I think the problem with the DC films is that they’ve given control of them to people who fundamentally don’t understand the characters or why/how they work in the right context.

That they’ve managed to get it right with so much of their TV output shows that they are capable of producing the goods in terms of tone, content and Dan service. Why they didn’t just put Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Geoff Johns in charge of the whole DCEU is one of the stupidest decisions they’ve made. That stupidity is typified in their casting of a completely different Flash in the films compared to the TV stuff. Why make it so confusing for non-fanboys?

I love DC comics over Marvel every day, but fuck those films - they’re unwatchable.

It really is a shame that they've fucked it so royally. Even in Justice League there were flashes of the characters working. I thought they had finally started to figure out the Superman thing.

Getting the TV people in would be an incredible admission of failure.

I_R wrote:

Getting the TV people in would be an incredible admission of failure.

I think that’s part of the problem though - this culture that says that TV is inferior to the almighty cinema. When even relatively throwaway soap opera (but hugely enjoyable nonetheless) series like The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow are considerably better than the biggest budget films in recent year then at what point do you swallow humble pie and try and rescue the situation? It’ll never happen though - Hollywood execs and humbleness(?) are mutually exclusive concepts.

I_R wrote:

Getting the TV people in would be an incredible admission of failure.

It would, but taking some time to understand why the TV versions work, and the movie versions don’t, would probably help.  (Of course, saying the TV versions “work” is overstating things a bit - they have smaller budgets, playing to lesser audiences, and at their best they are still disposable fluff but...  They’re still much better than the DC movies any present.)

The first thing the TV shows understood was the need to course correct when it’s not working.  The first season of Legends of Tomorrow is one of the worst bits of TV I’ve seen.  Subsequent series however are a delight to watch - purely because they realised they had a concept sop ridiculous that playing po-faced and straight was never going to work, and leant hard into enjoying the silliness.  (Punching Nazis! Saving George Lucas from space men!  Saving Barack Obama from a giant psychic gorilla! Etc etc). It’s a show so unconcerned with jumping sharks that it strapped them to its feet and used them as water skis.

Beyond that though, the TV shows essentially work as soap opera, and whilst that can’t easily transfer to the Big Screen, the central conceit of actually giving your characters some, well, character can, and does.

Which is where I disagree with Miller.  I kind of get his point.  Marvel’s heroes are easier to characterise, in that each one generally represents something familiar to their audience.  Spidey is teen angst personified, Hulk is a walking metaphor for anger issues, the X-Men are any oppressed minority, etc etc.  DC’s heroes are generally regarded as emblematic of abstracts rather than experience.  Superman is positivity, hope, patriotism; Wonder Woman is femininity and truth and so on.  They’re harder to handle.

Except.  Prior to the movies I would have said Captain America was just a blank slate of patriotic jingoism, Iron Man was just rich wanker wish fulfilment and Thor was a joke.  The idea that DC’s properties aren’t “characters” and Marvel’s are is only true in the sense that DC has singularly failed to provide any characterisation for them.  Because they employed a director who has consistently created glittering empty vessels.  They’ve employed writers that haven’t understood the characters they’re writing or what they represent.  (When they have - Wonder Woman for instance - the films have been better received, even if they’re still less than perfect.). The biggest disappointment for me with DC’s output is that the world could probably really do with a decent Superman movie right now, but they’ve instead made just another bunch of films about a brooding arsehole who can do magic.  (Hell, I don’t even like Superman, but the Donner films show he can be done right.)

If the problem with the DC movies was really that their characters aren’t based on personality, but their superpower, it would be a piece of piss to fix.  Just do what Marvel did - give them a personality.

The problem with the DC movies is simple and obvious.  They’re opportunistic shit made with an eye wholly on the bottom line with little or no love for the properties they represent.  (Marvel/Disney are every bit as interested in making cookie cutter money generators, but I suspect Feige et al have realised what DC haven’t, which is that for them to keep being profitable you have to protect what people loved about the characters in the first place.)

It's too late lads
The roadmap is up

See you in Justice League 2

Tempy wrote:

gRiM dArK rEaCtS oNlY @roujin

Of the opinion that you can't male a decent 40k film. I love the lore, but if I stand back and try to imagine someone looking at 40k for the first time the whole thing is just too ridiculous to put into a self contained film.

Getting into 40k is like being an atheist, then one day your friend convinces you church isn't what you think and so you go along and then you slowly get converted a bit at a time without reaising, until you know it to be the one ultimate truth but everyone around is looking at you like you are a raving lunatic when you talk about it.

Heretic

Well done guys, you made the super hero thread on a games forum look nerdier.

Just started Batman (1989).
7 minutes in and we have had the origins and a Prince track.

This is how you make DC films.

Interesting footnote from a podcast I was listening too

The Horus Heresy was invented so GW could sell a version of Epic/Space Marine with only one set of forces instead of two.

Now it's a 50+ novel series that underpins every part of 40k and has its own dedicated rules team for the 30k historial variant.

Outrageous.

I used to collect the Orks because they were the best.

Both are right.

Gorkamorka is a testament to the bestness.

nah it's Rouj & Tempy town now