5 Reasons Things Look Bad For The DC Cinematic Universe.
1) Warner Brothers Is Only Interested In Franchises, Not Movies.
A big emphasis for movie studios is the classic ‘tentpole franchise’, this is loosely defined as a series of movies that the studio can spend a lot of money on, and will reliably make them a lot of money, the summer blockbuster. In recent years, Warner Brothers has been hurting for precious ‘tentpoles’. The one-two combination of “The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy” and the “Harry Potter” series steamrolled the box office, but as the source material ran out, so did the movies. Thus the decision to make The Hobbit (the shortest of the LOTR books) into THREE movies to really stretch out that sweet sweet LOTR money, and the decision to take a book referenced in one of the Harry Potter movies “Magical Beasts And Where To Find Them” and decide that needs to be a trilogy of movies. It’s no surprise that Warner Brothers recently talked to Guy Ritchie about getting him to make a 9-movie series about King Arthur.
The inherent problem with announcing 8 sequels before pen is put to paper on the first one, is that the quality of the first movie generally suffers. In move history, titles that are made solely for the purpose of kick-starting a trilogy generally flop critically and commercially, such as: Green Lantern, Prince Of Persia, John Carter, Battleship, Jack The Giant Slayer, The Lone Ranger. It should go without saying that studios should go into production thinking “let’s make the best movie possible and see how it goes” rather than thinking “we’re already planning the fourth one”. Pirates Of The Caribbean was conceived as one movie and it shows, there was no long origins, it was well received and closed in a neat little package. The majority of the listed movies are simply origin stories, where you have to watch the lead character be normal for maybe an hour before seeing them become the character on the poster in only the final 20 mins, and is usually very heavy on setting up the sequel.
Superman Returns is an early example of WB only looking at the bottom line as far as box office goes. The publicly loathed movie went down great with critics, but only pulled in $400 million at the box office, and considering $400 million is pretty much exactly what Warner Brothers spent trying to get the world to care about Superman, it’s technically a loss. Hopes for a sequel were dashed when WB executives said “Superman is the most recognisable superhero in the world! The movie deserved to make twice that! No way are we funding a sequel!” Despite the fact that nobody had cared about Superman since 1981, and it’s a goddam miracle a movie where Superman doesn’t punch anything got as far as $400 million. Hindsight may be 20/20, but at this point I’ll point out that 2005’s Batman Begins only netted WB somewhere around $350 million, but the sequel The Dark Knight broke a billion dollars. So, you know, there’s something to be said for taking risks.
2) WB Loves To Make Announcements Regardless Of The Impossible
I’d have to estimate that WB has been talking about making DC movies more than it’s actually made them. Seriously, for a number of years they’d make announcements about how they were thinking of making a Flash movie, and a Wonder Woman movie, writers and directors would occasionally come and go, but nothing ever happened with them. Warner Brothers bought DC in 1969, but hasn’t really figured out what to do with them since. With the exception of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, WB has been pretty happy to let their all-star cast of recognisable superheroes fester on the shelf. The amount of movies based on DC properties but never came to fruition largely resembles a child’s art-book filled with drawings he barely started. There are at least three Superman movies that got as far as scripts and directors but never actually produced, a couple for Batman, one Justice League movie that actually cast all of it’s members and fitted them for costumes before getting hit by the writers strike and pulling the plug on the movie. Apparently a strike that lasted about 4 months was enough to kill the movie permanently.
However, The Avengers making a shit-ton of money made WB rethink it’s commitment to the bulging roster of superheroes that it’s sat on for 40 [frick]ing years, because a shortly after, WB came out with the proud announcement of “We’re gonna bring out a Justice League Movie In 2015 And It’s Gonna Be Amazing! Just You Wait And See!” The problem was that they didn’t have a script, a writer, a director or even a cast, just a dream to make billions of dollars like Marvel did. They kept blowing that trumpet before finally accepting it wasn’t going to happen. So instead the following year at Comic Con (2013) they proudly announced “We’re gonna do a Batman Vs Superman movie in 2015 And It’s Gonna Be Amazing!” Even though they had an even smaller production window, not really much more of a script, and the only confirmed cast member was Henry Cavill as Superman. Needless to say, WB eventually announced that they couldn’t make the movie for 2015, so decided to move the release date to 2016, on the exact same date Marvel had earmarked for Captain America 3.
3) Man Of Steel Was Only Made To Keep The Character Rights
Man Of Steel is the movie supposed to kick-start the DC Universe, which is a shame, because if it’s angst-ridden brooding is setting the tone for the future, we’re not in for a fun ride. But it’s important to remember that WB didn’t really want to make Man Of Steel in the first place. Yep, you read that right. While Batman was pulling in the moolah, WB wasn’t really that bothered about trying to drag Superman’s name out of the mud, having sunk a lot of money into it only a few years ago. Conversations were had after The Dark Knight hit big, but ultimately nothing came of it until they were told that if production wasn’t started on a Superman movie by 2011, they would be liable for a lawsuit by Jerry Seigel’s estate who owns 50% of Superman.
Little thing about character rights, they’re sort of on a “use them or lose them” basis for studios that share them with someone else, it’s the reason Constantin films made a Fantastic Four movie in 1994, but never intended to release it (or even tell the actors), but in doing so would get to keep the rights on technicality of having used the characters. It’s also the reason that the cinematic rights to Daredevil reverted back to Marvel from Fox because Fox had done nothing with the character in years. WB had made an agreement with Jerry Seigel to pay him off several thousand dollars a year for creating the character, but he was never happy with co-creating Superman then getting screwed out of profits by WB, so through a series of lawsuits was able to recapture 50% of the rights. Because of this, his estate would be liable to sue for loss of earnings if WB sat on the rights to a Superman movie but never actually made one, and if successful, could have taken the rights from WB. With Superman Returns being an attempt to revive ‘classic Superman’ for modern audiences failing, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight being praised for “being a great crime thriller that happens to have Batman in it”, it feels like Man Of Steel was an attempt to make a Superman movie without Superman in it. Let’s not have Clark Kent as a bespectacled reporter, let’s make him a bearded hobo working manual labour. Let’s have Lois Lane figure out he’s Superman the first time they meet. Let’s take away the S-curl, the red underwear, the S on the back of his cape, let’s have nobody use the word Superman. It doesn’t fill me with confidence that the supposed stepping stone to a Justice League movie is based on a movie that’s almost ashamed to have Superman as a lead character.
4) They Still Won’t Take Risks
So Man Of Steel got fairly decent reviews, and though it didn’t make the squillions they hoped for, turned a profit with the aid of a $160 million product placement deal. What’s WB’s next move? A sequel? A Flash movie? That Justice League movie they’ve been crowing about for [frick]ing years?
Nope, it’s a sequel, with added Batman.
See, there’s some debate online as to how much money Man Of Steel actually made. It’s conventional movie-making wisdom that every dollar you spend making a movie is two dollars you want to see at the box office, and with a bloated budget of nearly $250 million, and a marketing campaign of $150-$200 million, that’s around $450 million or more, meaning WB wanted to see at least $800-900 million in returns. However the aforementioned product placement deal technically offset their marketing budget, making their $660 million box office take into more of a profit than it actually would have been.
So what to do when your first step to a bold *new* world hasn’t quite made the splash you hoped it would? Of course, you add Batman, the only DC character who has ever grossed a billion dollars in a single movie. In the buildup to Justice League, Batman is the character who needs no introduction, audiences know who he is and his origins story, he could be dropped into a Justice League movie and nobody would be confused. Compared to the likes of Wonder Woman, The Flash and Shazam, whose backstories are lesser known, it’s hard dislike the fact that Batman is getting yet another movie yet so many characters will be unceremoniously dropped into the long fabled Justice League movie. And you can notice that WB hasn’t really announced anything beyond Batman Vs Superman, they still haven’t really committed to a Justice League movie, or any other solo flicks between BVS and JL. The string of failures like Catwoman, Superman Returns and Green Lantern could possibly be a reason why WB is making a big deal about having a DC Universe… but only one movie at a time.
So why doesn’t DC just come straight out with a Justice League movie? If The Avengers can be made for around $200 million, Justice League can easily be made for the $225-250 million WB spent on Man Of Steel. Well, a lot of people will say it’s because it can’t be done, that introducing 5 or so new characters in a movie, plus a villain, plus telling a story would be a suicide move. Well guess what, Marvel is now dominating with an almost $100 million opening weekend for Guardians Of The Galaxy, beating established brands such as Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men Days of Future Past and The Hobbit. This is a movie based on a comic-book the average public had never heard of, introducing a team of 5 heroes, one of which is a walking tree, the other a [frick]ing talking raccoon. If Marvel can turn a completely obscure comic with a wacky premise into a success, why can’t WB take a team of heroes, half of which people have actually heard of, and make a good movie? Whatever their reputation, at least people have actually heard of Superman, Batman and Wonder-Woman, yet apparently it’s simply impossible to make a straight-up movie about them? It means that we’ll never see a Justice League movie until WB decides a solo movie is successful enough.
5) Batman V Superman Is Shaping Up To Be Like Iron Man 2 and Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Okay, so Hollywood mandate dictates that sequels are supposed to be bigger, longer, and not quite as good as the original, that’s no surprise. What is surprising is the trend that’s oddly specific to the second movie of brand new franchises. Look at this way: Iron Man 1 made a lot of money and got great reviews and word of mouth, it gathered a lot of buzz for the laid-out plan to get to The Avengers. The whole ‘shared universe’ craze was birthed when Iron Man did well. So what did Marvel do for the sequel? Cram as much extra stuff in as they physically could. Nick Fury was given a large role, Black Widow an even larger one, lots of Avengers foreshadowing, Captain America’s shield, Thor’s hammer, War Machine, Iron Man 2 was criticised for being an advert for The Avengers. Do you think other studios would have learned from this? Of course not.
When Sony rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man, the world let out a unanimous “Ehhh…. really?” but when the movie got fairly positive reviews and $800 million in the bank, Sony jumped on the bandwagon of “We’re doing shared universes too!” because The Avengers. The problem is that Sony really only have the rights to Spider-Man, meaning it’s less of a “shared universe” as it is a “Spider-Man Universe”, as the supposed spinoff movies are of villains, such as Venom and The Sinister Six. How are Sony going to make kid movies about the bad guys? Are the bad guys going to try to kill Spider-Man? How would that work? In any case, now that Sony decided to do a cinematic universe, it’s time to cram the sequel with as much as they can. So they threw in three villains (Electro, Green Goblin, Rhino), they threw in clues to other villains (Dock Ock, Vulture, Morbius, Smythe, Venom, these are just the ones I know about), they threw in a potential Black Cat, they even threw in Mary Jane Watson, before removing all her scenes because they decided the movie was just too full to take another love interest. The movie had pretty much the same criticisms as Iron Man 2, and Sony pretty much admitted they just shot as much footage as they could and see what fits.
So, WB had moderate success with Man Of Steel, and they’ve decided to make it a cinematic universe so.. can you tell what happens next? Not content with a Superman sequel, they’ve thrown in Batman, which doesn’t sound so bad, except they’ve explicitly called it Batman V Superman, and eased us the fight from The Dark Knight Returns. So WB are trying to be like Marvel and have a long term plan, yet they’re giving us a big payoff the first time the two characters meet rather than building towards it? It feels a bit short sighted, kinda like having Captain America wield Thor’s hammer in the first Avengers movie. So there’s that, which would be fine if they weren’t also shoehorning Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman and Aquaman (that we know of) into the movie also.
So, this is my case against the proposed DC Cinematic Universe. These are merely my opinions.