The Four Color Media Monitor

Fandom Wire has an article about what filmmaker Zack Snyder said about fellow filmmaker Christopher Nolan in podcasts in past years. The article also tells quite a bit about what went wrong in the span of a decade, beginning with Man of Steel:

...at the same time, the film directed by Zack Snyder with Christopher Nolan acting as the producer also somewhat led to the downfall of the DCEU, considering how Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was the movie that marked the universe’s end.

As per a Snyder interview that recently resurfaced and went viral from 2013, Nolan just may have contributed the the death of the DC Extended Universe by vetoing against the director’s wild ideas for the superhero.

Nonetheless, the ultimate blame for it all still rests on the shoulders of Warner Bros. for reasons more than one.

Well good to see they recognize the studio's got considerable blame to shoulder. The worst part has to be that there's only so many more executives running a movie studio than a comics publisher, that as a result, you can't pin the blame on just one or two people, since you can't be entirely sure who's foremost guilty.

Although Christopher Nolan resurrected Batman back in the flesh with the thoroughly successful The Dark Knight trilogy after the disaster that was Batman & Robin, he might have missed out on some elements while acting as the producer for 2013’s Man of Steel.

This was derived from a recently resurfaced 2013 interview of Zack Snyder with Empire, where the director admitted that Nolan was never truly too invested in the source material in the comics as he and screenwriter David S. Goyer. He said:

“As a fan of the character [Superman], I don’t think [Christopher Nolan] is a big comic book dork. So I think that you know, Chris was like, ‘Nah, it doesn’t make sense.’ Even though we’d be like, ‘Noo! That’s in the mythology! It’s awesome! You gotta do it!’ He’d be like, ‘Ehh, really?'”

As it turned out, the Oppenheimer director wanted to have a more grounded and mature tone in the film just like he did with his Batman trilogy. As Snyder continued to say:

“I mean, I think his role was just challenging some of the, like, accepted, you know, gimmes that Superman has, which I think is good. He was a great spoiler for that kind of, you know, automatic acceptance stuff that we all were just like, ‘What do you mean? ‘Course he’s gonna have red underwear’ or whatever it is.”

Because of that, a lot of material from the comics failed to enter into the movie. But the parts like Superman’s icy breath and the not showing of the Kryptonite were not included in it by none other than Snyder himself.

In fairness, it's not easy to cram so much material into a 2-hour-plus movie, but all the same, Snyder's whole approach is overrated regardless, and there were signs of wokeism in what he worked upon. More recently, his newest non-comics venture broadcast on Netflix, Rebel Moon, was panned by critics. And if that's the result so far, then the 2nd part coming in April can't be expected to be much of an improvement. So it's not like Snyder's bound to improve as a filmmaker even after he's moved on from comics adapting.

The article also contains a confusing statement about Warner's meddlings:

Just because the higher-ups at DC got confused at the mixed reactions that came with the next darker-themed movies, like BvS, for instance, they decided to switch to a lighter tone for the films that came after, like Justice League.

Gee, how odd they should say this. The Justice League movie was anything but lighter in tone. And to think, that over a decade ago, Cyborg was retconned away from the Titans back in the comics proper just so he could be added as a token POC member to the League, and apparently so the movie screenwriters would have something to build upon, as though they couldn't take creative liberties themselves. What a joke. But all this was still nothing compared to the whole scandal that erupted when it turned out at least 2 actors they'd hired, Ezra Miller and Amber Heard, had both committed offensive behavior behind the scenes. Even Marvel's recently had similar problems. At the end of this item:

All in all, while Christopher Nolan just may have contributed to some extent to the end of the DCEU by promoting a more grounded approach when the DC executives couldn’t follow it, it was ultimately the fault of Warner Bros. and the higher-ups that the recently ended universe suffered so badly.

I'm decidedly taking issue with the part about "grounded". All that's done is perpetuate the failure to appreciate surrealism, provided it's built with merit. Why, it could even explain why it's hard to find a tasteful sense of humor in some of these modern movies. That aside, the point is well made that Warner Brothers is guilty on their part of leading to the failure of their series of adaptations, clearly out of a "bigger is better" obsession, all the while not knowing how to accomplish the goal plausibly. But, no chance they'll voluntarily resign out of accountability. There's only so many Hollywooders who've never recognized the importance of responsibility.

Labels: dc comics, history, msm propaganda