Let's Be Careful What We Wish For, DCEU Fandom
Okay, so Iâve gone on this tangent a couple of times before and since itâs not having much effect, Iâm putting it here and putting it behind me afterwards. This is about the DCEU fandomâs opinion of WB and what they do behind the scenes. Iâve heard enough jokes about them cutting movies, interfering in the creative process, side lining the directorâs vision, etc, so this is about what weâre 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.
Thereâs a difference between what we think is happening behind closed doors and whatâs 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, theyâd 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, letâs remember that the DCEU has been hated right from the outset, with Man of Steel. And despite its glaring success, there are people whoâll swear by any deity to this day, that Man of Steel was a âflopâ and with BvSâ 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 didnât happen:
DEB: Online, everyoneâs like, âOh, theyâre doing an R-rated in reaction to Deadpool,â and youâre like (laughing), âWe didnât just shoot it last week, and we also didnât edit it last week.â
ZACK:Â 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, âCool, I can put it back in for the directorâs cut.â 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, âOh, now the movieâs rated R.â And, by the way, itâs not a hard R. Thereâs no nudity. Thereâs a little bit of violence. It just tips the scale.â
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 âtoo darkâ 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 didnât 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, BvSâ job wasnât simple success, it was survival. It had to survive in a market, not because there was competition, but because there wasnât âallowedâ to be one, in a marketplace overrun with bias and repeated flip flops between âneeds to be exactly like marvelâ and âomg, theyâre trying to be marvelâ, it needed to survive itâs own predicted death because itâs already been called. And therein comes the Theatrical Cut of BvS and hereâs what Zack says about it:
âWe were just like, âOkay, look. Weâre not making a three-hour movie. I mean, even I didnât 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 itâs at a manageable two-and-a-half hours. Letâs also not forget the credits are super long, the end credits. So the movieâs closer to two hours and 22 minutes.â
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 wasnât WB âlisteningâ 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 âthey did it for extra moneyâ criticisms.
The contents of that cut also make this a point of contention for me because itâs 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 âtoo long, dark, gloomy, depressingâ, etc, with chants of âLois Lane sucksâ and âSuperman is a depressing murdererâ being very common, could somehow be received differently than the way it did, if it was infused with 30 more minutes of same? It doesnât make sense. Because the key word Iâm 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 âthis movie was shot and framed scene by scene like it were comic book panels come to lifeâ become âmeh, it was decent, but omg watch the UC, itâs a masterpieceâ simply because the UC exists? Apparently this fandom doesnât believe in âeven more of a masterpieceâ, only binaries of barely good to great. Even though merit is completely missing in peopleâs 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 âpay attention to the damn movieâ but to watch the UC, itâs âbetterâ. Like how do we expect peopleâs opinion to change if weâre validating and excusing their laziness? Because what we do whether we realise it or not, is say, ânah, itâs good you shat all over BvS, they didnât release a good movie but a bad oneâ 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 âmeritâ, so why the divide in the fandomâs opinion? Ever wonder why thereâs no distinction in BvS hate but there is distinction in BvS love? These people know what theyâre doing and theyâre helped along by this binary the fandom believes in. And even if they released a 3 hr R rated movie to a crowd thatâs 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. Iâve read defense posts that basically say âyeah, the critics are unfair but I canât ignore the huge second week drops which proves it doesnât have good legs.â Really? So the week drops canât be ignored but weâre going to ignore the relentless slamming from every corner of existence that would logically result in those week drops? Weâre 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 wouldnât be a franchise, itâd have stalled from go but it didnât, because it has the one thing the DCEU/WB doesnât have: permission to be enjoyed. A Transformers movie gets its bad reviews, then youâre 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 youâve made the âright choiceTMâ 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 itâs unfeminist to support it, this is the real reason female attendance slipped slightly for BvS, not because it had Batman. And people whoâre incredibly good at analysis, consistently refuse to lend those skills to the universe, write it off as âgrimdarkâ 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, peopleâll 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. Weâve 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 âall inâ sounds good, itâs 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 didnât. 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, weâd have gotten a truly lesser movie on par with Fantastic Four â15. 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 donât, 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, XMAâs reception is not some isolated incident, it could have all started from FF but due to FFâs own quality, thatâs up for debate. We canât continue to let people fuck around with film makers ambitions, try to destroy a movieâs potential, then blame the studios at the end of the day for trying to minimise the damage thatâs 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 movieâs 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, wouldnât. 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 whoâll 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 thereâs officially a viable enough DCEU audience for such.
Letâs 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, youâll still lose. There wonât be a last second plot twist that garners you everyoneâs favor, people lose and often theyâre centuries down under, before anyone remembers thereâs any great thing they did that was overlooked. That is, if ever. Please, letâs not forget exactly where we stand on historyâs 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 weâll lose at the end. Thereâs an incredibly persistent narrative that paints WB as a controlling, directorâs vision interfering studio and itâs 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, thereâs an entry that BvSâ 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 BvSâ âfailureâ. WB and Zackâs 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 didnât. They need someone with the guts to make the hard calls that other âgo with the grainâ people couldnât make and they need to keep being pragmatic about how they conduct the DCEU because itâs failure is all people are expecting. When youâre 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, wonât get you shit. Youâre 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, iâm not saying no oneâs entitled to how they individually feel about the issue, but donât be so caught up on what you think is happening that youâre 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 canât just haphazardly put out a movie without covering itâs ass because people think going all out could have helped them âmake more moneyâ from people whoâve made it explicitly clear that it physically pains them to know it exists.
