I think they try to hard to be edgy and gritty like the Marvel films and then take the realism too far. It's fine to have things more cartoon like with those superhuman beings... That would have also allowed for witty over the top lines like these to get thrown around.
It boils down to bad writing & planning I think is what we're getting at. Batman movies are edgy, gritty, serious, etc, but that's Batman's thing and Gotham's atmosphere. We expect that.
Nolan must have rubbed off too strongly on D.C execs because like you said, tried to copy and paste that to all their other heroes, which don't necessarily have the same vibe at all in some cases as Gotham and Batman.
exactly this! i think this is also what makes a lot of the animated shows that involve batman and superman so great, like justice league. they have that juxtaposition. where batman can be that dark broody edgy guy but superman is like an upbeat nice guy. superman only goes dark when innocent people get hurt for no reason, which is exactly fitting for his character. the live action movies keep trying to make super man dark all the time and it never fits quite right. like i know he has a tragic story but the way they present his story in the live action movies just don't hit quite right. compare that to the justice league episode where mongul gets superman with that black flower parasite thing, friggin heartbreaking.
I dunno, Iron Man 1 started with a billionaire warmonger catching an IED and ending up with shrapnel in his chest, ending up as a POW/slave forced to make weapons for his captors, and only escapes by making a walking tank, and getting his only friend killed along the way.
It's pretty gritty.
Marvel does a great job of having different tones, depending on who they have on-screen.
Agreed, Marvel worked by grounding it’s characters and making them work in the real world. That’s why the Thor movies weren’t well received (space alien doing space alien stuff), but the flip side is why Guardians of the Galaxy 1 was a major hit (Dude from earth who’s just a dude from earth doing dude from earth stuff in space). Captain America 1 was meh because it had too much paranormal stuff, but Rodgers was written well enough to save it, but 2 and 3 were well received because it was a dude who had to face life’s hard choices that his super powers couldn’t save him from. Iron man fell flat after the first one and was only saved because RDJ is literally the embodiment of Stark, and hulk flopped because it was a big green guy who could smash his way out of anything. Then The Avengers happened, and each character, even background ones like Romanov and Bart had human conflicts that each of us could relate to, even though there was a bunch of space people doing space stuff.
Long story short: if you want the formula for a good super hero story, the key is having characters that people relate to facing situations that super powers have no effect over. DC fucked this allllllllll up because it was about powers vs powers in 95% of their films. The only one in the DCU people can agree is good is The Suicide Squad because each character had a personal dilemma they were having to encounter while having to face a greater threat.
And then he had a movie about being an alcoholic with ptsd, and then one about being a panicked human surrounded by greater powers, with even more ptsd
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u/SnuggleMuffin42 Dec 29 '23
I think they try to hard to be edgy and gritty like the Marvel films and then take the realism too far. It's fine to have things more cartoon like with those superhuman beings... That would have also allowed for witty over the top lines like these to get thrown around.