You think that's the reason audiences didn't like BvS? Because Snyder didn't have a press release explaining that these aren't the same as the characters in the comic books?
Audiences have been well aware of that fact since 1989 when they saw that Batman was wearing black rubber and not tights, his parents were killed by the Joker, and that he was willing to kill. NOT the same as the comics.
And every other comic book movie since then has had that understanding baked in before anyone even bought tickets.
BvS was a failure cause it simply wasn't very good. The same way Rebel Moon is a failure cause it's practically unwatchable. The excuses you're making for Snyder's failures are getting utterly ridiculous.
What next....the movie flopped cause his dog ate his homework?
Those that disliked BvS did so mainly because they expected a straight-ahead classical genre take—which was hugely popular when done in a grounded way a la Nolan’s Batman. But they didn’t get that at all.
What Snyder did by deconstructing Superman and Batman wasn’t “bad” objectively. Just because people don’t like something doesn’t make it bad, lol.
As for what constitutes ”objectively” good or bad, I’ll repost something I posted in the last couple of days on reddit:
“Objectively good” is a bit tricky for some things in life, cinema being one of them. I’m not saying it doesn’t theoretically exist, just that it’s a problematic thing due to how human brains have evolved. People tend to form personal biases that arise from the way ideas make them feel emotionally, combined with a sense of security that comes from affiliation with others who share the belief. And most of the operations of the brain fall outside of conscious awareness.
I can find people who truly believe heart and soul that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden are the greatest American presidents of their lifetime, and they can in fact present factual information to support their belief. Those who share the same beliefs are utterly convinced of those arguments. It then becomes apparent that the belief is driven by how it makes one feel versus existing on some sort of abstract ideal plane. Rather, they’re unconsciously asking the belief “what’s in this for me?”
It’s disconcerting because with some things, like a math problem, there is a single correct answer. And in the hard sciences we can prove or disprove things, etc.
I don’t want to belabor or over-intellectualize that point, but it is important… when trying to get at “objective truth”…
Maybe “successful” gets at it better than “good”? But a film is still ultimately something to be subjectively experienced by each individual human psyche and personality. Maybe we can say a film is successful—or not—in how terms of how it makes people feel, such that a consensus forms about it.
Anyway, you see him as making mistakes with the genre. But I think as he’s very aware of those conventions (tropes). And he is defying and dismantling them. He recently said in an interview that an example of this is having Superman kill Zod in order to protect humanity and Batman having towards the end of his crime fighting career become indifferent to killing criminals in self-defense in BvS. In Snyder’s mind he wanted to test what can remain heroic about the figure when they’re placed in such a situation.
I’m still fascinated by the possibility of what the PG13 cuts of Rebel Moon might represent in Snyder’s own mind. And that he is maybe doing something subversive with the PG13 cuts even though he describes them as sort of straightforward and “earnest.” I wonder if he’s showing from his perspective what happens to an extremely ambitious, quirky, offbeat, and “wild” artistic idea, i.e., that of taking “Star Wars” and applying a sci-fi/fantasy/pulp/B movie aesthetic to it which is the director’s cut—and then having to rather drastically limit, constrain, and tone that down. Like I’ve said it then becomes more of a creature on display in a zoo.
Now will he deliver the goods with the “creature in the wild” form of the idea in the director’s cuts, we’ll have to wait and see in August when they release.
And he may not! The director’s cuts of Rebel Moon might end up being like Sucker Punch. I think Sucker Punch is an example of where Snyder goes overboard with throwing too many ingredients into the stewpot. I admire what he’s trying to do at the core with Sucker Punch, which he has said he actually intended as satire. But anyway, in that film he’s taken a basic idea to such an extreme that there’s just too much to process. For me it’s not really enjoyable. It’s like surviving a bombardment, lol.
But I still give Snyder tremendous credit, and my continuing support as a viewer, for doing something that ambitious. That’s more interesting to me personally than the classical genre form. I’m not saying it’s “objectively better” than classical genre content. I’m saying that it satisfies me more emotionally and psychologically.
. That’s the only reason.
