MovieChat Forums > Justice League (2017) Discussion > Franchise Killers: Justice League

Franchise Killers: Justice League

posted 6 years ago by TMC-4 (19574)
2 replies | jump to latest

https://lebeauleblog.com/2018/12/18/franchise-killers-justice-league/

Justice League was released a few months after Wonder Woman and despite Gal Gadot’s presence in both movies, the team-up movie grossed roughly half of what Wonder Woman made domestically. That’s not how these things are supposed to work. If a movie starring all of DC’s most popular characters can’t gross $700 million dollars, something has gone terribly wrong.

Actually, a lot of things went terribly wrong although we can only speculate as to the specifics. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that Warner Brothers got impatient. Marvel built up to Avengers by introducing the lead characters in their own solo movies. Warner Brothers made due with split-second cameos in Batman v Superman. Audience barely knew Flash and Aquaman when they teamed up for the first time.

Despite the headlines about Cavill’s mustache, Justice League‘s marketing was coy about admitting that Superman was in the movie at all. He doesn’t appear on the poster. That’s because Snyder actually killed off his Man of Steel in his second movie appearance. Everyone knew the death would be undone, but for some reason the movie’s marketing didn’t want to admit that was the case.

Would Cavill’s Superman have sold more tickets if his digitally shaved lip had appeared in commercials? Probably not. But it couldn’t have hurt.

What happens from here is anyone’s guess. Warner Brothers has released Cavill from his contract. He won’t appear as Superman in any future movies. It seems likely Ben Affleck is also done playing Batman. But Gal Gadot will continue playing Wonder Woman and it seems likely Jason Momoa has more Aquaman movies left in him.

The plug got pulled on a Cyborg solo movie and the Flash keeps getting pushed further and further back on the schedule. Instead, several DC movies have been announced many of which probably will never happen. While DC hasn’t fully given up on their shared universe, some of their DC movies will not tie into the others.

One could argue that Justice League was a movie that was supposed to start a franchise, but didn’t. I labeled it was a franchise killer instead because the series started with Man of Steel. What Justice League killed, for all intents and purposes, was the Snyder-version of the DC Universe. Some of his influence lives on, but primarily that is in the form of the actors he cast.

[–] TMC-4 (19574) 4 years ago

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Justice-League-not-as-successful-as-the-Avengers/answer/Dean-Hacker-1

Choice of Source Material: Both teams have been re-booted several times and, therefore, had a few different origin stories from which to choose. The folks at Marvel Studios started from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates. The folks at DC Entertainment started from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s New 52 era Justice League. While both series started very strong in comic shops, The Ultimates was a huge throughout its initial run. The New 52 Justice League faded substantially.

Adaptation Process: The Avengers was developed by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige with writer/director Joss Whedon. Justice League was developed by then DC heads Geoff Johns and John Berg, who replaced original director Zach Snyder after principal photography (and writer Chris Terrio leaving with him). This led to substantial re-shoots. While the work of Millar and Hitch was given a critical eye by their adapters, Johns was in charge of essentially adapting himself. Key mistakes in one version were passed to the next. Given that the source material for Justice League was less successful in the first place, the ceiling for the project was lowered.

The DCEU Strategy: The Marvel cinematic universe was a fairly slow build with Iron Man beginning in a very realistic world and five of the core Avengers characters introduced one at a time over five movies. Captain America debuted in the First Avenger. Thor debuted in Thor. The Hulk in The Incredible Hulk. Black Widow debuted in Iron Man 2. By the time that the iconic “circle shot” happened, fans knew these characters. Justice League started on a semi-promising way with Man of Steel introducing their Superman, but skipped the hard work introducing their Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman until the bigger noisier team-up movies. You barely had enough time to learn the character names, which made caring about them impossible.

[–] tarantinofan4lif (0) 4 years ago

[deleted]