All-purpose, running Geek thread (formerly Battlestar Galactica thread)

That's the thing, it's not fun. The movie is joyless.

 

I previously watched the first two episodes of Daredevil, but my wife said she would watch it with me and then we never got around to it. A few of our shows' seasons have wrapped up and, with nothing to watch last night, she finally agreed to watch it. We watched the first episode and she enjoyed it, so hopefully we'll catch up on it pretty quickly. Line of the night: "So wait, his other senses are heightened and they have compensated so he can basically 'see' now? But he doesn't have any other superpowers? That's bullshit. Batman would kick his ass."

 

If I am going to BvS ... I want a decent movie. I don't want a Transformers mess.
Fun? Ok.... The Avengers was great fun. BvS does not look like fun.

 

I understand the payoff is huge, but you're really just betting on longshots, which is a long-term losing strategy.
Of course Snyder and Affleck don't care, they get theirs. The studio and its investors have money only the line, so for them it should be a concern.
I don't hold any financial interest, so I don't really care. I just don't get the business model. It seems like bad business to sink so much into the product upfront that one piece of the franchise needs to bring in $1 billion to make it a winner.
I'm starting to think it's really just the media reporting that's nonsensical.

 

It sounds like the idea that it needs to clear $1B to be considered a winner is more about "beating" the MCU and Star Wars type franchises. The movie was budgeted at $260M and even if they put in $150M, the film basically broke even at the box office this weekend with an opening of $420M worldwide. Between box office and merchandising, there's no way the movie will lose money.

 

Good points, and kind of what I mean by the reporting that is nonsense.
If this movie doesn't hit $1 billion, it can still make money. It might be disappointing without being a failure.
It seems like the reporting is just constantly centered around box office records rather than profitability.

It's also difficult to determine financial success as an outsider because we don't know marketing costs, which have to be insane for this movie.

 

I've seen the marketing costs cited at $150M in a few places, though none of them attributed that number to the studios, so I'm not sure if it's speculation.

 

I think people some people might be tired of the constant re-booting of Batman and Superman vehicles with different leads. Christian Bale nailed it for a generation, so why reboot it so soon? The Dark Knight trilogy only freaking ended four years ago. Bale's portrayal is still too fresh in my mind to even care about some new portrayal. And how many people have played Superman in the last decade? Word of mouth gets me to go see comic book movies, and none of the recent Superman movies have done that.

Batman vs. Superman? The premise alone is cringe-worthy. The Superman movie where Christopher Reeve went bad and hit the bottle was the worst one.

 

I get why they rebooted it. They wanted to do a Justice League megafranchise to match the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is reasonable. And there's always basically been two completely different Batmans: Gotham Batman (who gets into fist fights with petty criminals) and Justice League Batman (who fights against and alongside virtual gods), which means you can't do Bale again, which is also reasonable. And "superheroes meet and misunderstand each other before uniting against a real enemy" is a solid trope that can be very well done.

All of this works if it *works*. If the movie is fun and good and enjoyable, you can forgive all the plot holes and iffy stuff. It's just that when it's painful and dull that the cracks really show.

The first five minutes or so they were on the right track:

Spoiler

Batman seeing the destruction of the city in a Superman vs. Zod fight from street level was a pretty good premise for him having a beef with Superman. They got a little ham-fisted with all the death and mayhem, but whatever.

It just gets worse and worse from there though. Superman's problem with Batman is that Batman is literally an insane criminal supervillain in this movie. He's got the Punisher's approach to solving problems without the Punisher's clarity of moral compass. Lex Luthor's plans change constantly for no apparent reason and require him to have information he has no way to have, and his character goes from vaguely interesting millennial tech mogul genius to a shitty knockoff insane Joker for also no apparent reason.

And at least half of all decisions made by all characters in the movie make *no sense whatsover* outside of "we wanted to do a scene where this happened so they had to act this way."

 

Cringe-worthy? It has been done many times in the comics, including one of the most beloved Batman stories ever written, the Dark Knight Returns.

To answer your question about how many people have played Superman in the last decade, if you mean live action movies, that would be two. And it is just barely two because Routh's version came out in June of 2006. Now if you want to get into television and animation, the number goes way up, but I don't think Smallville or the Timmverse have much of an impact here.

It sounds like the real issue wasn't the rebooting of Batman. It was the rush to put out an Avengers type movie rather than slowly building the DCU the way Marvel did with its movies.

 

Let's be more candid than that- it was a straight-up money grab.

 

DC is actually on a pretty similar timeline with its rollout as Marvel was. Marvel released Iron Man in 2008 and Avengers in 2012. During that span, they introduced Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America as headliners in solo films.

DC introduced the newest version of Superman in 2013, and is aiming for a Justice League movie in late 2017. In the meantime, it will introduce Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as headliners and, of course, the ensemble of Suicide Squad, before Justice League arrives. Flash arrives shortly after Justice League.

They followed the just about the same game plan.