Going against the expectations - will DC find its tone in 2017 (Rumors)

So we are all waiting for the next instalments of the DCEU and see if they can solidify their stance of the comic book movie market, and while we do that lets see if the facts aren't a bit twisted for some strange reason.

There are several rumors going around always pointing in the negative direction. As someone who is a bit more half and half on the companies currently existing I have issues with all of them. If you have issues with just DC, or just Disney or just Fox then you are pretty much a person with a bias look and you hate everything from a company or a brand just because. Well that is more or less a waste of time and oxygen for people like me. Do i love all DC movies or Marvel movies, not by a mile.

This is behaviour that will kill the entire genre sooner or later, wait and see i can promise you that. 

I am not mentioning Fox or Disney in the same regard in future movies, as with them it’s pretty clear by now.

Disney – they have so far pretty much stayed on track and given most of their announced movies the time deserved with some ninor exceptions like Inhumans for example and have managed to follow a specific narrative and a tone. Not discussing if you like the tone or if you are a fan of them. Its simple fact stating, you go to a Marvel movie post Avengers era, you have certain expectations. Most of all people seem to be very precise when the movie is Disney/Marvel produced, you need a sense of humor in it, you need the movie to wear more than just a comic book hat and allude to other genres in cinema. Disney always diversify their director’s portfolio with new comers and people that are not set in their ways as much as some already solidified directors that people expect specific things from. The end result is a shared universe of characters that occupy the same place and have a similar tone, but are introduced in their solo movies with their characteristics flushed out a bit more and using other genres to separate the narrative.

That wasnt always the case with them, but after a few less popular movies in Phase 1, they learned what works for them and stuck to it pretty well.



Fox – now the bad news for Fox is that they have a very limited pool of characters within the Marvel universe to choose from. They already established the X-Men as a group and going in the direction of solo movie for each one and then reaching that X-Men team up is certainly a task that will not be easy. We have also the Fantastic Four that has been seen in 3 movies already, with medium to almost no success.

The blame game seems to be circling mostly around the director lately, with Josh Trank helming the last effort of the team. We can blame him or we can also add the obvious character problems that seemed to be bothering general audience when it comes to their personal interest with this more 60s beloved team. We have a fire based character (Human Torch) that can pretty much be a secondary character in any comic book universe, there are character in the Marvel lore and at least 6-7 of them currently with similar powers that also cannot exist on their own.

The Thing reminds us of a not so cool looking Hulk (and by us I am thinking mostly about non geeks and non-experts on the comic book side of things). Mr. Fantastic isn’t that appealing nowadays as well, people seems to be more or less pulled towards darker and grittier properties. That is just the norm and the good guys with less impressive abilities seem to suffer in the market. Deadpool seemed to be the main super surprise hit for Fox and they cashed in pretty well on him, with thing for Deadpool looking just as shaky as they do for the Flash over at DC.

Also coming is the last Logan movie with the now iconic Hugh Jackman. As most trilogies go X-men have been a steady franchise with the inevitable 3^rd movie sucks syndrome in each one. Can we be mad at them for not being able to achieve something that most trilogies fail at, not at all. For every Last Stand and Apocalypse, we have 2 better X-Men movies.  For each Wolverine Origins we get a nice Logan one ready to make up the past mistakes. So we can say that the only major issue with Fox is not being able to spin off more characters due to the similar nature of the tone of the movies coming from the X-Men universe. The fact that they almost have the same origin is a bit of an issue when having to produce a solo movie for each one and the fact that not many of them have a very expanded rogue’s gallery on their own may be the reason why they stick to X-Men movies and a couple of spin-offs like Deadpool and Wolverine. Personally I would watch also a solo Storm movie, Cyborg, Gambit, and many others.



Now with DC is seems to be a lot different than what we see above, I mean was Batman v Superman DOJ the best version of itself or was Suicide Squad a movie that could have used another 3-4 months more in terms of script – sure. I personally cannot say that I hated them as much as the critics did. I found their tone interesting, but I understand why families and kids under a certain age stayed away from them as well. When you have Batman and Superman, they need to exist in a neutral world – not Dark Gotham and not Bright Metropolis. Find the DCEU look and stick with it. Suicide Squad could have taken advantage of the great rogue’s gallery and went with a more practical villain and not another CGI looking creature of the night. But the disconnect between Box office and critics is huge with DC, its almost like they are being punished for something, that escapes me.

Now here are some things going forward to wonder over about what we can get from them.

In case all the things we are hearing from inside sources are true, Wonder Woman might be this beautiful heroic story we haven’t seen for a while with a bit of a Highlander feel (immortality), a bit of history (World War 1), a touch of mythology (my father was Zeus) and a bit of mind blowing action we saw in both comic con trailer and the recent first official trailer. Gal Gadot seems to embody the principals of the character of screen as well, and is now becoming more and more liked by fans of the character around the world. After the 1^st official trailer for it I can say that this movie seems to be gathering some major female attention that I honestly did not expect for a comic book movie.



We know that men will be there for sure, the question is can WOMEN prevail and take this movie to the goal of box office success and critical praise,  if the movie is good enough or does it need to be beyond good at this point ?

Now recently we heard rumors about the Batman script being bad and I can assure you that this has now been debunked by the source and the scoop master Umberto Gonzales too.

Apparently Affleck is still in works and hasn’t really turned in a finished script for the movie, but he has more than 6 months to finalize a draft that is already in a very good shape. As you know 6 months of additional work can be so much time in terms of ideas and re-writes. How do you think a man that has now directed several movies with very good qualities suddenly starts making such bad scripts out of nowhere? I do not believe it for a second. I think The Batman movie will be very different due to the nature of the story that we are getting, with a NEW villain never before seen on the big screen, a fresh take on the mythology, an expanded Bat universe in which many threats already exist, endless possibilities for villains, a comic book accurate Batman and Bruce Wayne, a beloved Director at the helm, what more do you guys want?

As far as people judging Justice League in regards to being directed by Snyder, that is a bit bias and frankly the guy doesn’t deserve it, he is honestly trying to bring your favorite comic book moments to life. The only issue with that is that when people see some of them represented from a comic book form to the big screen, realize internally that some of them are pretty silly.



Now there are some new rumors coming from Hollywood Reporter Neil Turitz who had a chance to exchange some info with some Warner Bros. executive who claims that they aren’t worried about Flash and that they are ready to proceed with Aquaman, and also that Justice League is unlike anything that Snyder has done before and it might be the hit they need.

I will link his article below for anyone interested. Seems that losing the Flash director isn’t something they are losing sleep over due to the fact that neither the director is someone with a track record nor are they so desperate to just make a movie to fill in a date. Aquaman will easily replace the slot and since Momoa has been embraced very well by fans so far might be the surprise hit in their portfolio. Have in mind that this type of character hasn’t been done so far by anyone before and it’s a brand new universe to explore and a total different power based hero than anything we have seen so far.

So with all that said, I think once we get a real trailer for the Justice League things will look a bit more concentrated, what we saw was an exclusive footage for fans at Comic Con so its purpose was teasing, no plot elements alluding to the villain and story elements have been shared with us and this might remain like that for at least another 6-7 months.

This will no doubt be the last Snyder directed film and he might act as a producer only from now on, which is the right move to distinguish the movies so far from what is coming - a expanded DC universe with never before seen characters, all of them known and with very well written villains, true to their roots and maybe something new as with any Big Screen incarnation.

So am I excited about the DCEU, yes bring it on and make it as different as possible from what Fox and Disney are doing, we need to have an option to see different things out there and not be the slaves of one thing only. At least I do not wish to be a slave of lack of diversity when it comes to having the right to pick more titles and productions for my own amusement. 

I am sure that Affleck and Snyder will deliver on Justice League and we will finally get this movie, fact of the matter is we are lucky as we live in these times. Many people will eventually only be able to see those movies after the fact and will not grow up in the same GOLDEN AGE as we did.

DC are 3 movies deep and personally think that they learned from some of their mistakes and are ready to wipe them clean and bring something new.

What do you think