stingermck

And thats the difference in Aquaman.

RichC2

Suicide Squad was never considered a failure at the box office, it was a surprise. Sure, performance wise it was front loaded -- had a $133m opening weekend and dropped fast (-67% in weekend 2) as compared to Aquaman's $67m and legging out (-23.2% in weekend 2). But it pulled over $300m+ without starring any key superheroes. Unsurprisingly, Suicide Squad 2 and the Harley Quinn movie were being worked on almost immediately after its release.

Are you thinking Justice League? Batman v Superman and Justice League were both expected to pull Avengers-style money, BvS did well enough (though it was severely front loaded, dropping 69.1%), Justice League not so much.

Being #1 doesn't really mean anything these days, imo. Unless we're talking end of the year / overall ranking.

Hokeyboy

Neither BvS nor Suicide Squad was considered a failure. Both were successful. BvS was expected to be more successful and maybe disappointed WB because they probably thought they had a $4-500 million grosser on their hands, but no one ever called it a financial failure.

An artistic failure, well that's another argument all together.

There's simply no way you can spin Aquaman's BO as being "poor" by any stretch. Is it Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War? Hell no. Nor was it ever even remotely expected to be.

Deftones

Just saw this. I enjoy the fuck out of it. I loved the music in the movie. Very Blade Runner-ish. The fight sequences were always fantastic.

tanman

I think if you compare the MCU with the DCEU that yes there is a proper way to go about these things. I totally understand why WB wanted to go all out and didn't have the patience for any world building. They made a financial decision to strike while the iron was hot. However, when you have the JL movie come out and be BO failure you've got a problem there. If they had done things the "proper" way and built up the JL team members by introducing them in their own feature movie you would have had a BO success like the Avengers. It takes time for the general audience to warm up these lower tiered characters. And while you might not need an introduction to the mechanics of what created Batman of Superman introducing them in a solo movie would allow the audience to warm up to what this Batman is like and, ideally, be hungry for more. Of course a terrible movie is a terrible movie no matter what order you go but I believe that doing a solo movie also would allow the creators to get to know the character better and make adjustments accordingly. There's no way that the Avengers could have been the movie it was without taking the time to get the characters right in the first place.

nando820

time and time again people blame the world building as the issue for the DC films failure.
But Guardians of the Galaxy and Into the Spiderverse introduced all new characters and we were all on board.

if the DC films underperfomed is simply because they sucked, as simple as that

tanman

World building isn't a guarantee that a film will be good. But I still stand by my statement that there is no way that Avengers could have been as good as it was if they didn't take the time and build up the team with individual movies first. And Guardians of the Galaxy and Into the Spiderverse aren't anything like the Avengers or the Justice League. The Avengers was an event movie. Something way more special and rare than a typical summer blockbuster. Looking back at Aquaman and WW and now knowing that the WB can put out a good movie it would have been nice if they started with that and then the JL could have been the event movie it should have been. Of course this is all just wishful thinking.

Giantrobo

Thank you. Marvel has successfully set the standard that "world building" is NOW THEEE ONLY WAY to make comic book films. I hate this. I don't need 70+ year old characters and franchises "built". Shit, I even had a co-worker complain that the new "TITANS" series on DC Universe needed more "Build up". I swear he felt that they needed to do Solo series for each Titan THEN and only THEN could should be put together in a Titans series. Come on man...really?

But hey, Marvel has set "world building" into the creative stone for comic films and has made many great films and lots of $$$. People have made their minds up that they want it this way now so I don't think there is any way around the demand for it at this point.

d2cheer

Worldwide: $1,021,461,781 and still going!!

dex14

James Wan joins the two films with $1bil+ club.

TheMovieman

Ok, so reportedly Patty Jenkins got $7-9M for Wonder Woman 1984. What kind of salary will Wan command for Aquaman 2? And would Warner risk going cheap with an up-and-comer instead?

RichC2

Wan is more established than Jenkins and would likely pull a minimum of $10m for directing duties. With how much trouble WB has had with getting keeping DC properties afloat, they will likely do what they can to keep Wan happy.

dex14

Not to mention an existing relationship with The Conjuring.

Mike86

Giantrobo

No they didn't. DC had been "establishing" these characters since 1977 in a cinematic way. Since the 1930's if you really wanna get technical. I'll give you the crap part...only because I'm in the minority that they were NOT crap...but will give you that as the main reason for failure. It was not due to lack of world building/establishing.

Mike86

brayzie

Exactly.
There was a build up for Civil War. We saw Chris Evans as Captain America for 4 films, and his relationship with Tony Stark as played by RDJ.
In B v S, it's only Superman's second appearance and already he's fighting against this new Batman, who's not even the same one from the Dark Knight trilogy. There's no reason to care about WHY they're fighting. The only sell is the visual spectacle of it. Storywise, it came out of nowhere.

It was very rewarding to see how all these characters and events lead up to Avengers: Infinity War. In fact, for full enjoyment of the film, it's dependent on seeing the previous MCU films.

brayzie

Well, yeah.
Had WB/DC done their own thing and not tried using a cheat code to try and imitate Marvel's formula, maybe it would have been a step in a better direction.
Batman Begins wasn't as successful as WB had hoped for, but they stayed the course and we got the excellent Dark Knight.
Man of Steel was wasn't as successful as WB had hoped for, so they ditched Man of Steel II and did Batman v Superman to compete with Cap v Iron Man.

Yeah, Green Lantern wasn't trying to world build and it was awful.
There's a variety of factors that come into play.
But your argument is too simplistic.
We shouldn't blame the campy direction for the Schumacher's Batman and Robin. It worked for the live-action Batman series right? It was simply because it sucked.

TheMovieman

Are you sure about that? I could've sworn the Cap v. Iron Man came after Warner announced Batman v. Superman. Also, although BvS came out the same year as Civil War, it was supposed to come out the year before but got delayed after, IIRC, Affleck got injured just prior to production. But I could be mis-remembering.

brayzie

Damn, you're right.


link

I remember there had been rumors or talk about a World's Finest-type movie since the Burton Batman movies.
But I thought Batman versus Superman came about because of the Civil War movie. So it was the other way around.

​​​​​​But I would be surprised if it was sole reason, if even main reason, why they put Batman in Man of Steel II.
I would have thought that it was a variety of factor, mostly:
1)Man of Steel underperforming
2)The Nolan Batman series being a huge success, so why not use that to bolder Superman.
​​​​​​3)and pressure from studio/shareholders to start a connected universe so they can start printing their money like Marvel

But I do get that it would be hard to top Zod and the Phantom Zone criminals.

Hokeyboy

"Man, that Star Wars film was a horrible attempt at world building. They should have first done a Princess Leia film, a Luke Skywalker film, a Darth Vader film, and a Han Solo film. Otherwise, nobody cared about those characters, why they were teaming up, and what they were fighting against."

I'm sick to death of "world building". Just make good movies. Period. Like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Man of Steel. Heck I even liked BvS, while acknowledging its flaws; but at least it attempted to present something new with these characters and that universe. It might have failed in some ways, but it was at least an ambitious failure. I'd rather have a film aim high and shoot low rather than just ride a dull wave of formulaic assurance.

Suicide Squad and Justice League, well let's just not talk about those.

fumanstan

I've softened on the stance about DC jumping the gun, although there's some different factors involved. Obviously not every ensemble type movie needs individual films before teaming up, but I think it's a little different with comic book heroes and especially with Marvel given their status when the whole thing started. Marvel kind of had to start one by one since they took a someone sizable gamble (if I recall) producing their own movies and were starting with less established characters then what was already out there, so it made sense to start with a few characters like Iron Man or Captain America to test the waters. With these characters having rich origin stories worth telling, I don't think they could have jumped to Avengers and been as successful.

Going the individual hero route first also helps build some hype and anticipation and made Avengers more of an event film. I think the idea of seeing heroes team up together was a cool and unique thing to see for most audiences and it made it special, i'm sure the same way it would have been if you were a comic back reader back then. Until Black Panther, the Avengers movies were the biggest MCU grossers for a reason.

DC is/was in a little different boat. I think after Marvel did their thing it made sense to shake up the formula a little bit. And because Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman have some more known history to them it's less of a big deal to establish all of them individually. Batman v Superman wasn't a bad idea, and one which I don't think suffered from not knowing more about Batman or Wonder Woman in that universe. Heck, using the much maligned Zod/Superman fight was a clever jumping off point. They just did a poor job building off of it.

I think from there, Justice League was destined to struggle after the poor reception to BvS. Cinematic Universes only work if people enjoy the movies that build up to them. And I still say Justice League was fun.

brayzie

That's both a good and bad comparison.
Yeah, "A New Hope" dropped us right into the middle of a made up war and hit the ground running. Audiences had no reference to the "Galactic Republic" or knew what a Darth Vader was.
However, Luke, Leia and Han are not all superheroes with wildly different powers and origin stories. They're three regular people, with only ONE of them finding out they have super powers.

Not only that, but WB tried to shoehorn in The Death of Superman storyline, aspects of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, and reference A Death in the Family among other things. All those stories could have been their own films.

Not only that, but Star Wars was a novelty for it's time. BvS was not. So expectations are going to be higher for BvS, considering how many quality superhero films we got prior to its release. We saw a great Batman series from Nolan that was allowed to build up over time.

Agree.

Yeah, the Star Wars prequels attempted something new too.
I just want a good film.

Which explains Superman Returns.
The WB thought that the 1978 Superman film was so iconic, that they ended up making a sequel to it, even reusing the music and Marlon Brando. And it wasn't very good.

For me, the Nolan Batman series was still fresh in my mind, so seeing a new Batman felt wrong to me. It was jarring.
Batman and Superman are very iconic, so I guess you can argue that they're conflict doesn't need to be built up in advance. But even Frank Miller didn't have Batman and Superman fight in the first issue of the Dark Knight Returns.

sjon66

couldn't agree more, esp on #1

Mike86