Man of Steel wasn't responded to the way Nolan Batfilms were and those who did care generally disliked it.
Warner Brothers hired Ben Affleck fresh off of his Oscar win for directing Argo thinking hiring an attractive movie star with writer/director credentials would be a smart way to make a well-loved follow-up to the now canonical Nolan Batman films. This seemed like a smart move until Affleck's infidelities and divorce played out in real-time in front of America, damaging his lovable image and apparently taking him out of a space where he could do triple duty on a billion dollar franchise flick.
Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad were both 5 times as hyped as they were good.
The Batfleck dream of writing, directing and starring in a Batfilm is falling apart, we’ll be lucky if Affleck is even in the next solo Batman movie.
Justice League is a 5 freight train-wreck: first Zack and Deborah Snyder re-tooled it after the backlash to BvS and Suicide Squad, then their daughter committed suicide and they passed the movie to the legendary untouchable nerd luminary Joss Whedon.
Whedon was already getting dragged for his old Wonder Woman script, which was really unfair internet nerd abuse in my opinion and now, his ex-WIFE is dragging him for years of deceit about infidelity. Not only is she DRAGGING him for it but she (or the editor of The Wrap, the magazine who published it) is insisting that it means he’s a fake and hypocritical feminist when feminism has become a bigger part of his brand every year that goes by. It will be about 5 minutes before the feminist internet nerd community, which I think of myself as generally sympathetic to by the way, successfully demands he be fired from working on Batgirl. The web's biggest Whedon fansite, Whedonesque, has already vowed to end its own existence in reaction to the Kai Cole article. Let me reiterate that the internet’s biggest Whedon fansite is committing suicide over this article. Now none of the film's 3 directors nor its biggest star can execute a huge successful talk show circuit push for fear of being pushed into profoundly painful circumstances and Batgirl the movie is effectively preemptively knee-capped.
I am seriously thinking that God, the Holy Spirit itself, has a huge problem with the DC Cinematic Universe. So here are my theories as to why:
- God sees the God-like DC trinity as false idols – it’s right there in the first commandment
- God is punishing the actual exceptional iniquity of this particular set of Hollywood Babylonians – if this is the case, then Bryan Singer should be getting locked up any day now so stay tuned….
- God wants to see more people of color hired to make these films, the way Marvel has begun to - this is the runner-up for the theory I am most inclined to believe.
- A different, more art-oriented God is angered by the over-commercialized bland uninspired adaptive approach of the DC film world. This is the theory I am most thinking is true. When Batman popped up on the scene in the late 30’s, he wasn’t a heartthrob- he was a creep; a freak, a weirdo, a ghoul. He changed entertainment history forever onward. Superman was an alien, an outcast. I think the Gods of art are disgusted that the characters are being turned into mass product, being stripped of their riskiness and weirdness, depicted with Olympian level attractiveness and sculpted beauty. The Gods demand the comics and their offspring be weird, challenging, strange. Art and its creation has always been an essential part of human society and its development- I would not be the first commentator to suggest the reboot-loop of small and big screen television we are in the midst of is a reflection of a lack of cultural imagination, cultural ennui, secular stagnation, or Fukuyama's "The End of History". I myself dismissed such concerns as cultural snobbery until God took particularly cruel vengeance on literally everyone who directed the Justice League film. I enjoyed Batman v Superman despite its huge flaws, same with Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman ( a somewhat less flawed movie). I would still love to see a Batman film written, directed by and starring Affleck. While I slightly prefer Marvel generally, I have a metric ton of Batman and Justice League hardcovers and paperbacks to go along with my Spidey and Star Wars collections so this opinion doesn't come from being a DC hater. I say this as someone who had accepted that the DC movies would be overwrought over-dramatic Greek God sculpture archetypes presented in a way that can sell to the largest number of the human population as possible. I had accepted all that and was okay with it- but God hasn’t! That’s how powerful the sigil of the DCU trinity is- the Heavens are concerned and they have opinions. God wants more originality, more risk, more trumpeting of the meek the Bible speaks about….never have I feared God so much as when the internet fell Joss Whedon, king of the nerds. Be afraid and tread carefully for we may very well indeed be living in the last days.
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