DC Comics Multimedia General - A crisis of infinite fuck ups

[Mystery Spy]

I think Zack Snyder is a talented cinematographer. He has shown some of the most gorgeous shots in cinema that put anything Marvel to shame.

But I think his movies were a commercial failure, and they were by the standards that he was never able to match the MCU despite having access to most of the most popular characters ever made, and was replaced by Gunn, for one huge flaw. No, it wasn't that they were dark. Batman movies since Nolan have proven that. His biggest issue is that he really doesn't respect or like the characters except maybe Batman. His Superman out of character, his Batman was murder-happy. He had Jimmy Olsen murdered as his idea of fun. It's not even specualtion, he has outright said so.

I have seen the outline for what he planned after Justice League and honestly WB dodged a huge bullet. Want to know who else also wanted to adapt DC superheroes that had a corny reputation at the time and made them serious? The DCAU. Bruce Timm and his team wanted to avoid being seen like the Super Friends, by his own words. And in return made most of DC superheroes relevant to an entire generation (the millennials). Some like Batman are still considered the definitive versions.

The secret is to actually like the heroes you are adapting and make them shine, and updating them instead of dismissing them as corny and putting them in the same mold.

 

[Eventide]

Now I'm going to make a really bold suggestion. Five years from now when there's distance between both movies, people are going to look back at Gunn's Superman movies and Snyder's and not only are they going to say Snyder's are superior, they're going to say the Snyder movies had the better Lex Luthor.

On the topic of Synder's Lex Luthor being superior: this is probably gonna sound really homophobic, but anyone else get a faggot vibe from Gunn's Luthor? To the point where it was distracting/felt extremely out of character? Like, despite Luther storing his ex girlfriends in that tesseract prison, he just came across as stereotypical prissy gay man the entire movie - especially so with the hissy fit he threw at the end.

I know Lex (in the comics/most Superman media) has his unique idiosyncrasies - but Gunn's interpretation just seemed to translate to: "bitchy gay man who shops at Whole Foods & runs a podcast snarking on the Real Housewives of Miami".

 

[Overly Serious]

On the topic of Synder's Lex Luthor being superior: this is probably gonna sound really homophobic, but anyone else get a faggot vibe from Gunn's Superman? To the point where it was distracting/felt extremely out of character? Like, despite Luther storing his ex girlfriends in that tesseract prison, he just came across as stereotypical prissy gay man the entire movie - especially so with the hissy fit he threw at the end.

I know Lex (in the comics/most Superman media) has his unique idiosyncrasies - but Gunn's interpretation just seemed to translate to: "bitchy gay man who shops at Whole Foods & runs a podcast snarking on the Real Housewives of Miami".

I can certainly see what you mean. He has a very prissy, overly-sensitive feel to him. (I assume have a slight typo in the first sentence and mean Gunn's Lex, though I could see your point as written too). Lex having a therapy-style breakdown at the end yelling to a room of people about how jealous he is of Superman is one of the least Lex Luthor things I've ever seen as well.

Lex is the villain nemesis to the most powerful man on the planet and does it with no superpowers whatsoever. To play that you need a presence and surety that fills the room. That's why for all the hate Jesse Eisenberger got, I think he was the better Luthor. He's a vicious little squirrel of a Lex but his ego is a psychotically robust one. He sees an unstoppably powerful person and thinks "how can I fuck with this guy." Gunn's Luthor feels like he's playing to lose from the start. Like he knows he can't win and is just having one epic drawn out tantrum about it the whole movie. Yeah - I think your calling of the vibe he gives off is a pretty good one now you point it out. Especially the stupidity and pettiness of imprisoning ex girlfriends in another dimension. Just... so insecure. Lex can be petty if you want to call him that, at least in a self-satisfied ticking off some slight from a ledger in his head. But he's seldom insecure. The Clancy Brown Luthor wouldn't imprison an ex-girlfriend in another dimension. He'd look up after a couple of weeks and notice she'd left him and replace her the same way he'd replace a pen that ran out of ink.

 

[Newcomer 42]

Also, once again the red head has been erased from a comic book movi

Right, forgot about that. Every time.

That's attractive. And lets touch on that - James Gunn trying to have his cake and eat it by having Superman have morals against killing but have the movie pull the double-whammy of condoning it by turning it into a comedy moment; and of ditching any hard questions by saying 'okay, when it's inconvenient for Superman to kill someone we'll just have someone else do it for him.'

Supposedly it will have consequences later on according to the pedobear itself, but I'm not sure. IMO it was the typical case of killing the Trump stand-in to own the right, because the bad guy was an unholy fusion of Trump, Putin, and similar cases.

they're going to say the Snyder movies had the better Lex Luthor.

Easy. Snyder Luthor didn't have Elon Musk bits inside his character and didn't scream his plan aloud in a way that even a Silver Age villain would consider dumb and throw tantrums mid-fight.

Not sure if this counts, but I recommend the Batman comic Dark Patterns. It's quite low-key and low-power, mostly focused on investigation adn odd situations, but it's refreshing after Batgod pretty much becoming canon.

 

[The Nothingness]

Now I'm going to make a really bold suggestion. Five years from now when there's distance between both movies, people are going to look back at Gunn's Superman movies and Snyder's and not only are they going to say Snyder's are superior, they're going to say the Snyder movies had the better Lex Luthor.

Yep. I went there.

Even in the Snyder Cut, it seemed Lex was no longer the sperg he was in BvS and acted more calculated. Not exactly like DCAU Lex but at least going in that direction. Such a shame we also didn't get Deathstroke going up against Batman.

 

[Eventide]

Lex is the villain nemesis to the most powerful man on the planet and does it with no superpowers whatsoever. To play that you need a presence and surety that fills the room. That's why for all the hate Jesse Eisenberger got, I think he was the better Luthor. He's a vicious little squirrel of a man but his ego is a psychotically robust one. He sees an unstoppably powerful person and thinks "how can I fuck with this guy." Gunn's Luthor feels like he's playing to lose from the start. Like he knows he can't win and is just having one epic drawn out tantrum about it the whole movie. Yeah - I think your calling of the vibe he gives off is a pretty good one now you point it out. Especially the stupidity and pettiness of imprisoning ex girlfriends in another dimension. Just... so insecure. Lex can be petty if you want to call him that, at least in a self-satisfied ticking off some slight from a ledger in his head. But he's seldom insecure. The Clancy Brown Luthor wouldn't imprison an ex-girlfriend in another dimension. He'd look up after a couple of weeks and notice she'd left him and replace her the same way he'd replace a pen that ran out of ink.

Great point you make about Gunn's Lex coming across as extremely insecure. I've seen quite a few people online comparing Gunn's Luthor to Seto Kaiba from Yugioh. I think that comparison has some merit, since Gunn's Luthor comes across like a petty teenager trying to win an online game/seems extremely immature. In comparison, Clancy Brown Luthor acted like an adult (albeit an evil selfish one). His evil plans to take down Superman never would have been "release a video doxxing Superman's alien parents as evil!" Also, that video is one of my main issues with the film - the 4th wall had to be broken with hammy lines like "science guys are never wrong" to prove the video isn't faked/make the narrative work. It all felt silly & clunky.

 

[Mystery Spy]

I think most Lex Luthors fail because directors forget that, as bad as Lex is, you should respect him.

Otherwise, he will lack the gravitas to feel like a real threat.I agree he comes across more like a jealous teenage girl than a powerful businessman standing against the most powerful man

For some reason, they love to hire actors who can deliver a serious treathening Lex Luthor, like Kevin Spacey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nicholas Hoult, but then make them act as Goofy assholes.


Michael Rosembaum, and Clancy Brown keep being the gold standard.

 

[Overly Serious]

Even in the Snyder Cut, it seemed Lex was no longer the sperg he was in BvS and acted more calculated. Not exactly like DCAU Lex but at least going in that direction. Such a shame we also didn't get Deathstroke going up against Batman.

Yep. The biggest weakness of the Eisenberg Luthor was that he was so different to the usual Luthors. As a villain in his own right under a different name he was okay. Maybe I'm PL'ing a little but the scene where he's trying to talk to that room full of people and stumbles because he's running three different conversations in his head and trying to keep track of his brain, I have a touch of that myself. Now I've trained myself to focus in conversation and am actually a quite good public speaker when prepared. But in casual conversation I can sometimes do the same thing if I don't make an active effort not to. So I can relate to him a little actually - his manner is quite believable to me. One of the things I like about posting like this is that the act of typing constrained me to a single line of thought and I learned to touch type quickly so that I can blast through a post like this very quickly. Faster than I can talk sometimes. So if people see a long post from me and think it's a massive effort-post, can be less than you might think. But in any case, Eisenberg's Lex - I don't want to oversell this. He's not a great Lex but he's a decent character in his own right and a better Lex than whatever the Hell we got with Gunn, jumping around the place and squealing like a five year old who didn't get what he wanted. Eisenberg also comes across as actually evil and vicious. Kind of a plus in a leading villain. Like he's half my size but I still wouldn't want to take my eye of him. Whereas the Gunn lex is about as intimidating as an upset chinchilla.

Not sure if this counts, but I recommend the Batman comic Dark Patterns. It's quite low-key and low-power, mostly focused on investigation adn odd situations, but it's refreshing after Batgod pretty much becoming canon.

Read it. Liked it. Good recommendation. I generally don't read much comics because they're all but impossible to follow with the cross-over obsession the big two have. But that series is self-contained which is another nice plus. I should warn you that my taste in comics is woefully un-edgy and I will as cheerfully read "Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman" as some bleak Batman story about murder victims stuffed into laundromat driers (Dark Patterns). So long as it's good and not filled with cross-over references, I'm happy.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Man of Steel is way better for a lot of reasons, despite its faults, starting with the fact Henry Cavil looks buff enough to play Supes (instead of having twiggy arms), his character IS NOT constantly humilliated in one way or another, and the movie doesn't have Marvel humor bits that are cringe and outdated by now. Mr. T(errific, kek) was a second-rate Cyborg with the same function.
GunnSupes is kinda like the soy equivalent of Superman with an infamous director to boot.

Now I'm going to make a really bold suggestion. Five years from now when there's distance between both movies, people are going to look back at Gunn's Superman movies and Snyder's and not only are they going to say Snyder's are superior, they're going to say the Snyder movies had the better Lex Luthor.

MoS is more cinematic even when it comes to dialogue. "What was I supposed to do? Let them die?" sounds better on screen than "I'm as human as anyone else! I get scared! I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and make the best choices I can. And every time you said I don't belong, it hurts my feelings! That's being human!" Both scenes are kid Clark (I consider Corenswet to be a kid in these movies given how insecure he is) expressing self doubt, but at least Synder and Goyer's pass the listening test for dialogue. Corenswet had to deliver a Lucas-tier paragraph for his big speech. At no point did Gunn do this basic writing test on his own work. And no, it's like a Silver Age comic book is not an excuse.

Also, it's very much fighting for third place considering the Reeves movies and the Animated Series exist.

 

[OutInTheRain]

I think most Lex Luthors fail because directors forget that, as bad as Lex is, you should respect him.

Otherwise, he will lack the gravitas to feel like a real threat.I agree he comes across more like a jealous teenage girl than a powerful businessman standing against the most powerful man

For some reason, they love to hire actors who can deliver a serious treathening Lex Luthor, like Kevin Spacey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nicholas Hoult, but then make them act as Goofy assholes.


Michael Rosembaum, and Clancy Brown keep being the gold standard.

For some reason they keep trying to make Lex Luthor a nerd. They had Rainn Wilson voicing him in some of those DC animated movies in the late 2010s and he sounds awful. Lex is an industrialist/inventor. Someone who has the drive and ability to create a company from nothing, and shape the world to his desire. Someone who you can't relax around, but not because he is unhinged, but because you don't know what he will use against you. Someone who would have been the greatest man of his age, if it weren't for Superman.

Make him older and intimidating. Someone who can silence with a look and fills a room with his presence. Luthor should be oppressive to be around. Regular people should be stressed when Luthor is in the room. You would think with Hollywood there would at least be a producer they can base him on.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

ou would think with Hollywood there would at least be a producer they can base him on.

maybe nobody wants the boss to think it's about him

 

[The Nothingness]

Maybe I'm PL'ing a little but the scene where he's trying to talk to that room full of people and stumbles because he's running three different conversations in his head and trying to keep track of his brain, I have a touch of that myself. Now I've trained myself to focus in conversation and am actually a quite good public speaker when prepared. But in casual conversation I can sometimes do the same thing if I don't make an active effort not to. So I can relate to him a little actually - his manner is quite believable to me.

Watching that scene back in hindsight, I often wonder how much Lex was hiding his full intellect from the public. BvS reveals he knew the identities of Supes and Bats along with having files on Flash, Cyborg, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. His speech included him butchering the myth of Prometheus and taking shots at Zeus before cutting to Diana with an annoyed look. Lex may have learned the Amazons were real and suspected Diana was one given her WWI photo. But even if he didn't suspect the Greek gods were real or that Diana was Zeus' daughter, Lex taking the piss out of Greek mythology knowing Diana couldn't do anything without revealing herself was some good trolling on his part.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

I liked Mr. Terrific well enough. Even if in terms of function he overlaps with Cyborg

Mister Terrific should have been the DC black Justice League member to begin with, instead of Cyborg.

 

[NeonFlux]

DO NOT REDEEM, SUPERMAN

Indians have no real range, it's unbelievable. I need to watch this movie sometime, it seems like its in the "its so bad its good territory." James Gunn really thinks he's owning the chuds.

 

[GlupShitto]

Pattinson as Batman would be the smartest choice for the DCU. He is a fan favorite and already established, and I think even James Gunn knows that, but I doubt that’s what he wants.

He has said before that Batman is his favorite.He has even talked about how his version of Batman would be like, how he hasn’t made up his mind for his design for Creature Commandos.

James Gunn clearly wants to do his own Batman. But for better or worse, someone already made a great Batman. Unlike literally everything else, Batman doesn’t need to be rebooted to get a strong movie prescense. And Pattisn’s Batman already would work great for their Superman becuase, unintentionally they are opposites in the best way possible.

Gunn wouldn’t have to waste time risking if yet another Batman would be popular. If they (Reeves and Gunn or whomever) swallow their egos and learn to share their toys, they could make something huge. It’s a no-brainer.

Honestly the biggest problem is that I doubt Matt Reeves wants to do Robin. Despite all the Robins having great stories in comics, animation, and video games, their reputations in live action have been utterly tarnished because they've only been in garbage (the 60s show, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, kinda BvS, Titans, Gotham Knights). But James Gunn obviously wants to do Robin because he's a pedophile and also because the ex-Robins are some of the most beloved DC characters

 

[GlupShitto]

He's in the same position Alan Moore often was. When you take a C-list character, change them beyond recognition, and write them well, people will call you a genius. Even Alan Moore admitted he enjoyed writing C-listers because there were fewer expectations. While fans of the originals get upset, their numbers are so small that it ultimately doesn't matter.

The real trouble is that DC’s A-list characters are the ones who need help after years of severe neglect. Yet, Gunn still acts as if he's at Marvel, where he had to make the few characters they hadn't sold the rights to work. He isn't the underdog, but he's still acting like one.

Uplifting a C-lister and rekindling interest in an A-lister are two very different things, and DC desperately needs the latter.



I personally lean toward the DCAU version of the character as superior. She was a brawler with anger issues, but she was also very feminine . Unlike the Faust version or the cringe-worthy CW adaptation, there was no lame attempt to make her "cooler" or a Superman clone. She doesn't need to be; she's interesting on her own.

The fact that her dynamic with Batgirl in the DCAU was never explored beyond a single episode is one of the greatest wasted potentials I've ever seen in animation.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AKhesiLyusI

I might sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but I think Gunn/DC as a whole is eager to push C-listers and completely reinvent A-listers because all the A-listers are about to become public domain and as soon as that happens, the DC brand becomes utterly worthless

 

[GlupShitto]

On the topic of Synder's Lex Luthor being superior: this is probably gonna sound really homophobic, but anyone else get a faggot vibe from Gunn's Luthor? To the point where it was distracting/felt extremely out of character? Like, despite Luther storing his ex girlfriends in that tesseract prison, he just came across as stereotypical prissy gay man the entire movie - especially so with the hissy fit he threw at the end.

I know Lex (in the comics/most Superman media) has his unique idiosyncrasies - but Gunn's interpretation just seemed to translate to: "bitchy gay man who shops at Whole Foods & runs a podcast snarking on the Real Housewives of Miami".

If I'm being totally honest, I think Snyder's Lex feels gayer. His weirdo detached autistic lolsorandom quirkiness, long hair, and the Jolly Rancher scene all just scream annoying faggot to me.

 

[Mystery Spy]

I might sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but I think Gunn/DC as a whole is eager to push C-listers and completely reinvent A-listers because all the A-listers are about to become public domain and as soon as that happens, the DC brand becomes utterly worthless

That does make a lot of sense, actually. I had a similar theory before. Marvel’s A-listers mostly came into prominence during and after the ’60s, so they still have time to exploit them—with the notable exception of Captain America.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, later on, they start pushing Supergirl or John over Superman once they feel the deadline closing in.

But even then, DC has one of the strongest and largest collections of B-list characters, which they constantly neglect but really should prioritize. Just look at most of the Justice League Unlimited cast for examples—many of them on the magical side (Constantine, Zatanna, Dr. Fate, etc.) or among the teenage heroes like the Shazam family, Static Shock, Batman Beyond, the Young Justice crew, and the Teen Titans cast. All of them are being ignored.

The Legion of Super-Heroes may be mostly C-listers, but they’re still far better than the bottom-of-the-barrel Z-listers Gunn was bragging about with that “history of metahumans” mural Easter egg.

I guess Gunn is too busy propping up characters like “The Bride” and “Bulletman.” His priorities are skewed, to say the least.

 

[Overly Serious]

Watching that scene back in hindsight, I often wonder how much Lex was hiding his full intellect from the public. BvS reveals he knew the identities of Supes and Bats along with having files on Flash, Cyborg, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. His speech included him butchering the myth of Prometheus and taking shots at Zeus before cutting to Diana with an annoyed look. Lex may have learned the Amazons were real and suspected Diana was one given her WWI photo. But even if he didn't suspect the Greek gods were real or that Diana was Zeus' daughter, Lex taking the piss out of Greek mythology knowing Diana couldn't do anything without revealing herself was some good trolling on his part.

Good catch on that dig at Diana's dad. If she is the daughter of Zeus in this version. I think so but I forget. Yes, on a rewatch I think he knows who all three of them are at that point. And there's his "I love bringing people together" at Clark and Bruce Wayne. One thing the Eisenberg Lex loves is to run conversations on multiple levels and he knows how to disguise that. So when he says "you should not pick a fight with this man" to Bruce, he's set it up with the handshake and the "wow that is a good grip!" to make the whole thing feel borderline - is he / isn't he aware. He's absolutely someone who loves to troll in the most subtle and intellectual of ways. In the scene where he blackmails Superman he's got all this set up he rattles off about gods and man and as he gets into the helicopter holding the little oven timer that shows how long Martha has to live he says "Mother of God, would you look at the time!" Which is utterly a play on casting Superman as a god and Martha therefore being the mother of god. The Lex stuff in Snyderverse flows pretty quickly like that whereas the Gunn stuff is so much more on the nose. I'd say that the Snyder movies are frankly aimed at a more intelligent viewer than the Gunn stuff.

Case in point:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gGaKUIYuErg
DO NOT REDEEM, SUPERMAN

Indians have no real range, it's unbelievable. I need to watch this movie sometime, it seems like its in the "its so bad its good territory." James Gunn really thinks he's owning the chuds.

It's idiotic of Lex to say "I thought that would last longer". It's a fucking revolver with six shots. By the second shot you're down to less than a 70% chance you haven't killed the guy. Oh, and you spaced the two shots about 10 seconds apart. How long did you actually expect it to last then Mr. Scientific Genius.

Also, the "I recognize the smell of his piss as he flew across the desert" does not sound like a very Superman line, I have to say.

I need to watch this movie sometime, it seems like its in the "its so bad its good territory." James Gunn really thinks he's owning the chuds.

Maybe I'm just past that but I couldn't even enjoy it in that sense. It's like a decorated cake without the cake. Like the sprinklers are there in that there are things you can and probably will like. Little touches. But they're not on anything. And things I liked from the trailer, like Crypto, end up just becoming annoying. The whole thing feels workshopped to death and rushed. The more time that passes since I watched it, the more my dislike of it grows. In fact the only thing I like about it by this point is how many opportunities it is giving me to say "you know, the Snyder movies don't look so bad now, do they?"

I'd love to get some solid financials on this with context from someone who knows what they're talking about. Is Superman actually a flop or not? I haven't seen that much interest in it, to be honest.

 

[Calandrino]

One of the most popular criticisms of it at the time was his leaving his dad to die in the tornado.

Come to think of it, in Gunn's movie, Superman both 1) lets a guy die to preserve his secret identity and 2) abandons a villain to die in a subway car. Bravo, 10/10 homages to MoS and BB.

Now I'm going to make a really bold suggestion. Five years from now when there's distance between both movies, people are going to look back at Gunn's Superman movies and Snyder's and not only are they going to say Snyder's are superior, they're going to say the Snyder movies had the better Lex Luthor.

I think even people who don't like the way they went with the character should give Eisenberg's performance some credit. Of the movie versions, he's the only one who doesn't seem to know he's in a movie.

His biggest issue is that he really doesn't respect or like the characters except maybe Batman.

People say that, I don't necessarily agree. Maybe he's "fixing" them and turning them into his idea of what's cool, but I think he really does like the versions of the characters in his movies, and he at least isn't trying to mock them or take them down a notch (like Luke Skywalker suffered, among many others).

Make him older and intimidating. Someone who can silence with a look and fills a room with his presence. Luthor should be oppressive to be around. Regular people should be stressed when Luthor is in the room.

CW's Superman and Lois wins again, suck it theatrical motion pictures