DC Studios running thread

Saw The Flash.

You will know why I started this once you see it.

 

Haven't seen it but knowing the basic premise my two initial thoughts are:

1) If we achieved superhero fatigue after Endgame, how long will it be before we reach multiverse fatigue? I think this is at least four franchises (DC, Marvel, Hasbro and Godzilla/Kong) that are trying to piece together some sort of multiverse or shared universe idea.

2) It's funny that DC's repeated failed attempts to sustain a shared movie universe has finally led them to a place where they're trying to celebrate it.

 

The ultimate multiverse is akin to a heroin addict that is down to one more vein left and he looks down on ol' Oscar.

 

This seems a bit vague. I've heard good things about it, but I'm not sure when I'm going to see it.

 

I have never watched a DC movie and eagerly awaited the next one… until The Flash.

 

Just can't bring myself to seeing "The Flash" in the theater because of all the stuff with Ezra Miller.

 

Whether we're talking Marvel or DC or whatever, ultimately, movie quality still matters. Like, Spiderverse is going to break $500M pretty easily, and probably double whatever number it gets once you factor in merchandise. The Flash and some other multiverse or team-up efforts seem to fall under the "oh isn't this cool?" skeletal structure, whether there isn't much to the actual movie outside of cameos on cameos. I don't think it's dissimilar from like, mid-90s action movies, where some schlock would manage to do well just because (Armageddon), but plenty of other tries were DOA at the box office.

 

That's the problem. There likely won't be a next one. JRoyal points to the major reason, Ezra Miller. He's toxic enough that I doubt he rebounds, at least not anytime soon. I was really looking forward to Keaton's return. Supposedly, the plan was for him to be in an upcoming Batman Beyond movie, which would have him as a mentor to a younger Batman, but that is no longer in the works. Also, as JRoyal pointed out, people are just turned off by Miller and he is in just about every scene. (I haven't seen it yeat, but that's what I read in an article about the movie's poor box-office opening.)

Given the reboot that is coming under Gunn's leadership, why should an audience invest in any of this year's DC movies?

 

The crazy thing is that it sounds like plenty of the warming over of the old characters and IP actually works, but anytime that, say, Michael Keaton isn't on the screen and instead its Miller, the movie is the drizzling shits, to quote Stone Cold Steve Austin. That, and plenty of the cameos just seem utterly bizarre. The movie has way more in common with Space Jam 2, seemingly, then a "proper" multiverse or team-up movie, like Spiderverse, No Way Home, Endgame, etc.

 

About five years ago I wondered what would happen when audiences abandoned superhero movies - which would be rough for studios given that the films take years and hundreds of millions to execute. The studios had to know the genre had a shelf life - like the disaster movies of the '70s, the big action movies of the '80s (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard) the Bruckheimer films of the '90s, the fantasy stuff of the 2000.
Pixar is kind of going through the same thing with Elemental (which seems like a knockoff of InsideOut). They've made movies about just about every cultural group and They've anthropromorized cars, toys, animals, fish, insects, emotions and now they are getting down to elements? What's left?
And these movies cost a ton and take years to develop as well.

 

I'm not sure audiences will abandon superhero movies, but the studios need to adapt. They need to mix in more grounded stories like Joker and even some of the Marvel Netflix shows, especially Daredevil. It can't all be a CGI-driven mess. That was enough for a while, but Quantumania showed that it's not enough any longer.

 

The cameo at the end struck me as really stupid when I first heard about it, but now that I thought about it, that was the only way they could do it. I'm just not sure it was worth doing.