itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

well i'm sorry, but that doesn't mean only Comic Book Guy enjoys Marvel movies

like, fyi - first weekend of guardians

Guardians of the Galaxy wound up having a ton of appeal with women: exit polling indicated that the audience was 44 percent female, which is the biggest share ever for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (the previous high was 40 percent for The Avengers). Meanwhile, the audience was 55 percent over the age of 25.
how many comic book guys are out there.

and that's just the US - the film has made even more money overseas.

idk if the movies were only shitty product cynically manipulating fan goodwill or w/e, something like Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn't be the biggest movie of the year

lol xp'ed

and that gender/age make-up is just for the people who rushed to be the first in line, guessing fewer fanboys and more families came in the weeks that followed

does anybody actually read anymore, I never said the audience for these films consisted solely of 40yo nerds - I said the tastes of 40yo nerds are driving the process, they are the axis around which all these films' productions swing. that's why I said "maximize" in my initial post - the studio gets this core audience/has guys like Joe Quesada in charge and then they successfully figured out how to parlay that into wider success. idg how this is worth arguing over.

I mean do you think this io9 commenter:
This whole announcement shows once again how some companies "get" it and how others simply don't.

is referring to Marvel's ability to reach women and children in foreign countries? No, they're referring to how to make assholes jizz themselves at Comicon.

I'm going home now

your planet needs you?

and to be clear, you referred to maximizing the money from 40 year olds, which is why i pointed out they're not a good choice of financial engine

if you'd simply responded "no i was whining that these Kevin Smith feebs are the tastemakers" rather than "O RLY EXPLAIN ZACK SNYDER THEN" i would said "ok sure"

"it" = how to maximize money squeezed from 40yo morons in the throes of arrested development

It's like Transformers; these movies are now far more aimed at foreign markets than just some demographic subset of Americans.

I mean, shit, big genre film has primarily been a visuals showcase for like 12+ years now, and you can market shit blowing up and have it translate to certain very large countries a lot easier.

The origins of the franchise license mean dick compared to global marketing efforts needing a recognizable title/character/studio/filmmaker to launch from

bring on the big visuals imo. if it's not worth watching in IMAX it's only worth watching at home.

(nb dark knight/man of steel suck at any size)

lol no movie that was created with hardcore nerdlingers in mind has ever been successful

and croup is otm about watchmen, it was an extremely loyal adaption of one of the most beloved and popular nerdlinger properties, a heated nerdlinger topic for yeeeeeeears before it happened. zack nerdlinger dickface snyder and whatever dumb studio gave him piles of money went out of their way to appeal to nerdlingers and promoted it as primarily loyal and he promoted himself as king nerdlinger, defender of the nerdlingers, giver of all they ever wanted in a watchmen movie, and it sucked and everyone hated it and he realized he wasted several years of his life

and then he goes to DC makes a supes movie that doesn't reflect supes at any point in time in history and it makes 40 billion dollars

i'm really big on "nerdlinger" right now thanks

remember when they fucked to leonard cohen in the hoverowl

it was an extremely loyal adaption of

nah

it was literally as loyal a film adaptation of watchmen would ever be

ok except for the thing at the end forgot about that but still

would ever be

except in tone and meaning and visual style and intent and content

like, "would ever be if directed by Zack Snyder," maybe




not that I'm arguing for any other adaptation

oh my god please do not make me relive this

http://toysnbricks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/LEGO-Superheroes-Lex-Luthor-Minifigure.jpg

https://static.squarespace.com/static/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/51ce6099e4b0d911b4489b79/51ce61e5e4b0d911b44a4d5a/1367259876031/1000w/header-entertaining-justice-league-stop-motion-lego-comedy-short.jpg

http://www.bricksandbloks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2015-LEGO-Darkseid-Invasion-76028-Set-Box-LEGO-DC-Superheroes-Winter-2015.jpg

DARKSEID IS appropriate for ages 8-14

lol

Counting down until DC announces their own two-part Justice League V. Darkseid: Infinite Justice movie because it's totally an idea they had forever ago that was in no way inspired by anything their competition is doing.

and then he goes to DC makes a supes movie that doesn't reflect supes at any point in time in history and it makes 40 billion dollars

minor quibble but man of steel wasn't an unqualified success - globally it made less than Guardians Of The Galaxy, every iron man, EVERY spider-man (even the reboots), Captain America 2...

granted Batman Begins also underwhelmed and then led to The Dark Knight which conquered all these, and it definitely did better than Superman Returns. But given Superman's name recognition, Man Of Steel did okay. Any sane studio would follow it with a strong sequel rather than an avengers style team-up, but DC doesn't have the patience right now.

Batman v Superman seems a better commercial prospect than Man of Steel 2 - I mean, for years comic bk companies have 'given the fans what they want' in the form of crossovers, team-ups etc and Avengers proved that such things can work just as well for movies.

oh it could be huge, for sure. but this isn't christian bale coming in to give henry cavill a boost, it's ben affleck - the guy cast in gone girl because america can never decide whether they want to fuck him or kill him. marvel could have followed iron man 1 with Iron Man vs Hulk: Avengers Assemble but instead they reaffirmed the strength of the iron man brand and introduced two more with potential before the team-up. dc is going forward with a new batman and a superman less popular than andrew garfield's spider-man (a franchise in serious danger right now). and from this a thousand sequels involving relative unknowns will be launched.

granted, if it rocks it will do great anyway, but it's not without risk.

also, if it merely does pretty good, they've rendered their two biggest characters as half of a movie that does pretty good

Batman Begins underwhelmed?!

adjusting for inflation, batman begins made less money than any modern batman live-action movie except batman & robin

globally, it did about even with superman returns

(i'll acknowledge the madness of describing a movie that made 300 million as "underwhelming," but it's mostly just relative to potential)

(another bit of madness is that sony is fretting about spider-man - the problem is that instead of seeing him as an enduring bond type character who can have adventures every two or three years until we run out of water, they want him to be able to carry a bunch of spin-offs, and the numbers for ASM2 suggest that's a lot to ask, so they're having "universe" envy)

honestly i thought they were doing it just to have an excuse to make cheaper Spidey movies and extend their license with lower risk. like Fox would be doing the same thing if there was no Hugh Jackman to prop up the X-Men movies (maybe), and if the new FF bombs it'll be pretty embarassing

yeah fox making cheapos wouldn't be a bad idea either but venomcarnage would still be in the cards if they didn't have grander disney-ish ambitions. fox is being smart - bringing in channing tatum as gambit just as hugh jackman starts to age out, somehow making time travel work for a semi-reboot, doing a new fantastic four for cheap. i read that marvel's furious, refusing to make new x-men characters and killing off the fantastic four because they know fox isn't giving up either franchise any time soon. spidey they've still got hopes for.

sorry, should have said "sony making cheapos wouldn't be a bad idea"

we talked about it in ILC, but thinking about the comics from an editorial standpoint
1) there's a million mutant characters to use already that they can pull from
2) FF comic sales have be marginal for decades anyway, but yeah, total spite if true
3) Spider-man i'm not sure about - i guess his sales/character importance are too good to kill, also maybe Marvel is hoping Sony will tank the franchise eventually and give up. with Fox, seems like they can keep X-Men going for at least another another ten years if they want, as long as Jackman/Fassbender/MacAvoy/Tatum/whoever are on board

marvel could have followed iron man 1 with Iron Man vs Hulk: Avengers Assemble but instead they reaffirmed the strength of the iron man brand...

"heat check guys. before we go all-in here let's try a really shitty, forgettable IRON MAN 2. If that does okay we're golden."

adjusting for inflation, batman begins made less money than any modern batman live-action movie except batman & robin

you're sort of ignoring that batman & robin burned the franchise to the ground and left a radioactive crater.

based on reasonable expectations at the time, batman begins outperformed and sparked the current (lol) DC "renaissance"

then why didn't superman returns (which did as well as batman begins) following superman iv, which did worse than batman & robin?

surely The Dark Knight, for a period being the biggest movie not directed by james cameron, was the outperformer/sparker

(will admit superman returns costing 100m more than batman begins is a notable distinction, but still, nothing was sparked by batman begins except the sequel)

i think possibly bc superman returns was a movie people were a bit more psyched for than batman begins and it was overall disappointing, whereas BB was a film people were wary about and ended up liking.

i remember many ppl hating SR and then coming back from BB being like 'no it's actually good!'

if you actually read more than the first half of the sentence of my post (thanks roger!), i said BB led to the dark knight which blew the fuck up. and my point being that dc could still rake it in with BatSupes, just that marvel's shown more patience in their franchise growth

no reason for anyone to think i'm underappreciating Chris Nolan or anything

woops, sorry roger pulled the first half of my first sentence re: iron man 2, the whole "batman begins underwhelmed???" thing came earlier