Zack Snyder's Justice League - what's your wish list?

[Turtle882]

Nice. This tells me a lot about you and your sincerity and seriousness to have a real conversation based on some facts here.

It's the internet, what more should I expect than a teenage mentality with no idea.

Jal is being upfront and honest with you guys and himself with his answer. This isn't a glass half-full/glass half-empty situation. There is no glass. You guys are just pouring water all over the table.

 

[jye4ever]

I disagree jye. I don’t think it was seen as a failure. It’s the first movie of a franchise and like it or not the Snyder movies left a sour taste in fans mouths so people were a bit hesitant I guess. I don’t think it was meant to cross a billion it was just meant to jump start the franchise

Those hedge fund types are pricks lol

 

[Alatar]

Imho… It’s okay that neither BvS or The Batman made $1B.

Did everyone at WB want them to? Of course!

They didn’t but still made money.

 

[JediJones]

If you take out the difference in money from China between Aquaman and The Batman, Aquaman still outgrosses it with about $880m. And Joker far outgrossed The Batman without any China money at all.

It's a fair question to ask, how can a Batman movie be made to gross at the top of the heap where it would be in line with the character's overall popularity worldwide?

Aquaman would say, make it a giant action spectacle, where he fights an army of CGI villains like Clayface, Poison Ivy and Man-Bat.

Joker would say, make it a deep character study of Bruce Wayne's psychology where he struggles through life after his parents' death and doesn't fight any villains at all except maybe at the end.

The MCU plan would say, keep using him in crossover movies so, like Iron Man, his movies keep going up in gross until they're over a billion.

They took a very safe approach with Reeves' Batman movie in every way. Definitely safer than Snyder making him a villain who loses his moral code. And basically copying some very clear templates laid out by Nolan and Burton, in terms of the visuals, characters, style and story. As well as taking cues from other popular movies like Se7en, Zodiac and Chinatown, rather than pulling more far-out concepts that have only appeared in comic book form. From the gross of The Batman, we can conclude that the safe, low-risk approach worked just like a safe, low-risk financial investment works. It didn't crash and burn and lose all their money, but it didn't offer any remarkable returns either.

And, now, we have Zaslav exploring an overhaul of DC Entertainment. It sounds like this is much more about corporate restructuring than about planning out the film content though. And it's not just about films, but about synergy with TV, merchandise and gaming. The article is quite vague and erroneously states that "Under Walter Hamada, who took over DC Films from Jon Berg and Geoff Johns in 2018, the unit has achieved more consistency in terms of both the critical and commercial reception to the company’s movies." I don't know what's consistent between the box office of Joker and Birds of Prey.

One explicit thing is that Zaslav believes they're letting Superman languish, which he's definitely right about. He praises Joker as a model for how to handle 'second tier' DC characters, which seems like a deeply confused statement though. Joker is top tier, and we all know that's an extremely difficult type of film to replicate in success.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

 

[Hoody999]

If you take out the difference in money from China between Aquaman and The Batman, Aquaman still outgrosses it with about $880m. And Joker far outgrossed The Batman without any China money at all.

It's a fair question to ask, how can a Batman movie be made to gross at the top of the heap where it would be in line with the character's overall popularity worldwide?

Aquaman would say, make it a giant action spectacle, where he fights an army of CGI villains like Clayface, Poison Ivy and Man-Bat.

Joker would say, make it a deep character study of Bruce Wayne's psychology where he struggles through life after his parents' death and doesn't fight any villains at all except maybe at the end.

The MCU plan would say, keep using him in crossover movies so, like Iron Man, his movies keep going up in gross until they're over a billion.

They took a very safe approach with Reeves' Batman movie in every way. Definitely safer than Snyder making him a villain who loses his moral code. And basically copying some very clear templates laid out by Nolan and Burton, in terms of the visuals, characters, style and story. As well as taking cues from other popular movies like Se7en, Zodiac and Chinatown, rather than pulling more far-out concepts that have only appeared in comic book form. From the gross of The Batman, we can conclude that the safe, low-risk approach worked just like a safe, low-risk financial investment works. It didn't crash and burn and lose all their money, but it didn't offer any remarkable returns either.

And, now, we have Zaslav exploring an overhaul of DC Entertainment. It sounds like this is much more about corporate restructuring than about planning out the film content though. And it's not just about films, but about synergy with TV, merchandise and gaming. The article is quite vague and erroneously states that "Under Walter Hamada, who took over DC Films from Jon Berg and Geoff Johns in 2018, the unit has achieved more consistency in terms of both the critical and commercial reception to the company’s movies." I don't know what's consistent between the box office of Joker and Birds of Prey.

One explicit thing is that Zaslav believes they're letting Superman languish, which he's definitely right about. He praises Joker as a model for how to handle 'second tier' DC characters, which seems like a deeply confused statement though. Joker is top tier, and we all know that's an extremely difficult type of film to replicate in success.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

Yep totally right about Superman. Not doing more with arguably the most well known of all Superheroes is simply bad business.

As for the synergy of movies with TV, merchandise and gaming. I think he's clearly wanting to take it in the direction of the Disney connected playbook. Which is fair enough. It works more or less. Get people on board that everything is connected and they will even go and watch stuff about characters which they have never even heard of, just to keep up with the story.

But being late to the race means this may not work as well as Disney did it, but it surely makes some sense. It's a hard call as individual concepts like The Joker can also stand alone and be successful. But I guess he sees the strike rate is lower on that type of model.

I guess the good thing about inflation is that as ticket prices go up making a billion dollar movie at the boxoffice is getting more and more easier Only the profit margin probably remains the same or less with the costs to make a movie surely also rising significantly.

It's going to be an interesting few weeks and months as to what they do end up doing. But based on the details we have, and following this pretty closely I think more Superman movies for Cavill, maybe a stand alone Batfleck and eventually JL 2 +3 have a real chance. Among all the other stuff they will do outside of the Trinity of course.

 

[JediJones]

I think it's a little concerning. It sounds like Joker is what gave him the biggest hard-on. It was a very low-budget movie that made a billion dollars. Hearing about Zaslav's cost-consciousness, that must be his dream movie. But everyone in the biz and the fandom sees that as a bizarre outlier that's almost impossible to reproduce.

So this doesn't sound like grand plans for an epic universe, but just to continue with one-off movies, that are as low-budget and low-risk as possible. If they fail, they don't threaten an entire universe of movies or lose much money. His plans don't sound ambitious at all. He could have said, we want to be the next MCU. Instead he's talking about a weird, low-budget, one-off movie as his model. By not talking about a creative lead for DC, but a business lead, he's signaling that he's not looking to do a shared universe.

If this is his thinking, it sounds like he'll want to revive Superman as a standalone film, disconnected from everything else. Which sounds like a reboot rather than a Man of Steel 2. There's just nothing in the article that suggests he sees the value in the synergy of characters crossing over. And nothing that suggests he sees epic, big-budget movies as the ideal model for DC.

What he's saying are the statements of a businessman who has little understanding of the DC canon, and no innate sense of what parts of it are more popular than others, the same thing that's been plaguing DC movies for decades.

 

[jal76]

I think it's a little concerning. It sounds like Joker is what gave him the biggest hard-on. It was a very low-budget movie that made a billion dollars. Hearing about Zaslav's cost-consciousness, that must be his dream movie. But everyone in the biz and the fandom sees that as a bizarre outlier that's almost impossible to reproduce.

So this doesn't sound like grand plans for an epic universe, but just to continue with one-off movies, that are as low-budget and low-risk as possible. If they fail, they don't threaten an entire universe of movies or lose much money. His plans don't sound ambitious at all. He could have said, we want to be the next MCU. Instead he's talking about a weird, low-budget, one-off movie as his model. By not talking about a creative lead for DC, but a business lead, he's signaling that he's not looking to do a shared universe.

If this is his thinking, it sounds like he'll want to revive Superman as a standalone film, disconnected from everything else. Which sounds like a reboot rather than a Man of Steel 2. There's just nothing in the article that suggests he sees the value in the synergy of characters crossing over. And nothing that suggests he sees epic, big-budget movies as the ideal model for DC.

What he's saying are the statements of a businessman who has little understanding of the DC canon, and no innate sense of what parts of it are more popular than others, the same thing that's been plaguing DC movies for decades.

I think this article should be a cold, hard, reality check for the “Zaslav is here to save us all and restore the Snyderverse!” crowd.

 

[hbhf]

I certainly don't think the article is a deathknell for the Restore movement, but it's a reiteration of all the stuff that made me highly skeptical in the first place. All the stuff profiling him prior to the merger noted he has a reputation for penny pinching and being absolutely ruthless about slashing budgets. That, to me, did not sound like the guy who'd say "Here ya go Zack. Take another 250 million a pop for your two Justice League sequels, oh, and however much else you need for any spin-offs you want!"

So him praising a lower budget movie like Joker is exactly what I'd expect.

 

[Turtle882]

Some new info. ZSJL had 2.2 million viewers in the first week. For context, Black Widow had about 2 million views over its first 10 days on D+ and had a pay wall and a theatrical release. The season premiere of Euphoria had 2.6 million viewers on premiere night . I love ZSJL and his take on the DCEU, but it's easy to see why WB isn't going all in on the restore movement.

 

[hbhf]

 

[Alatar]

Some new info. ZSJL had 2.2 million viewers in the first week. For context, Black Widow had about 2 million views over its first 10 days on D+ and had a pay wall and a theatrical release. The season premiere of Euphoria had 2.6 million viewers on premiere night . I love ZSJL and his take on the DCEU, but it's easy to see why WB isn't going all in on the restore movement.

Look, I'm aware how this might sound... and if people eyeroll at it or whatever, fair enough... But given how truly hostile WB has been towards Snyder, his films, and the Snyderverse fandom ever since the critical reception to BvS, basically... I'm still waiting for some kind of an official statement from WBD, i.e., where it's crystal clear that it's from the new leadership. I.e., that it's the internal numbers, not from a third party. I simply do not trust WB in any way shape or form given the antagonism they've shown.

Please note that if these numbers are for Samba, that's a third party company! Also, be aware that Samba has various parameters for how they measure.

If the numbers were not particularly impressive, I'm genuinely curious: why did WB refuse to release them shortly after ZSJL first aired? A midrange result would have bolstered their case. One would think they'd have been eager to release them.

Also, Samba reported for a number of countries overseas that ZSJL broke records. Ah, but it was only overseas, though, eh? Hmm. Okay...

I just want an honest and full accounting from the new regime.

And, hey, if ZSJL's views weren't tremendously impressive, it should not be overlooked that it was a four hour (!) director's cut of a movie that was utterly terrible when it released in the theaters back in 2016. Just to put that into context. On the other hand I do also acknowledge that interest was higher than usual for such an event, given the Snyder cut's former mythical unicorn status for presumably many casual viewers and even hardcore CBM fans.

 

[Turtle882]

I mean, these are the same numbers Samba released last year regarding ZSJL, so... those numbers haven't changed. Records were broken. And have been broken again since. Compared to The Batman, ZSJL performed worse. Compared to a TV show premiere, ZSJL performed worse. Yes, based on Samba's estimates. Third party numbers are the best we can get. WB did release some info about the disappointing numbers last year. Specifically, ATT reported in April of 2021 the state of new subscriptions. During 1st quarter 2021, even with ZSJL and GvK, HBO Max's new subscriber needle didn't move. And new subscribers was the whole reason they did it. Many, many people correctly interpreted that as a disappointment for the Snyder Cut. Why didn't WBcome out and say ZSJL was a disappointment? Because they are not selling it to you. They are selling you to their investors.

I think I may be missing something. You will only trust the numbers if they come directly from WB because you don't trust WB, but if a third party gathers data and reports you won't trust that because it's not from WB? I would think that we should be more inclined to trust the independent third party over the bad-acting WB.
Anyway, my point isn't that WB SHOULD abandon Snyder's vision. Again, I love MoS, MvS, and ZSJL. To me all are great movies and probably my favorite superhero trilogy set. I'm just saying in light of the numbers that we have access to, I can understand why WB isn't reinvesting in Snyder's vision. Especially when they have other IPs that are getting better returns on the investment.

 

[Alatar]

@Turtle882 If the numbers are accurate you have a perfectly valid point. Personally, I just want assurance about the reliability of those numbers. That's all I'm saying. You're more trusting than I am. WBD hasn't even appointed their new DC Entertainment czar yet. I'm waiting for that to see what happens. If they don't announce some sort of plan to allow Snyder to finish his arc, then I'll take that as a pretty clear sign that they're abandoning it entirely.

Although that said, I think there's reason for optimism that Henry Cavill will be getting his solo films regardless of whatever happens with completion of Snyder's saga.

 

[jal76]

I think the more valid defense of ZSJL performance on HBO MAX compared to Black Widow, Euphoria, and other things would be recognizing that HBO MAX was available in far fewer markets back when ZSJL premiered than Disney Plus was and certainly fewer markets than HBO MAX is today, if we want to compare it to current releases on that platform that have performed better.
It’s truly an unfair comparison.
It’s like comparing the overall sales of cheeseburgers at your favorite local family owned restaurant to the overall sales of cheeseburgers at McDonalds.
With that said, however, it is still clear that ZSJL was not the global phenomenon that many of us who love it wish it had been.
WB wants to make money more than it wants to win a non-existent debate with Zack Snyder…look at how quickly they announced a sequel to The Batman…if ZSJL had met their measure of “success” the sequel would have been announced at LAST YEAR’S DC Fandome.
The film has a dedicated, but relatively small, group of extremely vocal fans…but there is a huge difference between a “Cult” hit and a hit.
And it’s okay that it wasn’t a success.
There are tons of amazing things that are just too unique and interesting to be gobbled up by the masses…many of those properties are among my favorite things and maybe that’s why I like ZSJL as much as I do…but it’s probably best to face facts that it was not a big hit with the general public and there is no vast conspiracy being perpetrated by WB to tank their own stock price, and deceive their own shareholders into thinking that one of their biggest successes was actually a big failure because they…don’t like Zack Snyder…even typing it sounds silly.

 

[hbhf]

James Wan flat out said there was no way Aquaman 2 was going to meet its Christmas 2022 release date, which is most likely correct since they just finished shooting relatively recently. As the other poster upthread said, VFX work (especially the kind that actually looks good) is not quick under even the best circumstances, and the COVID situation has caused a log jam for the entire industry. And, as I said previously, the claim that they're secretly being delayed so that they can be reshot to accommodate the Snyderverse ignores that other WB projects that have nothing to do with the DCEU or DC at all also got hit with delays in the same wave of announcements. I very much doubt Wonka and Super Pets are delayed because ZSJL2 has been greenlit.

It's like I said, I wouldn't entirely rule out the Snyderverse stuff being the cause for the delay, but as of right now, there's no real reason I see to assume the VFX excuse is a lie other than not wanting it to be true. That is a consistent thing I've been seeing with this entire discussion for months, and I don't mean to attack anyone here. But there's a habit of taking a conspiratorial stance on issues that have a clear or reasonable answer because some fans really want everything to be a secret signal that the movies they want made have already been greenlit.

. It’s understood Ant-Man is further along in the production process, and so the decision was made to swap launch dates with The Marvels.

Yeah, like I said before, the entire VFX pipeline in Hollywood is strained right now, so those delays weren't anything uncommon.

 

[Alatar]

It may not necessarily be in order to accommodate ZSJL 2 and 3 into the lineup, but I do think that WBD is course correcting in some way by pushing the release dates back. Some films may need fairly extensive reshoots such as The Flash. I think with the Flash WB's decision to get rid of Henry Cavill is not what David Zaslav wants. Maybe a fair bit of reshoots for Aquaman 2, because if Amber Heard now only has 10 minutes of screen time left in the movie they can reshoot that with another actress if they decide to replace her. And some films may need no reshoots such as Shazam 2, or very minor additions in Black Adam such as maybe tacking on a post credits Cavill Superman cameo. Reportedly Zaslav wants DC products to resemble the MCU's in terms of a coherent brand and I think what WB was doing was apparently not moving in that direction. But time will tell! We should get a much clearer picture on May 18th.

 

[Hoody999]

I think the more valid defense of ZSJL performance on HBO MAX compared to Black Widow, Euphoria, and other things would be recognizing that HBO MAX was available in far fewer markets back when ZSJL premiered than Disney Plus was and certainly fewer markets than HBO MAX is today, if we want to compare it to current releases on that platform that have performed better.
It’s truly an unfair comparison.
It’s like comparing the overall sales of cheeseburgers at your favorite local family owned restaurant to the overall sales of cheeseburgers at McDonalds.
With that said, however, it is still clear that ZSJL was not the global phenomenon that many of us who love it wish it had been.
WB wants to make money more than it wants to win a non-existent debate with Zack Snyder…look at how quickly they announced a sequel to The Batman…if ZSJL had met their measure of “success” the sequel would have been announced at LAST YEAR’S DC Fandome.
The film has a dedicated, but relatively small, group of extremely vocal fans…but there is a huge difference between a “Cult” hit and a hit.
And it’s okay that it wasn’t a success.
There are tons of amazing things that are just too unique and interesting to be gobbled up by the masses…many of those properties are among my favorite things and maybe that’s why I like ZSJL as much as I do…but it’s probably best to face facts that it was not a big hit with the general public and there is no vast conspiracy being perpetrated by WB to tank their own stock price, and deceive their own shareholders into thinking that one of their biggest successes was actually a big failure because they…don’t like Zack Snyder…even typing it sounds silly.

Nope, it's personal for Emmerich. If WB had wanted to make money, they would have promoted it and embraced it to make even more money than it did with just Zack and the fans promoting it alone. WB clearly wanted it to fail and not make money. ZSJL making money and therefore making it a success would have proven their incompetence with Josstice League. Why else would they not release the US HBOMax numbers as Alatar pointed out.

WB even re-released the 4K Josstice Legaue Trailer when ZSJL was out to confuse the public. Youtube has removed the dislike count, but it was over 100k. How many trailers have you seen with that many dislikes ?

But the over 66,000 comments remain. I guess that is just the vocal "minority".

Have a read of the comments for yourself........yeah I guess they would be all bots though.........



Then there is this of the Warner Bros CEO, which I personally find hilarious through it's sheer irony.

 

[Alatar]

Nope, it's personal for Emmerich. If WB had wanted to make money, they would have promoted it and embraced it to make even more money than it did with just Zack and the fans promoting it alone. WB clearly wanted it to fail and not make money. ZSJL making money and therefore making it a success would have proven their incompetence with Josstice League. Why else would they not release the US HBOMax numbers as Alatar pointed out.

WB even re-released the 4K Josstice Legaue Trailer when ZSJL was out to confuse the public. Youtube has removed the dislike count, but it was over 100k. How many trailers have you seen with that many dislikes ?

But the over 66,000 comments remain. I guess that is just the vocal "minority".

Have a read of the comments for yourself........yeah I guess they would be all bots though.........



Then there is this of the Warner Bros CEO, which I personally find hilarious through it's sheer irony.

Yeah it actually IS bizarre but I wholeheartedly agree that what happened with Zack Snyder and WB was an unusual situation.

First of all, Zack gave WB what he told them he was going to do with BvS. WB knew what it was getting. But when that turned to be too jarring for critics and GA WB decided to abandon that course.

However by the time BvS opened in theaters Zack already had the sets built for JL. So they had to proceed with that movie, and apparently WB decided it was too much trouble to buy out Zack's contract and fire him. The way Zack has described what happened with Whedon being brought in he could see the handwrighting on the wall for what was being done to the film. In parallel for Ben Affleck's solo Batman film newly promoted DC Films co-president Geoff "hope and optimism" Johns attached himself as co-writer and we went from Ben's script being described by Jay Oliva as the best Batman script he'd ever read to Ben getting peevish in interviews whenever asked about that project and eventually saying "I just couldn't crack the script."

Then as we know Zack's daughter suicided and he stepped away. The studio fabricated the narrative that Zack and Joss were friends and that Zack's buddy was finishing the movie for him, and would adhere to his vision, etc. It was all outright lies by Toby Emmerich.

When AT&T bought WB and two of their execs (Kevin Reilly and Robert Greenblatt) pushed for completion and release of the Snyder cut, that put egg all over Ann Sarnoff's and Toby Emmerich's faces. Walter Hamada is technically in charge of all DC IPs but Toby Emmerich is above Hamada in the hierarchy, so I think Hamada was basically following marching orders from Toby Emmerich. Hamada has managed to stay relatively safe because both Aquaman earned $1B each under his watch, and he had brought Wan in to make Aquaman. (Note: WB also had no faith in Joker and ended up selling off 2/3 of its profits due to an investment deal for what was already an inexpensive film to make.) Ann Sarnoff was supposed to have been the one to come in and integrate HBO Max's streaming and video game development and sales, i.e., she had that sort of background, but WB remained motion picture-centric during that period. And I suspect that was because of the power that Toby Emmerich had consolidated after WB fired Kevin Tsujihara because of his scandal.

Zack Snyder did something unprecedented for a director. He mobilized his fan base using Twitter to lobby to get his director's cut released--AND to return and continue his original vision. There have been other hashtag campaigns before and fan bases pushing for various things. But to my knowledge a director had never tapped into this before to do what Zack was able to orchestrate.

So is there animosity on the part of the old WB regime toward him? You bet your ************* *** there is. Big time. It's a direct challenge to the traditional power structure and the studio-director relationship. Did Toby Emmerich, in addition to his own personal butthurt, also perhaps try to justify that the film studio industry needed to draw a line in the sand and try making an example Zack for what he had done? I strongly suspect that he did.

The big question in my mind is how does David Zaslav see all this. For all we know Zaslav might agree with Toby Emmerich that it's best to quash maverick directors from behaving as Zack Snyder has done.

On the other hand, Zack has found a new home at Netflix. And if his Rebel Moon franchise in particular is on par with or possibly actually even better in many ways than Star Wars, it makes more sense to ally with someone like that. Because in that case Zack's gambit to get the Snyder cut released paid off. And everyone in the industry can see that plain as day. Zack will clearly be the victor if Rebel Moon blows up (and AotD as well, but imo that will pale in comparison to the next big sci-fi fantasy franchise). So there's no "example" for WB to make of him. There's no real punishment there by denying him completion of his saga. Instead WBD might as well capitalize on that success and bring Zack back to complete his saga.

 

[jal76]

Nope, it's personal for Emmerich. If WB had wanted to make money, they would have promoted it and embraced it to make even more money than it did with just Zack and the fans promoting it alone. WB clearly wanted it to fail and not make money. ZSJL making money and therefore making it a success would have proven their incompetence with Josstice League. Why else would they not release the US HBOMax numbers as Alatar pointed out.

WB even re-released the 4K Josstice Legaue Trailer when ZSJL was out to confuse the public. Youtube has removed the dislike count, but it was over 100k. How many trailers have you seen with that many dislikes ?

But the over 66,000 comments remain. I guess that is just the vocal "minority".

Have a read of the comments for yourself........yeah I guess they would be all bots though.........



Then there is this of the Warner Bros CEO, which I personally find hilarious through it's sheer irony.

So…wait…they gave Zack Snyder $70 million dollars to make his cut of JL so he would fail and they would lose the $70 mil, lose subscribers for HBO Max, risk the reputation of their new streaming service, drop the price of their stock…because…they don’t like Zack Snyder…some guys in a boardroom who are legally responsible to shareholders all agreed to this? This was their board approved, quarter one, 2021 business plan? You’re kidding, right?

 

[DioramaMaker]

I'm sure this discussion has long been had, but finally warched ZSJL, and have never seen the theatrical release so I lack that bias.

The movie is entirely self indulgent, the excessive pans, slow mo, and (in my mind) the trash aspect ratio...it is unquestionably beautiful in it's excessiveness...but I get why there was studio meddling. It genuinely could probably could be 3 hours max and still coherent to the essential vision that ZS had; the problem is that this is a film that requires set up and it has to level that within it's base run time. There are TONS of concepts in this movie that deserved more time than being crushed into this film; Cyborg comes to mind in that regard. **** his entire arc in this movie should have been fleshed out on its own. The Darkseid vs Amazonians/Atlanteans and company....that's a movie. Batman reaching the point of being paranoid of Superman and learning of what's beyond Earth...that's a few films too. If they wanted to take from Marvel - that's where they needed to: Tony's move from grounded to fantastical.

Aquaman also really retconned Aquaman's persona in many ways.

I stand by the claim that Affleck, Irons, and Simmons are absolutely God-tier castings for a Batman cinematic universe; there is no doubt in my mind that had Affleck had his shot to do a solo film that all of this would have played out very differently. They're perfect; ZS had the right idea, but confounded it with the killing. I really think Affleck could have brought that back in line. I genuinely lament the fact that we never got what amounted to Rocksteady's Arkham Aslyum with that cast.

I'd 100% be okay if they'd go back and prequel the heck out of this and establish this movie as the conclusion to a series.

Tl;DR pretty good, shy of great, capped at the knee at a rush to meet an Avengers level film without the due diligence of earning it.

That being said; if this movie was what we originally got, I think I'd have gone in on the full crew while it was available. The POTENTIAL of each of these would have been worth it, even as seen in these abridged interpretations of the film. But now it's simply too late to get Flash, Aquaman, and blue Supes.