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

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

"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."

as for batman begins, definitely side with roger here - in the context that it was coming from the ashes of Batman and Robin, introduced a newly stylized Batman world with Bale and such, that definitely felt like a big deal and big success at the time

you're right in that it made less money than I would have expected, considering the excitement and general reception of the movie

yeah i didn't say it tanked, just that like man of steel it didn't suggest audiences were leaping with the same degree of enthusiasm they did for iron man or guardians of the galaxy despite considerably more of an established fanbase

once heath ledger showed up all was clearly forgiven

and who knows maybe jesse eisenberg will reveal a similar magnetic pull

hah. i actually like the idea of nu-Lex Luthor being a Mark Zuckerberg-like technocapitalist but... probably not gonna work

Lex is not the kind of villain that lends himself to trad action movie setpieces imo

well neither does the joker. both are inventive plotters. admittedly, joker can explicitly throw more hired goons at his foe, but lex can still instigate dramatic setpieces and act the heel.

agreed. altho I'm sure Snyder doesn't grasp that.

oh definitely, for all i know jesse will just do his mark zuckerberg shtick and eventually tell a robot to punch superman or something

Lex is not the kind of villain that lends himself to trad action movie setpieces imo

Gene Hackman's Luthor certainly wasn't, but every other Luther has been doing heavy punching in armor for decades now.

http://cdn3-www.craveonline.com/assets/uploads/2013/11/foreverevil3658.jpg

every other Luther

eh not quite

imo a regular guy in armor punching Superman isn't gonna be all that compelling on-screen

man there is so much they could do with lex, goading superman that for all his power and patriotism he'll never be as american as lex and he'll never be able to STOP lex without breaking the laws that lex can dance around. just as the joker is the nihilistic response to batman saying the system's broken, lex is the nihilistic response of superman saying the system works. it could totally serve to make superman more sympathetic, to give him definition and purpose beyond the red state hothead of the first movie.

failing that, i do hope they put eisenberg in green armor.

oh I'm sure they will, Snyder won't be able to resist and he isn't that smart. of course it will be some kind of dull, washed out green.

oh god i just realized, if this is going to jack a lot from dark knight returns...maybe BEN'S gonna be the one decked out in mega-armor

I wonder how many movies before Lex runs for office

not if they stick with young Lex

stupid question maybe but is this going to have Superman *fighting* Batman?! or have i misunderstood.

there's some laughable quote by Snyder about how it's "v.", not "vs." for some dumb, yet-to-be-explained reason

SUPERMAN YEA, VERILY BATMAN

Legal battle over use of the suffix '-man', IIRC.

ManMan v. Man

agree that best use of Lex as foil is as 1% puppeteer

"what are you going to do, punch ~the system~?
you and your ma and pa have ~always~ been working for me"

etc etc

what are you going to do, punch ~the system~?

I'm sure Snyder would find some way for Superman to punch the system

until there's more news, my money is on batman being all "yo this asshole fucked up metropolis and forgot to save the wee ones, gotta tell this punk how we roll in superhero land" and superman being all "hey i'm from nebraska why u not like me?"

maybe lex exploits their distrust of each other but that the big battle is MECHA-BAT trying to beat the tar out of Superman like the end of dkr. also possible that happens earlier and they fight the real enemy in the end.

dunno if they'll have batman bring in the other heroes to help him macgruber style before the big stand-off or if they just wave hi after the credits

Maybe Supes will laser eye Luthor's dick off, MacGruber style.

In fact if they use MacGruber as a template for this movie it can do nothing but help

agree that best use of Lex as foil is as 1% puppeteer

"what are you going to do, punch ~the system~?
you and your ma and pa have ~always~ been working for me"

etc etc

― resulting post (rogermexico.), Thursday, 30 October 2014 20:51

Wasn't there an "event" storyline recently where one of the characters punches REALITY ITSELF hard enough that it ended one version of the universe?

Always thought that image of Lex Luthor riding on Dr Octopus's back (Doc Ock with enormous tentacles climbing across the city) was hilarious. That was Superman vs Spiderman in the 70s I think.