So we are all aware that there is this Marvel vs DC debate about who is better, who is critically acclaimed and DC fans are always attacked with “your movies suck”” in case the movie did pretty well financially. Here is why this is complete garbage argument and I will never ever check for a score that isn’t given by the fans going further.
People back in the day used tools like iMDB to check if the movie is above 6 (something consider by many as the minimum for an interesting movie), so they would know if this is something watchable. In the years to come a lot sites that are aggregator based came out and started giving different scores than the ones you see from fans.
Now for all DC fans that bash Rotten Tomatoes or similar sites that just aggregate critic’s opinions from different media, stop, the site itself doesn’t have anything to do with the score. It just does an average score on the approved critics.
I have read a lot of those critic reviews and here is why I find them to be as useless as ever at this day and age. First off, the majority of the critics I checked are not a source that I can respect, some media outlet that is called the
NewsReview or Alabama Times really? The reviewer looks like he is 65 and the criticism sounds like its coming from an uninformed place, a dusty understanding of the lore and genre. You get interested in the way this person thinks, how he grounds his basis a bit and you check how he scored other movies, so you can see if there is a chance of any type of bias towards movies like BVS, MOS and SS. You browse through and see these guys are pretty much acting like an internet meme, whatever is trending they hop on the wave, same sentences and complaints.
Why would I take movie advice from some random dude, that is probably a failed journalist that can’t get big stories and just got stuck writing the weekly column in some website that is visited by no more than 120 people on a daily basis. Sure there are big names on Rotten Tomatoes as well, but majority of the critics could be basically anyone, I can start a
youtube movie review channel and get a critic status in a few months’ time. Anyone can do it, there is only a few people with actual basis to do this, people that have went to film school and know what to look for and give a good, honest critic. People that make the difference between comic book movies and movies based on real events, drama and comedy. Looking at some of the movies scored high on Rotten Tomatoes I often wonder if they even have any realistic idea of what a good movie is, again I do not exclude the fact that there are individuals that are giving some very good reviews and sound very professional and have good grounding for not liking Batman v Superman and other DC movies. Sure, it is a movie, it’s not supposed to be liked by everyone, and I do understand the problems a lot of people have with the movies, for example anyone that isn’t into CBM always hates on the CGI villain. People in general do not like a lot of CGI characters being stuffed into movies, everyone can tell now. It’s not like any of them look realistic or in any way familiar to us as humans, I ask however where was that critique when the Incredible Hulk was scored with 67 % on Rotten Tomatoes? The final battle of the movie featured not one, but two huge CGI characters smashing the city and destroying property, something that critics have pointed towards Man of Steel many times? The cinematography of the movies was below average, acting on most part was ok, nothing we haven’t seen done better by the main cast, no memorable moments, no
WOW moments. Nothing in this movie is in any way better than MOS, BVS or SS. Its box-office clearly shows the interest for that movies was not sufficient for reaching even 300 Million. Now you can tell me all about how Hulk wasn’t a known IP at the time, comic book movies hadn’t exploded yet, but if you check your facts, you will see clearly this wasn’t the case.
We had successful Batman, Superman, Spiderman, X-Men and Blade movies. Disney did not invent comic book movies, so blaming the financial failure of phase 1 can’t be put on the fact that they were using unknown IPs. And ask yourselves why some of those IP’s were considered unknown, was it because they had the lack of material or there just wasn’t an interest in the mainstream for them at the time, there wasn’t the CGI that could make them possible and people just preferred the actual proper classic heroes that weren’t based on similar properties.
Anyway forget about the critics for a moment, they could have been honest and hated all of the DCEU movie so far for real, they could just be ridding this wave of hate towards DC, which in many cases comes from an uninformed place, like most things on the internet. I have read ridiculous claims by critics that just make them sound like idiots that do not know how to use Google or Wikipedia. An example will be “”DC is even trying to copy Marvel by transforming Batman into the next Iron Man – a billionaire that uses a tech suit””, first off let’s take a step back and see what the problem in the above statement is.
DC published the first Batman comic under Detective comics back in May 1939, followed by Iron Man in March 1963. If you cannot count that is a 24 year head start, the suit Batman wore in BVS is something that is inspired by a specific 80s comic book story line by Frank Miller (TDK). It is not a suit that has A.I, special weapons in it, gives Batman flight or something close to what Iron Man does. This is a statement coming from someone that just did not put in the time and didn’t do his back ground research. Batman has multiple suits in the comics, mostly based on his needs, as does Iron Man, but who do you think borrowed from whom?
I have seen things like, Wonder Woman (1941) is DC’s attempt to copy the Captain America (1941) TFA tone, where Captain America did appear 9 months before her in the comics, Captain America has a very different background and is much more similar to other archetypes than a Greek goddess.. His look is closer to Superman, back in the day Superman did not fly, he had the power to jump as high as a building and leap over, they both have super strength and are considered the ideal for a hero, no moral flaws most of the time. But Wonder Woman who has a connection to World War 1 or 2, is mostly tied to them as she has been here for all of them and one of her arch enemies is responsible for all of them, so why not use this in her origins? Why did Iron Man use the billionaire, playboy aspect in Iron Man 2008, when we already had Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? Why did they do it? Because it’s who he is in the comics you idiotic people, they can’t make him a poor asshole with tech worth billions, can they?
This brings me back to people giving uninformed quotes all the time on social media.
Marvel is not the first studio to share their universe, also the MCU is not the first shared Marvel universe, go watch Daredevil and Electra – same universe people. DC tried to come up with Justice League a long time ago, but the writers’ strike made that project die out as the price went through the roof and the scripts itself was going to become too expensive and basic rebate legislation that had just got through a new Australian government.
Way too many opinions that are now considered true are actually false in nature. The magic of the internet
So, why critics think of DC movies less, well they are not paid but definitely you can see a trend of bashing DCEU for copying MCU, that doesn’t make much sense though, the skeleton that the DCEU lays currently goes against the phases which we are getting from Marvel.
Pretty much MCU is – solo movies, solo movies, or sequel, solo movie – Avengers, which now evolved to solo movie masked as Avengers movie, solo movie with another big name etc.
With DCEU there is no telling if this is something that they will try to emulate, so far it looks like they are more flexible and will do everything simultaneously and try to keep the story interconnected through each movie referencing the previous one in a much tighter fashion, that a few disconnected cameos as seen in Phase 1 by Marvel. I think once the DCEU comes to movie number 5-6 they will have a much deeper connection than most of us realize.
So DC is dark and brooding, but it copies Marvel? DC needs to be lighter to be good, but when they are light, it’s copying Marvel? It just doesn’t make any sense and the conversation is ever changing to fit the argument of the favored side. It’s being twisted and the media is currently looking for a way to bash it. We have the Bond franchise to take for an example, different actors over time take the mantle, different directors and you can’t really say all BOND movies are bad, same with DC, you may not like Snyder but that doesn’t mean Patty Jenkins will do bad, or Wan will suck too, or Rick will make the flash dark and gritty. All DCEU movies aren’t one person writing, directing and acting are they?
I made the effort to watch two movies this weekend Ghostbusters (2016) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016). What do they have to do with Marvel, nothing. The only reason I am bringing them up is the fact that those two movies are what I just watched and they both have better scores that BVS and SS on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ghostbusters – the movie is a comedy, we should not really nitpick the plot and point to it for flaws, but what we should do is check at least the comedy. There wasn’t any, that movie did not make me laugh one single time. It just proved that whoever holds the rights to this franchise wanted to cash out. They did not. They thought to themselves, let’s use the formula, 4 popular comedy actors of their time and let them run. Come on guys, I love all of the SNL cast and some of their performances over the years have made me literally cry of laughter, this time I cried of boredom. Is this the new ideal for a movie, forced jokes, expected humor, over acting characters, bad CGI and another attempt of Chris Hemsworth to act. Nothing in this movie worked, the only good thing they had, the cameos of the original cast made me want to watch the original movie, not this shit. How is this movie a box office flop, made less than double of its own budget, has an audience score of 56 % and 5.5 on IMDB and being presented by critics as such a beloved critical movie with a score of 73 % on RT, I mean someone explain this to me. I understand if an indie movie, with no big names, that wins indie awards left and right, has low box office, has good positive reviews from fans, gather attention on festivals and has good critic reviews, but this movie is clearly the opposite of all of this. I mean I would personally sit and watch it with any critic that rated it high and have him point out the readable qualities I am missing? It has an all-female cast, so what, a lot of other movies do, and they weren’t based on an all-male original movie.
I don’t really want to go into details about how bad
Tarzan was, but the timeline in that movie made me want to stop it 12 minutes in, it was a flop that also made less than twice its budget. Fans score 6.5, audience score 64 % and critics score 36 %, again higher than both SS and BVS, I just sit here and wonder, how do they rate this so high?
So after that experience I will assume DC is just going to be bashed whatever movie they do, because “expert critics” have decided that they are copying Marvel and they deserve it by default. Meanwhile I will be happy for them and their box office success and their success amongst fans.
I would put both BVS and SS in a much, much higher regards that any of the Hulk movies that have come out, still on RT they have better scores. You can see both BVS and SS were 3-4 times more profitable and had a better audience and fan scores.
I just don’t see how this tool is accurate anymore, relevant to me as person with a head on his shoulders that can think for himself and doesn’t rely on some random old ass washed up writer for the “”Daily Inbred Cousin Times””
And yes we know all Disney flicks have good scores, but they are pretty much following one very narrow formula. Action, humor, a bit of dramatic pauses with some character talking about Brooklyn and the usual expected stuff.
Anyway I am officially done with sites like that after that Ghostbusters score. [frick] that movie for life. Good news it was such a flop they will not do a part 2.