WI: Man of Steel is a disaster

BlueThunder25

Gone Fishin'
What if Man of Steel (2013) had been far worse than OTL and became a major box office failure? How does this affect the future of Superman and other superhero films?
 

BlueThunder25

Gone Fishin'
It depends. What kind of box office failure are we talking about in here?
Like $300-400 million or less at the box office instead of OTL $668 million.

Edit Note: But most of that money is just because the movie is about Superman. The actual movie itself is of very poor quality.
 
Last edited:
Well, if it's $300-400 million, it could be a new Superman Returns.

However, DC did notice that shared universes brought a lot of money after The Avengers, one year before the release of Man of Steel.

But there is another factor. The Dark Knight Rises could easily compensate the losses of Man of Steel. Snyder would probably be used as a scapegoat for the movie's failure. Because if DC has to pick Nolan, who gave them 3 box office successes in 7 years against Snyder, whose first movie in DC was a box office bomb with one of the most iconic characters of all time, it's highly likely that Snyder gets the boot from DC.
 
DC will double down on the wrong things, as they have so far in reaction to the critical devastation of their films. They want everyone to be grim-dark Batman. But not everyone is grim-dark Batman, and it sure as hell is not Superman. It's like they're embarrassed that they're doing comic book superheroes, and make them dark, gritty, and literally and metaphorically desaturate all the color from them. It also hearkens back to the problem of the Dark Age of comics in the 90s, where they see something that is mature storytelling, but are so tone deaf that their only take away is to go dark, overly serious, grim and gritty because they think that makes for high quality story telling.
 
DC will double down on the wrong things, as they have so far in reaction to the critical devastation of their films. They want everyone to be grim-dark Batman. But not everyone is grim-dark Batman, and it sure as hell is not Superman. It's like they're embarrassed that they're doing comic book superheroes, and make them dark, gritty, and literally and metaphorically desaturate all the color from them. It also hearkens back to the problem of the Dark Age of comics in the 90s, where they see something that is mature, but are so tone deaf that their only take away is to go grim and gritty.

They're obviously embarrassed to be doing comic book superheroes, and are only doing so because they believe there's a built-in market that will buy it anyways because it's a familiar brand name. Unfortunately, they're close enough to being right that they won't be forced to change course.
 
They're obviously embarrassed to be doing comic book superheroes, and are only doing so because they believe there's a built-in market that will buy it anyways because it's a familiar brand name. Unfortunately, they're close enough to being right that they won't be forced to change course.

That is a problem. People criticize fan boys as the people that complain about films and franchises. No, fan boys are the people that go see bad movies because it has a logo and brand name they like, and will argue to the death that it was the best despite all legitimate criticism.
 
That is a problem. People criticize fan boys as the people that complain about films and franchises. No, fan boys are the people that go see bad movies because it has a logo and brand name they like, and will argue to the death that it was the best despite all legitimate criticism.

The sad part is that I've seen this shit before, and quite recently, too. I'm not actually the biggest comic book fan, but you saw this same thing in the Star Wars EU before Disney took over. It becomes a depressing vicious cycle when failure causes writers to become more "conservative", and their "conservative" writing becomes grimdarker and crappier, leading to lower sales, and so on.
 
Top