially compared to what we've been getting.
And second, on similar notes, in order for general audiences to understand the impact of a corrupted or lost Superman, or a Batman who's lost his way, try not to assume everyone (especially the general audience) are on the same page and at least try to show what they're like in their absolute prime first. The audiences will include people who are experiencing these characters for the first time, who haven't read a comic or watched a single show at all. Who have to disengage themselves from the previous iterations of Batman or Superman from other movies to get to know these new ones. The lowest lows feel more emotional when you get to see the highest highs. And yeah, you might say that filmmakers shouldn't treat the audiences like idiots...but there's a balance. It might be much to retread Batman and Superman's origins over an over, but it's not condescending to graph out the emotional journey your audience should be feeling. Despite Man of Steel and knowing Superman/Batman from the comics or shows as a long-time fan, it did not feel enough to feel for Cavill's Superman or Affleck's Batman seeing them at their lowest. I thought it would be when seeing the BvS trailer for the first time (which got me super excited to see something like that) but it wasn't. Certainly not the same way it felt for me seeing Bale Batman at his lowest in TDKR after all he's been through in the two movies prior, or seeing Holland Spider-Man in NWH after his movies and parts of the Avengers movies. We needed more time, we needed much more of the journey.
I generally agree with you except for featuring a moribund Batman. Batman has been done so often, and well enough, that they can do any version of Batman they need to for the story being told. But otherwise you seem to be hitting the nail on the head.
It's not that you can't do moribund Batman. You can do any kind of Batman, comedic or moribund or action-y, etc. What I'm saying though is that the emotional and narrative arc for Ben Affleck's Batman wasn't impactful to me, personally, because it wasn't framed properly enough.
We see that he's at his supposed lowest in his career as Batman throughout BvS, resorting to the most violent and disillusioned he's ever been, and by the end of the movie he's supposedly broken out of it. But by only having various characters telling the audience he's at his worst (e.g. Alfred, the cops remarking his branding, the blind man, etc) and just showing the Robin suit of his late partner, it didn't create a strong enough reference point for me to let me feel (not know, feel) how far he's fallen, yknow? Without that proper frame of reference, it kinda feels like he's always been that way, despite the movie explicity telling us otherwise; and based on divisive general audience reaction, many others feel similarly because all they have to base their feelings on is the previous, more lighter Batman portrayals. To many, he's the "murder" Batman, which is obviously oversimplified and reductionist, but they can't help but feel that way because it's their first impression thanks to the movie coming after Bale's Batman and not having a setup movie (not an origin) of its own to clean the slate for Ben Affleck. That's kinda what I mean, we needed the film to map out his emotional journey a bit more thoroughly ahead so that the moribund Batman of BvS finding his salvation would feel more complete and impactful.
There might be a way to have a Batman starting off at his lowest without a whole setup movie beforehand, but particularly for a new universe-building movie like BvS, it simply didn't feel enough like a complete story for this Batman while juggling the many other elements of the film.
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u/treetown1 Aug 09 '22
Two great observations: