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Same here. By far.
Apparently he was never going to wear it. It was always just an Easter egg in the background. Umberto Gonzalez Tweeted about it back in December too:
And was once more popular than Superman. Trouble is that any attempt to make Captain Marvel "edgy" or "dark" would be a ludicrous disaster, so I hope the movie doesn't attempt to be anything more than an excellent family film.
If you go through the director's social media posts, its clear he has no intent on making an "edgy" or "dark" Shazam film.
That's very encouraging, especially since his previous features have been horror films (albeit well-reviewed ones). Fingers crossed he doesn't get too much corporate interference.
Not as bad as the Jimmy Olsen "easter egg" of BvS though, if you could call it that.
It seems a bit redundant otherwise.
@Risico007, fair enough. That being said, I've not heard people say it's the worst film (I think BvS is far more worthy), just that it's painfully average and been-there-done-that. While BvS really was a mind-blowing failure on all levels for me, JL was simply a weak effort that came about ten years too late. But not a film that haunts me by any means, and that's frankly a comfort.
https://heroichollywood.com/zack-snyder-fired-justice-league-year/
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Snyder's departure from JL was as amicable as the THR article led us to believe, but less than a year ago we saw a photo of Snyder working on JL. So either Josh Dickey's timeline is a bit off or he is just trying to stir shit up.
Even if he wasn't "fired", do you seriously think WB would hand him another DC film?
I would advise Snyder to seek out more artistically driven work, as he has a pretty great visual eye when it comes to sheer composition. I don't like how he uses color, often laboring with grays and dreary blues too much, but he knows how to grab you with shots. I've said this before, but he's a brilliant cinematographer stuck in the director's chair, and I think the former is far more suitable to him than the stresses of the latter, one of which is crafting an engaging story which he's always struggled with. He never seems to be able to make a movie that is focused and well paced, leading to three hour director's cuts that still feel like they don't say or do a lot or develop the characters in the way they should. Maybe the life of a cinematographer is what he should pursue instead then, so that he can utilize his greatest strength in that visual eye.
I do feel for him, as WB hitched their franchise wagon to his MoS and I think he could've been overwhelmed by that responsibility and didn't have the time to craft a clear vision for the films ahead, which could be why he put Batman in what was supposed to be MoS 2 at the last minute and then made that same film a rushed prelude to the team film. I think it's quite likely WB urged him to rush to the team film as soon as possible while they were hungry for Marvel money, and Snyder was left following orders he may not have agreed with, taking all the hits as the "face" of these films. And the death of his daughter goes without saying, of course. I hope he can move past this stage of his personal life and career and find other projects more suited to him with less restrictions or pressures, as pre-WB/superhero film Snyder was pretty cool.
He looked like he enjoyed making Man of Steel. Hell, it looks like everyone on it enjoyed it. And, quite frankly, if someone can NOT enjoy making a film that features both Batman and Superman in it, then something has gone wrong at both a creative level and, arguably more importantly, at the level above.
I feel for Snyder. I like him as a person and I think he's actually a pretty good director once the shackles have been removed. If he had been given the freedom to focus solely on a story that he wanted to tell, then he would have been fine. Instead, we got half Snyder story, half universe building story, and neither really came together all that well.
I definitely think that a Snyder working in isolation wouldn't have rushed to Batman and the League in the way he did under Warner's control following MoS's release. I can't say for sure, but I think he did want to develop Superman more in another solo film, gradually building to that team film as Marvel did. It's always seemed that WB was the entity hungry for Marvel money and billion dollar profits while the creative forces underneath them were slaves to that pursuit to did the bidding, as is the status quo. I can't imagine the kinds of things Snyder had to deal with, production notes about how he had to include scenes to tease this or that in the DCEU, or suggestions to include this character or that character to set up another solo. I don't know if he had the idea to put Batman in BvS or not, but I think WB was heavily involved in pushing that film into the rushed and cobbled together mess it ultimately ended up being. That scene where Diana finds Bruce's e-mail and goes through all the videos had WB all over it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the studio made Snyder shoot it to sloppily lead into Justice League.
And Justice League for sure had to be even worse, as you can see exactly where WB forced Snyder to inject more comedy or levity in response to their misguided secret screenings and because of their fear that they were making movies too differently from Marvel that wouldn't catch with audiences. And yet, as they quickly found out with JL's weak box office legs, we want DC films and not Marvel ones, as certain characters can't be equated to those of the other competing universe and are different for a reason.
I think the biggest problem with this universe isn't as much the contributions of the creative forces, but on the studio over their shoulder that never learned their lesson and kept forcing their way into the process and changing things they shouldn't have from the director's original vision. BvS had studio influence written on a good deal of it as outlines above, and Suicide Squad was a project that had Ayer rushing out a script in less than two months and ended with WB wrestling control from him in the editing room that produced a film with no sense of setting, pace or cohesion as a result. And that's not even to talk of Justice League's issues, the film version of a paint by the numbers coloring book where no risks are taken by a kitchen with enough cooks for a cruise liner and in which you see things done better in other movies that had their own identity and originality.
I have definitely been critical of Snyder in the past, sometimes too much, and in this I do sympathize with him because working underneath the studio system has long crippled the best of his occupation, up to even the great Orson Welles. It would be interesting to see what these films could have been without WB constantly interjecting their influence and production notes at each step, and if they made good on their promise to truly let their creators work with their properties in the way they liked with carte blanche. Marvel seems to be doing a much better job with that model nowadays, as you can see the freedom in which films like Thor: Ragnarok, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Black Panther have been made with tangible touches of their unique directors and crews visible from the outset that gives them their own identity. How Patty Jenkins was able to make Wonder Woman so good in that WB atmosphere is truly a miracle.
It was merely something I noticed myself on interviews and BTS videos from both films about Snyder's changed demeanor. I may be way off base with it but my eyes usually don't lie to me!
I would say, though Marvel are in a good place now, it is important to note that it is only recently that they've allowed their films to have their own identity and for me, it was only with Guardians Of The Galaxy that they began to really allow any sort of director imprint. Storytelling reasons aside, many of the Marvel films up til that point felt, looked and even sounded the same to me. That's not to say that they were bad at all, but they certainly felt like they could have been directed by any director. I mean, just compare Thor 2 to Ragnarok.
DC, meanwhile, has had Snyder's stamp all over it. That brings its own pros and cons. What baffles me is that WB surely must have known what they were going to get with Zack, and after Man Of Steel they should have just let him do his thing and developed a solo Batman film alongside that if they were really worried about it. Batman always puts bums in seats.
Since BvS, I have always felt that there should have been a standalone Batfleck film in between it and MOS or an MOS 2. It would have been set before Superman became known to the world, and would have adapted the Under The Red Hood arc. It would have ended with Bats at an all time low, an established Joker (with Leto being given proper time to develop his version, for better or for worse) and most importantly, the epilogue of the film would have been Wayne witnessing the battle of Metropolis just as he did in BvS. How about that for a cliffhanger instead of an opener? Make people leave the theatre actively excited for the next film, the way I was excited for what was going to come after Man Of Steel just by seeing Clark in his Daily Planet get-up again, and hearing Lois say "Welcome to the Planet" with a cheeky smile. I saw that and thought, "Yep, a good start. This has potential."
Two extra films over the course of a couple of years would have made all the difference to this universe. It would have meant that we had a story that served the characters, rather than characters that serve the story.
As much as I really like Affleck as Batman (in BvS at least, not so much in Justice League), it feels like he was reduced to nothing more than a plot device. I disagree with most people who say that Snyder got Supes fundamentally wrong - I think he had a clear goal for him that was to organically build him up to what we know him to be over the course of 2-3 films. Snyder knew who Superman was, but he also knew that making a Reeve style film wouldn't work; Bryan Singer found that out the hard way. Man Of Steel was just the framework for what Superman was to become. However, the insistence by the studio on an immediate establishment of a universe meant that the arc had to be condensed and reduced and it rendered the impact to be almost mute. Imagine how much more we would have felt during the character's death if Cavill had gotten a second solo film before his smackdown with Batman/Doomsday?
Justice League was so safe, so limp, so dull. It's a Snyder film in name only. Barely any of his concepts are in it, and they reshot nearly half the bloody film. As nice as it was to see some of these characters together for the first time, it still felt like a massive step backward. It's so Joss Whedon, it hurts.
The booting of Junkie XL and the ejection of the new (and to be fair, pretty good) musical themes for JL in favour of Elfman and his pastiche of former glory is the perfect allegory for what was wrong with Justice League for me.
"Okay, we've botched the new approach by being too fiddly with the content. Lets scapegoat the director, because we know he's divisive anyway, and then just go back to what worked for us before - except lets make it with much less care and love than we did in the 70s and 80s."
Such a pity, because the talent involved in these films has been quite extraordinary. Cavill, Affleck, Adams, Gadot, Costner, Fishburne, Michael Shannon....they've all been good when they get their moments. Zimmer, Junkie, Price and Gregson-Williams all did well with the music. They've all looked pretty good until Justice League came along and shit the bed visually.
It makes me so sad because when it comes down to it, as much as I love the Marvel films and the shows, I'll always lean towards DC characters.
Anyway, there's always Aquaman, right?
As for Snyder's stamp, you do have a point of his mark being there, but I guess what I mean was more that he was still hampered artistically, or felt hampered, when it came to his vision. I can't say for sure what went on during Justice League, but it basically feels like WB took the movie from him, used the death of his daughter to provide an excuse for why he was departing, and then brought in a guy who messed with what he'd worked on to that point.
I just don't think that WB has created a working environment where challenging and interesting films are being made, or can be made. They always have to run through the shop and meddle, even though that meddling has never worked out for them in the end, critically or financially with poor reviews and box office that falls short of what these heroes can produce when wielded by capable hands (look at what Nolan did). I repeat my awe in response to how Patty pulled off Wonder Woman, a film that does feel hers and not a product of WB micromanaging every frame. I wonder how she got them to lay off? I definitely think the DCEU was far too rushed, the backwards timeline aside. Part of why Justice League doesn't work is because it's hard to care about anything, you are so separated from these characters. MoS was a great start for Superman, and I actually like it in comparison to the prevailing opinion and have no issues with how he's characterized (I think the death of Zod is super powerful, as well). But with BvS it seems like all he learned was meaningless and he went back on it all in a way that felt out of character and strange. Not much added up in that film, honestly, with Batman included.
I would have liked to see a film with Batman leading into the Superman "event" with Zod, as we could see what Bruce was like (moral, upstanding, honorable) and then become shocked to learn what the danger posed by Superman does to him, turning him cruel and cold. We only get implications in BvS of Batman's past, and the problem becomes that if you're not going to even seriously address his fall from grace beyond a line from Alfred, you're really wasting an interesting story. I'm not a fan of the murderous Batman idea, but if you're going to tell a "fall from grace" story with Bruce, really drive that home. Have Gordon threatening to lock him up, get Alfred questioning if he should be part of it, and have Bruce haunted by the promise he made to his dead parents that he's breaking and the deaths of those in his past that have driven him to the edge, etc. Those seeds are in BvS, but bad pacing and the rush to plug future DC films really make it all lose focus and the most we get is Alfred calling Bruce cruel and that shot of Jason's old suit. That's not the kind of characterization that was needed and there's no definite arc to anything. Bruce starts bad, then gets worse, then really gets bad as he tries to kill Superman, then he asks for forgiveness, yet still kills a ton of people right after he gets faith back, and finishes the film not as changed as you'd expect. It just lost me and I didn't feel invested in any of it beyond hating this character.
In the end, WB just don't seem to be able to meet fan and audience expectations sensibly with these films, and can't please either to a satisfying degree. You and I get the Flashpoint teases or what that suit of Jason's means in BvS, because we are familiar with these characters and their histories, but can you imagine being a casual viewer watching the film who had never picked up a comic or seen a film with these heroes? How confusing would that Mad Max/Batman crossover be with the parademons, or Flash popping in to warn Bruce (they wouldn't even be able to know who that was)? There's easter eggs for fans like Marvel does and then there's building a film universe on obscure narrative teases that only 5% of the global audience will pick up on.
Marvel have expanded and expanded their universe over time and now have a running story with a lot going on, meaning missing out on a film could be confusing, but at least they've had a clear arc and have told a consistent and building narrative that has a definite climax. They have direction, while WB meander or scrap stories altogether, leading to films that never feel connected or of the same universe. Couldn't agree more about Batman in JL, so, so depressing. He's got nothing to do but drive the damn batmobile while the others get impactful functions and I can't even remember one time where he so much as threw a punch in the film. Part of why Batman is hard to use in these kinds of stories is because he's the only human and so he's kept away from the action in order to give credibility to the threat and avoid straining the logic of the story (ie. Bruce is gonna be killed, he can't be a direct fighter). That sadly makes him a very stale and unengaged character, with nothing to really do. I enjoyed seeing Bruce feeling guilt about his past and his actions, finding a better man in Superman to live up to, but it was too undersold and in other areas he didn't feel like he had much purpose. If Bruce wasn't there I don't feel like the others really would've struggled in his absence, like his presence wasn't consequential in the end. I said this in my initial review, but that's what makes me think Batman was made the DCEU's Hawkweye instead of their Iron Man.
Also agree on the condensed Superman arc that would've been great to see develop naturally. Just one extra film could've built up Clark and Lois so that we cared when he "died" in her arms, and his relationship with those at the Planet could've actually had some importance too. We see Clark go to work at the end of MoS, then he reports on sports or whatever in BvS and then the Daily Planet is given no mention again in relation to him, which is really sad. A lot about Clark's character and inner motivations were neglected because of the rushed timeline, and even then I still feel that how he acts in the second film is at odds with what we're led to believe he learned in MoS. It doesn't feel like a progressing, consistent character growing into a hero, but a promising hero regressing into someone he isn't. Can't really add anything, absolutely true. These people should produce magic together, but the management at the top controlling the story just weren't there to help them, which is a shame. I've long sided with DC for Batman, who has always had big importance to me in my life, but Spider-Man has been important to me for just as long as those Raimi films really changed everything for me and captivated me like little else has. These days I'm finding a lot to love with Marvel too when it comes to Cap, Daredevil and Black Panther most strongly, especially in the hands of great comics writers, and their screen counterparts have been beyond amazing. I'm more pumped for seeing Black Panther than anything coming from DC/Warner outside of Wonder Woman, the sole salvageable character from this universe.
I'll wait and see with Aquaman, as I felt he was surprisingly undersold in JL and, like Batman, was almost a non-presence at times and more mysterious that he should have been. I never felt like I knew him in any way and he was just there to spew one-liners or be a rebellious, actions over words type of guy with sparse layers to him. I personally hope the film adapts the same story one of the animated Justice League episodes did, where Aquaman is betrayed in a game of royal duplicity by a friend that leads him to losing his hand. There's an opportunity for a lot of interesting intrigue and a clash for the throne with the royal family and the hierarchy of Atlantis, but I'm not anywhere near as optimistic as I'd like to be coming off of seeing JL.
http://collider.com/zack-snyder-fired-from-justice-league/
https://batman-news.com/2018/02/11/nightwing-isnt-happening-anytime-soon-director-chris-mckay-cautions/
Sigh I bet Whedon’s batgirl will similarly not happen
@Risico007, I have also thought about the Whedon and Batgirl issue myself in the past months since JL. Are WB upset with Whedon's performance in taking over from Snyder, expecting Marvel's billion dollar director to net them similar profits, and has the film's critical and financial underperformance caused them to boot him from the project? Hard to say, but I don't think working on JL helped Whedon's future with this universe, even if I don't think it's fair to hang it all on his head or any one person's head. Filmmaking is a team sport, after all, and WB is usually far more complicit than any of their creative appointees when a film tanks. Just look at how they meddled in Suicide Squad and hired a bunch of trailer editors to put the film together in post production. I mean, what?
Man of steel (2013)
Man of Steel 2 (2015) with the villains being I believe Luther and Brainiac and Batman having a cameo at the end (similar to Wonder Woman in BVS)
The Batman (2016) likely being directed by someone else but staring the same actor
Batman V Superman 2017
Justice league 2018 (or 2019)
Again you can hate on Snyder all you want but he was dealt a bad hand by the studio I honestly don’t think anyone could of saved dc films from wb’s we need a justice league tomorrow mentality.
My personal views aside the franchise was doomed from the start and in my opinion should Affleck leave before doing his solo film I will place the blame firmly on WB
It's like if Marvel would've come out with Iron Man, then rushed into making Iron Man 2 more of a crossover and team building film than a film of its own with a cohesive story. In the film the development of Tony would be rushed, the narrative messy and all the coming team members of the Avengers (Cap, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, etc) would be addressed in five second teases to lead into the big team film where they are brought together without us as the audience knowing anything about them. Now tell me, how well do you think The Avengers would've done at the box office is that was the game plan? WB should've swallowed the criticism that they were copying Marvel and build the universe the right way, going from solos to team films. Tell Superman's story, then Diana's, then do a Batman prequel tying into the big fight he has with Superman in a later film to make us understand his character and who he was before he fell from grace. Actually build a cohesive universe and have all the films leading to something worth waiting for instead of racing there with most of the hard work undone.
I'm a bit neutral on Ben, as I really liked his performance in BvS even though I didn't like how they told the story of his Batman and I was underwhelmed by his part in JL as I found the performance unconfident and the character of Batman wildly underserved and limited. That being said, I would like to see Ben given a strong story and set of Batman only films where the focus is only on him to see what he could do as I have more faith in him when he's not asked to share the screen with a team of heroes. Nobody can argue he doesn't at least look the part, and if the script shied away from forcing so much uneasy comedy on him as JL did at times and instead doubled down on his Batman's quiet cynicism and moody presence from BvS, I think we could see some great things.
Matt Reeves could really sell the predatory Batman well judging from his filmography and style, so I'll be very sad if Ben is put in a position where he feels like he must leave the universe too early without any films to his own name under the belt. I would love to be a fly on the wall inside WB now, as JL didn't do even a fraction of what was hoped and as we all said, a critical and financial disappointment for such a hyped and important film was going to lead to massive and consequential reactions. Where exactly do you go from here? WB must shoulder the most blame, as they are at the core of all the bad decisions that have been made since 2013. Snyder was simply a pawn and the public whipping boy, the scapegoat behind which WB took the opportunity to hide from their own substantial accountability for why this universe has consistently underperformed where it counts.
Alfred deleted scene.