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kennysamathedeviant · 7 years

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Let's Be Careful What We Wish For, DCEU Fandom

Okay, so I've gone on this tangent a couple of times before and since it's not having much effect, I'm putting it here and putting it behind me afterwards. This is about the DCEU fandom's opinion of WB and what they do behind the scenes. I've heard enough jokes about them cutting movies, interfering in the creative process, side lining the director's vision, etc, so this is about what we're all forgetting is actually happening. My post has nothing to do with whatever WB has done pre-Man of Steel (2013), I may draw on some instances here and there but only for comparison.

There's a difference between what we think is happening behind closed doors and what's actually happening, i know that a lot of fans believe that WB is partly to blame for the less than desirable critical reception of the DCEU movies and that if they did things like release a BvS Ultimate Cut in theatres, they'd have gotten better reception or something. Is any of this supported by fact? Can this franchise just take that huge, a leap of faith?

First, let's remember that the DCEU has been hated right from the outset, with Man of Steel. And despite its glaring success, there are people who'll swear by any deity to this day, that Man of Steel was a "flop" and with BvS' announcement came a whole new wave of negativity, because this hated universe is taking its next steps towards growth and so followed three non fictional years of negativity. Every news, choice, reveal, casting decision, marketing, etc, was written off and scoffed at with nary an attempt to understand or even entertain the possibility of it being good or positive. For three years, people were conditioned not to expect a highly anticipated movie, but to anticipate a high profile failure. The reviews are still out there, anyone can look them up if they need to remember just how baseless the criticisms of this movie was. But should WB have done different? These articles speaks to the reasons why that didn't happen:

DEB: Online, everyone’s like, “Oh, they’re doing an R-rated in reaction to Deadpool,” and you’re like (laughing), “We didn’t just shoot it last week, and we also didn’t edit it last week.”

ZACK: The why of that is [the DVD version] is a half-hour longer, and some of that additional material is some of the stuff we took out for the rating. I was like, “Cool, I can put it back in for the director’s cut.” There was nothing by design. This was the material I just put back in, and then when [the MPAA] looked at it again, they were like, “Oh, now the movie’s rated R.” And, by the way, it’s not a hard R. There’s no nudity. There’s a little bit of violence. It just tips the scale."

So in actuality, WB did do right by Zack, they stood behind him when haters called for him to be fired post MoS, they supported every decision he made, even when they got ridiculed for it, unlike other studios would, they actually stuck by him all the way. But like I pointed out above, this movie was already being attacked once it was announced, the negativity was relentless and constant, which in turn, dimmed the possibility of success, but regardless, they and Zack soldiered on. Till the MPAA decided their movie was "too dark" and gave it an R rating, completely destroying any possibility of success. I put it this way because I feel people have forgotten just how bad the hate was, and the fact that people actually opposed the possibility of that R rating. This is a movie that just didn't need to succeed, it needed to justify the existence of an entire franchise, and people took it to task from day one. Unlike Man of Steel, which successfully paved the way for a shared universe, BvS' job wasn't simple success, it was survival. It had to survive in a market, not because there was competition, but because there wasn't "allowed" to be one, in a marketplace overrun with bias and repeated flip flops between "needs to be exactly like marvel" and "omg, they're trying to be marvel", it needed to survive it's own predicted death because it's already been called. And therein comes the Theatrical Cut of BvS and here's what Zack says about it:

“We were just like, ‘Okay, look. We’re not making a three-hour movie. I mean, even I didn’t want to make a three-hour movie. I drove the cuts probably harder than anyone. The studio, they were willing to let the movie indulge pretty hard. But I felt like it’s at a manageable two-and-a-half hours. Let’s also not forget the credits are super long, the end credits. So the movie’s closer to two hours and 22 minutes.”

So here is Zack, pointing out that WB actually indulged his movie and time length, but the MPAA and their notoriously fickle standards of rating hampered what everyone wanted. The cuts could never have made it into the movie without that R rating. The Ultimate Cut wasn't WB "listening" to fans and putting it out, it was always on the slate, announced (around 23, Feb) before the TC was released, at no extra cost, which dumps all over the "they did it for extra money" criticisms.

The contents of that cut also make this a point of contention for me because it's frustrating that it became common rhetoric that 30 bonus minutes of the very same things used to write off this movie would somehow, in some bizarre paradoxical way, have ended in a positive reception. So a movie that was called "too long, dark, gloomy, depressing", etc, with chants of "Lois Lane sucks" and "Superman is a depressing murderer" being very common, could somehow be received differently than the way it did, if it was infused with 30 more minutes of same? It doesn't make sense. Because the key word I'm chasing here is merit, if anyone wrote off this movie for any of the above reasons, why is 30mins more of it being considered the antidote? How did "this movie was shot and framed scene by scene like it were comic book panels come to life" become "meh, it was decent, but omg watch the UC, it's a masterpiece" simply because the UC exists? Apparently this fandom doesn't believe in "even more of a masterpiece", only binaries of barely good to great. Even though merit is completely missing in people's opinion of the TC, which actually enquires you to think to get everything but now, all I see is people no longer being told to "pay attention to the damn movie" but to watch the UC, it's "better". Like how do we expect people's opinion to change if we're validating and excusing their laziness? Because what we do whether we realise it or not, is say, "nah, it's good you shat all over BvS, they didn't release a good movie but a bad one" and those who had no intention of liking it, get their validation and continue bashing it. Hell, those who had the guts to admit they rewatched and thought better of BvS right here on tumblr, always happen to have watched the TC of their own volition, because they recognised the "merit", so why the divide in the fandom's opinion? Ever wonder why there's no distinction in BvS hate but there is distinction in BvS love? These people know what they're doing and they're helped along by this binary the fandom believes in. And even if they released a 3 hr R rated movie to a crowd that's been conditioned for three years to highly anticipate failure, where is the possibility of success? Especially considering how the TC was treated with no regard for fairness nor merit?

Another thing is, people overlook the human factor in all this discussion. I've read defense posts that basically say "yeah, the critics are unfair but I can't ignore the huge second week drops which proves it doesn't have good legs." Really? So the week drops can't be ignored but we're going to ignore the relentless slamming from every corner of existence that would logically result in those week drops? We're really going to act like bad reviews are enough to hamper movies anymore? Because those days are over, if bad reviews are so dangerous, Transformers wouldn't be a franchise, it'd have stalled from go but it didn't, because it has the one thing the DCEU/WB doesn't have: permission to be enjoyed. A Transformers movie gets its bad reviews, then you're free to watch it, however, a DCEU movie gets unfair, unrelenting criticism that would make hell freeze over, then anybody that even hints that they dreamt about it neutrally, gets a bullseye on their back. Everywhere you go; online news articles, blogs, vlogs, social media, the random pedestrian on the street, the garbage collector, heck, maybe even the pizza guy, will consistently go out of its way to find out if you know the movie exists, is bad, and you've made the "right choiceTM" to avoid it and join the New World Bashing Order. Oh yeah, and all the feminist sites also hate the DCEU and have told their mass followers it's unfeminist to support it, this is the real reason female attendance slipped slightly for BvS, not because it had Batman. And people who're incredibly good at analysis, consistently refuse to lend those skills to the universe, write it off as "grimdark" and then start looking for nuggets of feminism in a very racist and misogynistic franchise. With all that, everyday, for three years prior to release and after release, to this very moment, how exactly are second week drops a surprise and why do people ignore the human factor? We know if you extolled the virtues of eating crap vocally enough, people'll start doing it and if you say good media is crap long enough, people will start believing it. We live in a world where a bad thing can be acceptable if treated with jokes while a good but relentlessly scrutinised thing will eventually be thought of, as bad. We've had ugly reminders of that, last year.

Ultimately, it all comes down to making pragmatic business decisions. Business must always have a possibility of profit and while going "all in" sounds good, it's a flawed way of thinking. Especially in an unfavorable market, you need to cover your behind at all times to limit the possibility of a loss. With a market averse to seeing WB make a profit (especially with a disastrous 2015, where all original content and ambitious projects failed), reasoned decisions that ensured survival, not just profit, from the DCEU needed to be made. If WB really interfered the way people are making it seem, I know the kind of movie we could have gotten and Zack would have walked off the project afterwards, but he didn't. At no point does he disavow the TC and he repeatedly states he did it the way he wanted but the UC is just all they took out because of the MPAA. If this were not a collaborated decision on all fronts, we'd have gotten a truly lesser movie on par with Fantastic Four '15. Which reminds me, how many people remember the fact that Trank and cast were bashed repeatedly for going in a serious direction with FF (despite a number of cheesy prior movies that were not beloved) until Fox stepped in? How many remember that the time of death was called before it started filming? Or that it was also scrutinised round the clock, which is where the problems behind the scenes started from? People don't, their role in that screw up has been erased, and a potential franchise went under, because they were not allowed to make their own movie. For all we know, XMA's reception is not some isolated incident, it could have all started from FF but due to FF's own quality, that's up for debate. We can't continue to let people fuck around with film makers ambitions, try to destroy a movie's potential, then blame the studios at the end of the day for trying to minimise the damage that's already been done. Luckily, WB has so far, in my opinion, made the intelligent move by making ambitious movies with pragmatic distribution without sacrificing the movie's integrity, rather than making pragmatic movies like Fox did and thanks to that, their movies have succeeded in a negative market in a way that going all out, wouldn't. This post also sheds light on the performance of BvS in China; which has so far, not been very instrumental to the DCEU, which is succeeding in spite of it and not because of. It showed that this movie successfully garnered WB a fanbase who'll be ready to pay for more movies. Considering how beloved it is there now, and how much Wonder Woman and Gal Gadot are loved over there (she won the most popular actress award), WB can afford to be a little less pragmatic with their distribution. Her movie can afford to have a higher run time because there's officially a viable enough DCEU audience for such.

Let's also remember that this is the real world, out here, good people lose all the time, you can make all the right decisions, all the right calls, and at the end, you'll still lose. There won't be a last second plot twist that garners you everyone's favor, people lose and often they're centuries down under, before anyone remembers there's any great thing they did that was overlooked. That is, if ever. Please, let's not forget exactly where we stand on history's side here, we are not guaranteed anything, this is how life works, all this can still come crashing down regardless. The DCEU can still (God, I hope not) crash and burn tomorrow and no one will remember it deserves utmost praise (I really, really, REALLY hope not). Because not everyone wins, shit happens, but we adapt as best we can, even if we'll lose at the end. There's an incredibly persistent narrative that paints WB as a controlling, director's vision interfering studio and it's outright wrong and exaggerated. Getting to the New Year and over the past few days, the anti dceu bias has retained strength and new attacks have commenced, with the Ben Affleck movie starting to get its own fresh hell. If I recall correctly, looking through the Unwitting Instigator of Doom section on Tvtropes.org, there's an entry that BvS' failure has caused WB to put off original content and focus on franchises. Not only is this blatantly untrue, but a failed original work has more chances of making such nonsense happen than BvS' "failure". WB and Zack's decisions are the only reason the DCEU still exists, the only reason some people can still admit we like the DCEU and are not going with the gross grain opinion. If WB was as overly concerned about profits to the exclusion of other human related factors, they could have fired Snyder years ago, and followed the Marvel method. They could have turned their movies into jokes and shallow popcorn, forgettable flicks but they didn't. They need someone with the guts to make the hard calls that other "go with the grain" people couldn't make and they need to keep being pragmatic about how they conduct the DCEU because it's failure is all people are expecting. When you're not doing business in a fair market, pragmatism is all you have, just churning out your product and thinking being impossibly impressive should get you praise from people adamantly trying to screw you over, won't get you shit. You're wide open. Because apparently, fair and unbiased treatment is something you grovel (and strive to achieve an out of reach concept of perfection) for and not something you deserve because you worked hard and put in the effort. And no, i'm not saying no one's entitled to how they individually feel about the issue, but don't be so caught up on what you think is happening that you're willing to ignore evidence to the contrary and start advocating for actions that have no possibility of success. I hope to not wake up one day to a rude reminder that the DCEU can't just haphazardly put out a movie without covering it's ass because people think going all out could have helped them "make more money" from people who've made it explicitly clear that it physically pains them to know it exists.

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