As the saying goes, the winner drinks soup and the loser eats dust.
As the saying goes, XX will eventually become the OO you once hated.
As the saying goes, thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi.
For the rapidly changing film industry, this thirty years is afraid to be reduced to one year, or even a case of sexual harassment.
What kind of mentality and expectations should we have for the DC Comics film adaptation?
In any case, there should be at least one thing, and that is different from the Marvel movies. As long as there is a difference, there is its unique value - with the current heyday of Marvel, DC has no way to confront it. The so-called attack on others' weaknesses with their own strengths, others are good at throwing paragraphs, you have to use your brain to deal with it. This is not something that can be justified.
Otherwise, it becomes Justice League.
When a DC movie has a "nother (Marvel-like) superhero movie" rating, it is already a precursor to playing it out. Because of the first, marvel's successful experience accumulated over more than a decade, DC is impossible to digest in a year's time, even Joss Whedon can not - in such a large-scale project operation, the completeness that individual creation can give can never catch up with collective creation; second, Marvel's problems that cannot be changed for more than a decade are inevitably inherited in the process of drawing a tiger, which means that the new and old criticisms we put forward on Marvel have now fallen to DC, which is not firmly established.
This is disappointing.
In the recent Thor 3, there are several important issues that have not yet been (completely) solved: the fading of social responsibility, the staging and contextualization, the character's entanglement between personal motivation and heroic identity, and how to construct a tension and persuasive confrontation between good and evil. Unfortunately, these problems that were covered up/remedied by the rich content in "Dawn of Justice" all erupted in "Justice League", and even intensified. For example, if a comic book adaptation is going to tell the story of a bunch of superheroes annihilating the invaders of the five planets of the galaxy, Marvel will at least put a layer of family drama skin on it - the purpose is nothing else, enhance the persuasiveness and motivation of the character, so that even if the villain is not captured, it will not make the entire battle with oversaturated CG over-rendered violence, appear absurd and lack of emotional connection.
What about Justice League?
Admittedly, the task of installing multiple new characters in two hours, giving battle objectives, and the most important CG effects and Easter eggs that only fans can catch is a daunting task. But again, the bigger the investment, the greater the responsibility. In today's world, when the artistic attributes of film have been capitalized, if we cannot grasp the balance between personal expression and commercial needs, it is natural that the higher you stand, the more miserable you fall.
Not to mention that the director is not known for narrative, but with style Zack Schneider.
Justice League tried to mend the misconceptions created by the three DCEU films before Wonder Woman — and for that purpose, the film was a success: the graphics were no longer overshadowed, and the soundtrack taken over by Tim Burton's old partner, Danny Eifman, was no longer depressing. However, the screenplay problems that have accompanied Zach Schneider throughout his career have never been solved— which is very important for a film director whose representative works are all adaptations, when the original content is relatively heavy. One of the final questions is how to balance the playing time of a large number of new and old characters. It's hard to do at 120 minutes, but it's not impossible (because the basic introductory tasks are already done). However, fragmented and tough editing and rhythm problems are more striking than previous Zach Schneider films.
After all, by this time, Justice League was no longer a Zach Schneider movie, but a DCEU movie. When an author loses the opportunity to personally polish the work for internal and external reasons, the result of this flawed mutual encounter is not unpredictable.
guts? Dissidents?
Why do we like Zach Schneider?
It must be clear that he is not a good director, whether it is the control of the subject matter or the control of the rhythm, he is too arbitrary. But one thing that sets him apart from the group of directors is the ability to turn good ideas into reality.
An important part of the career of "dissident" Zach Schneider is the comic book adaptation of movies, and his achievements in this regard are the most attractive part of his work - the film's requirements and priorities for depression and line level are lower than the reproduction of the texture of the comic. In addition, for the excavation of the film's issues, Zach Schneider also has its own unique features. We put aside the ambitious form of "Owl Kingdom" and the play-to-the-end "Sailor Moon" to the end, and in the superhero movies he directed, there is an important thread that comes up repeatedly - that is, the anti-heroic discussion of the place of superheroes in society. The (anti)hero image in "Watchmen" can well interact with its specific historical environment and has an important sense of life; "Body of Steel" gives Superman another screen meaning besides the divine savior, through the choice of racial interests, this image has a new understanding space; "Dawn of Justice" fully extends and deepens the views of the previous work, providing an exceptionally complex feast of ideas.
The so-called dark wind does not have to be dark and sullen, but the "Wolverine 3" style of serious issues. It is this that allows the audience to set aside Zach Schneider's shortcomings in narrative and presentation, and to accept the long and dull feature films he has created— because under the form, it can make people think, and thinking is always praiseworthy.
But when that content sadly disappeared from Justice League, what's left of this Zach Schneider movie?
A simple and straightforward plot like a Marvel movie, a facetious pro- and contraption, an anachronistic gags, and a final battle with many problems. Let's not talk about whether such content can last for two hours - the narrative problems caused by editing cannot be compensated by simply lengthening, and the good rhythm can appear full, otherwise it is a shroud (unfortunately, some people hope that the shroud will solve the problem, but are not willing to admit that it is a shroud) – you can never attack the short of others with your own strengths. After the mediocrity, Zach Schneider appeared unsatisfactory in "Justice League". And the strength of one person cannot be confronted with the entire Marvel studio - not to mention that this person is still a habitual narrative weak, personal color is strong. Swimmers going to run triathlons? Why not let him be his swimmer?
The reason is simple. market.
Courage is precious, and the box office price is higher. Moviegoers and giant babies in the market, who have been spoiled by Marvel, need brainless CG monsters, not huge tomes. The sword-wielding Zach Schneider is a good comic book adaptation director, but he is not the most suitable person to create a comic book universe. His weakness in diverse characters and story types is epitomized in Justice League. In this sense, warner behind the coin has obviously discovered this problem, trying to control the film to 120 minutes, and the use of diversified directors to develop future films, the logic behind it is the same: DCEU needs diversified blood to play those who have more screen potential, in order to have the volume of confrontation with Marvel MCUs. DCEU can't, and won't be, a puppet show that belongs to Zach Schneider alone, and a playground for unbridled fun. The marginalization and behind-the-scenesization of Zach Schneider in the future is a natural thing.
Such a result, for Warner, for DC, for The brother-in-law Jones" Gough Johns, who is in opposition to Kevin Feige, is inevitable and a helpless choice.
Half a dead whale?
A year ago, "Dawn of Justice", whether visually or ideologically, the sheer volume was eye-catching. Today, streamlined video content carries gimmicks from positives to Easter eggs. Becoming like this, can only mourn its misfortune and anger it.
Despite Zach Schneider's visual aesthetic foundation, the creative conservatism of justice league has left it with its vitality and freshness. The film's change in tone and emotional tone also means that more clichéd elements have an opportunity to take advantage of it — such as the isolation of the second half, offering a full sense of emptiness, so that the sense of crisis of the plot cannot be properly conveyed — which is rare in previous DCEU films. Of course, for comic book adaptations, the popular "Justice League" can't run out of the basic framework set by Marvel and the X-Men, and even in some ways. But for dceu and Zach Schneider himself, it meant a loss of certain meaning on an abstract level.
The story that follows from Dawn of Justice should have had great potential, but after Task Force X's wasted resources, Justice League forgot to dig deeper into this foundation, almost nibbling on the old book — no matter how thick the old book is, it can't withstand the output without input again and again. What the form of divinity in the human world means to society, and what kind of embodiment will be reflected in the power vacuum, this is a good opportunity to continue to deepen, and there are "pressure screws" Alex Ross's "Justice" and "Kingdom of Heaven" comics as the foundation, however, the 78th version of Superman's soul possession, motherhood explosion Wonder Woman how to take care of several half-sized children, how the powerless Batman quickly eats from the embodiment of fear, is obviously more important than the depth of thought. At the same time, the superman image has always been covered with a black veil in the DCEU, which makes the death of Superman in "Dawn of Justice" seem too grand, not to mention that there will be a difficult task of blackening in the future, perhaps until "Steel Body 2" can really dispel the haze.
That being said, if we put Justice League and the entire Marvel MCU movie under one coordinate system (which would have been a failure), it would still be an adventure movie with amazing visual effects that can achieve a lighthearted and thematically serious purpose without relying on unbridled gags, dog blood, and childish misconduct.
But is this what we really want from a DCEU comic book adaptation? Is this the ideal form for a comic book adaptation?
Finding the wrong answer is not terrible, losing the motivation to find the answer is terrible.
For "Justice League", the source of all its problems appears in the contradiction between cost pressure and market demand, the contradiction between individual creation and collective creation, and the contradiction between IP appeal and individual expression. As long as there is a problem that is not handled well, the balance is lost. The huge Marvel still can't escape these problems, and Warner and DC, who rushed to the horse, and Zach Schneider, who already had many shortcomings, were certainly not immune.
What's most frustrating about Justice League is not that it's less entertaining and watchable than Marvel movies, or the fragmentation of the narrative caused by the chaos of production, but the inability to go its own way.
Being down-to-earth is far more important than talking and finding someone to carry the pot. In any case, Justice League and the future DCEU should continue to work in the direction of interesting but not shallow, serious but not pretentious. What's more important is to wipe the glasses and eyes while learning the advanced experience next door.
After all, we have all come to this point, will it be worse?
If you don't reflect, of course you will.