Meh. All Spider-Man movies were sub-par, suffering from awful supporting characters and villains, Alfred Molina and J.K. Simmons being the exceptions. Spectacular Spider-Man is miles better than anything the two franchises did.

 

Here's my take on this. Superhero movies generally aren't a good.case.study in solid plotting. We forgive Marvel a lot because it's about the characters. Avengers suffered from the Dark Knight ridiculous villain plot that makes little to no sense when you take a closer look, but character interactions were great instead. I could watch the Avengers in a room shooting shit for two hours.

Another note, Marvel movies look good, have some great humor and build solid settings. In all of that, the plot gets pushed back to the background, but everything else is soo good that I'm still entertained. Marvel took time and effort to develop these interesting characters and evolve them so that they keep being interesting.

Now let's look at JL. We already kind of know the basic plot. It'll be the DC Avengers. CGI and cool stuff aren't enough to carry the film if I don't find the characters interesting. Out of all of these guys, three will be introduced in the movie itself and two were in the previous one, but the focus was on the jumbled mess of a story and cool visuals. Sure, there was some personal screen time for Batman, but 1/5 is poor. If you count WW who has a solo film this year, that's 2/5 characters I'll know going into this big crossover movie.

I could be wrong. It could be that this movie will be awesome in every way. But withe the current DCCU track record of 0/3, I doubt it. No hype for you, JL.

 

I don't think a movie should need a bunch of other movies to set it up in order to be good. The vast majority of action genre movies that feature squads or groups of people coming together fighting a common enemy don't have additional films focusing on individual characters as a prerequisite of understanding what's going on, what each character's motivations are, why each character should be received on their own individual merit etc.

Having said that, I think Justice League is just going to be a bit lame.

 

Somewhat original superhero flicks only work if the characters are somewhat fleshed out. The major failing of BvS, to me, was that Batman's motivation for doing literally anything at all felt shore-horned. His hatred of Supes was based on rampant destruction that they spent all of 5 minutes showing on screen. His turnaround late in the movie was based on another thing that they spent all of 5 minutes showing. My suspension of disbelief was screaming because Batman is supposed to be this phenomenal detective, rational, intelligent human, and he was none of them for nearly 3 hours.

It goes back to the discussion of Suspensions of Disbelief thread in the Fanfic Discussion area. So long as things have been properly established in universe, no one is gonna bat an eye at anything. DC, by virtue of rushing to keep up with Marvel, isn't establishing much of anything.
GiantMonkeyMan I agree that any movie shouldn't need to be set up by hours and hours of character development. The onus is on the screenwriters and studio to then not bite off more than they can chew in terms of plot. The plot has to be easily digestible enough, and make some semblance of sense, for there to be enough room for necessary character development and the plot moving forward without needing 4 hours. It's not easy, but it's what they get paid to do.

All that said, I'm not even remotely excited for JL. The only character I'll give a damn about is WW, as her movie looks dope. This Batman is only half developed at best, and everyone else is gonna need serious screen time to make me care at all about who they are (god knows they didn't do much in BvS). Only one who looks compelling is Aquaman anyway, and I can't believe I'm saying that. I had enough problems with both Avengers and Civil War to not be anything other than cautiously optimistic for flicks that have a ton of heroes in it. And DC's track record points toward a mediocre at best showing.

 

I dunno. Both this and WW's trailer make it seem like they're aiming for a complete 180 from the joyless and bland grimdark that was MoS and BvS. I welcome the change because that shit was going nowhere.

I'll stay cautiously optimistic, but I wont get my hopes up, because if any one can fuck up a fun superhero romp, it's DC.

 

^This, basically. The trailers for this and WW have at least hit 'potentially interesting', as opposed to 'cautious, wait for the reviews' that BvS managed. On the other hand, I felt the same way about the trailers for Suicide Squad, and that was pretty poor.

 

New Trailer is up

Not sure how I feel yet.

 

One thing that I have problem with is that something is missing in how the city battle is presented. I had the same problem with the first Avengers, but to this day can't figure out what exactly it is. Maybe it's a general problem of how they present a small group heroes fighting against an army. It just doesn't scale well in how big the fight should be when you have less than dozen people who actually do something in it. Instead of an epic battle you get few skirmishes.

 

I dig it. Wonder who that is at the end. Common sense says Superman, but idk. Might be something more wild.

'No Lanterns,' Rub it in why don't you

I'll admit that I like more about this the more I see it. What we've seen of characterization for Flash and Cyborg is cool, Momoa as Aquaman is exactly what I didn't know I needed, and the film looks well-crafted.

DC looks to be shaping up.

 

My only question: Does anyone remember Superman being a 'beacon of hope' in BvS or Man of Steel? Feels more informed.

Other than that, I haven't seen any DC movies in the theatre yet, and probably won't go see this.

 

Was wondering the same thing lol wasn't MoS and BvS just the Earth shitting on him with the occasional exception.

 

They finally add last thing that's missing from DCEU. Retcons.

 

Martyrdom can change people's opinions, but yeah, it was pretty forced. The trailer is a good sign and the quality of WW's movie also gives us enough to get our hopes high, but DC disappointed when we most expected it to succeed, so I'm only cautiously optimistic.

 

Same here. WW has raised my hopes for DC quite a bit, but not enough to expect a fantastic, mind-blowing showing for JL. It looks like it'll be fun, but I'm going to err on the side of caution with this one.

 

Didn't Zac Snyder helm the majority of this film/script? I know Joss Whedon took over filming a few last scenes, but I presume the script was already in the can.

I have zero expectations for this film. I hate what he's done with well, I'd say his DC films, but I hate all Zac Snyder films.

WW was pretty good, but that was because they excluded Zac Snyder and had a competent director.

 

Yes, he wrote the story with Chris Terrio who wrote the screenplay as well.

I am cautiously optimistic about this movie, but it's tempered by Snyder's past record. I will admit to being among the people who liked Man of Steel (although I do recognize it has its faults). In my opinion, the problem with most of DC's recent movies is that the narrative lack substance. They seem to have been written for spectacle, rather than substance and that is why outside of WW and Nolanverse Batman the DC movies haven't been received as well. Hopefully they've realized that they need a strong foundation for the narrative to stand on, rather than relying on flashy fight scenes to dazzle the audience.

 

The first reviews are in, from critics and fans, and they're generally mixed to somehow positive. It's not going to be as divisive as MoS and BvS, but it won't be as praised as WW either.

What I would consider its biggest problem at the moment is a rather lacking marketing campaign. Not in scope, but rather how good it is compared to other superhero films. Sure, Justice League shouldn't need much of it, but if the film opens below Suicide Squad opening of $133m, and at the moment it's predicted to have $115m weekend, then someone really did a bad job with it. Especially after Wonder Woman managed to convince fans that DC films can be considered good by pretty much everyone.

 

Well, in Justice League's defense, the Suicide Squad people marketed behind the sheer power of a skanked-up Margot Robbie too, because that was almost the only positive part of that whole shitshow. That body made them at least $50m on its own.

I am also kind of baffled a bit with how little they've truly showed us so far from JL, but I'm assuming it's because they really can't give much away with the Superman storyline in it if they show a lot of material. I could be wrong, but that's my wild guess at least. I'll still be seeing it Saturday in theater.

 

SO based on the reviews I'm seeing...

Zach Snyder needs to be removed from the DC cinematic universe. The best parts of the movie are Whedon's influence. Snyder just doesn't "get" DC movies.

 

I saw it today, because apparently my school gets to see the preview or whatever.

Don't waste your money IMO. I basically paid 2 hours of my life to stare at Gal Gadot.

While not a terrible trade off, I wouldn't want to spend 10 dollars on it.