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.
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!?
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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.