The Flash | June 16 2023 | Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton | We’re stoping the count at a Nice 69% RT (it’s 72% For Real) | Please Remember that Your Enjoyment Of The Film is Not Based On Others Opinions And To Be Nice To Each Other

[John Marston]

6 hours ago, WittyUsername said:

Before anyone jumps on me for sharing this tweet, I’m not trying to suggest this means the movie is bad. I just thought it was noteworthy.

 

If they think throwing Keaton in here is going to cause this movie to become a NWH type event they are sorely mistaken 

[excel1]

Why are we talking about NWH?

 

Solo FLASH movie would normally do like $75m/$200m if it were good. If Keaton somehow gets this to $120m/375m, that is a colossal win. 

[Chicken Little Syndrome]

6 hours ago, excel1 said:

Why are we talking about NWH?

 

Solo FLASH movie would normally do like $75m/$200m if it were good. If Keaton somehow gets this to $120m/375m, that is a colossal win. 

Execution is extremely important especially when the script for your film is simplistic nonsense that cancels itself out by the end, rendering the entire proceeding plot null and void. Audiences respond to excellent scripts and acting. They respond to beautiful looking imagery and well-crafted visual effects that make them believe the impossible is real. The suspension of disbelief relies on the audience forgetting that they are watching a movie. When you cram in a bunch of obvious remember-berry cameos into your bad CGI fest, you end up pulling the audience out of the fiction.

 

No Way Home and Endgame worked so well because of the fact that the audience was deeply invested in the characters and plots. The same cannot be said for the Flash film. This film didn't build a franchise that led to this moment. Warner's problem has always been that they are so desperate to emulate Marvel's success, they skip important establishing steps and rush to the Infinity War-like finales without earning it. They rushed their Batman V Superman, they rushed Justice League, and now they are pushing a Flash film that should be the third in a series of films, not the first.

[21C]

This film's biggest problem is the fact that the only  appeal it has is Michael Keaton's Batman.
That's it, that's literally all this film has going for it.
NWH went as big as it did because that film would've been massive Andrew and Tobey or not. It'd have made a billion without them, and all their appearance did is propel it to make another billion.

This film... nobody cares about Ezra's Flash, nobody cares about the DCEU. At best it would've done 400-500 million without Keaton, even getting the exact same reviews. So the question is, with Keaton, how much higher can it realistically get?
And I also have to put a little into question how much extra traction Keaton can get, because judging by general socia media impact, his return has not quite made the same splash as the debut of Robert's Batman last year, for example. Hell, they released the first Flash teaser with a Keaton tease the same day that The Batman's second trailer released and The Batman's obliterated that Flash teaser. 
The fact of the matter is, the people that are nostalgic for Keaton have already in large part already moved onto other iterations of Batman since decades ago, and there is also quite a gigantic chunk of modern CBM audiences that never watched his films to begin with, especially internationally. 
I also think that a factor that may contribute here is the fact that audiences specifically clamored to see Maguire's and Garfield's Spider-Men in scenarios like the ones shown in NWH, even more sci-fi and whacky and connecting to larger superheroes. And I really don't think that there's that many people that clamored to see Keaton's Batman back in the context of a Justice League level movie in scenarios that are completely different from the ones in his own films. Even with the nostalgia factor Keaton has, there is a disconnect here that might serve as a turn-off even for the people this film is desperately trying to get (the GA Gen X-ers that saw Burton's Batman 30 years ago). If this was a proper legacy sequel with Burton's Gotham and Michelle's Catwoman, etc then maaaybe the nostalgia bait would be strong enough to make a billion, but here you're basically just seeing 70 year old Keaton playing what's essentially Arkham videogame Batman with an 89 skin and on a Justice League movie that's tonally and visually the opposite of his films. 


The Batman ended up making 770 million when all was said and done, which was a very decent amount tho I hoped for better. And I'm having a reaaally hard time thinking that The Flash will do better than The Batman in that regard.

600-745 million is my prediction for this. My guess is that it'll most likely land somewhere in-between, Justice League numbers. 

Edited April 28, 2023 by 21C

[The Wild Eric]

Moderation

 

Can we please stop with the accusations that people think this will do NWH numbers? Because literally nobody has been saying that. This handwringing of "nobody's nostalgic for Michael Keaton" and "reviews aren't saying this is the greatest superhero movie ever" is frankly bordering on concern trolling and it's not funny anymore. Please stop with this, or warning points will be thrown out.

[Hatebox]

Batman ‘89 is of my favourite movies of all time. I have an almost primal nostalgia for it. So I should be a really easy target for this marketing campaign. But it’s not worked on me, because every time I see images of Keaton it’s not ‘89 Batman that comes to mind… it’s Birdman. There’s no going back after that movie. It was the final word on his relationship to the character. 

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Hatebox

[Blaze Heatnix]

Based on reviews, it seems to be a great and fun movie. That's all I want. I want a solid, fun and engaging DC movie.

 

Sure, the main actor has serious legal problems and issues he should be held accountable BUT a movie should be judged as a movie. 

 

That being said, Keaton as Batman is gonna bring lots of people back. Its box office is unpredictable, but I guess WB cares enough about reactions, which is why they're being allowed 2 months before the movie's official release. 

 

All in all, I'm not really a fanboy of the DC universe, but I'm a regular who usually watches these kind of movies. I really hope the movie is good enough to change things in WB / DC. Gunn seems to be a good choice and I hope we get more options besides Marvel. That's not to start a Marvel vs DC war, but competition is good and we can all have different things from different universes.

 

 

[dudalb]

9 hours ago, Hatebox said:

Batman ‘89 is of my favourite movies of all time. I have an almost primal nostalgia for it. So I should be a really easy target for this marketing campaign. But it’s not worked on me, because every time I see images of Keaton it’s not ‘89 Batman that comes to mind… it’s Birdman. There’s no going back after that movie. It was the final word on his relationship to the character. 

 

I really like Keaton as Batman, but a lot of people remember  Jack Nicholson as the Joker a lot better.

"Love That Joker!".

 

[dudalb]

9 hours ago, Blaze Heatnix said:

Based on reviews, it seems to be a great and fun movie. That's all I want. I want a solid, fun and engaging DC movie.

 

Sure, the main actor has serious legal problems and issues he should be held accountable BUT a movie should be judged as a movie. 

 

That being said, Keaton as Batman is gonna bring lots of people back. Its box office is unpredictable, but I guess WB cares enough about reactions, which is why they're being allowed 2 months before the movie's official release. 

 

All in all, I'm not really a fanboy of the DC universe, but I'm a regular who usually watches these kind of movies. I really hope the movie is good enough to change things in WB / DC. Gunn seems to be a good choice and I hope we get more options besides Marvel. That's not to start a Marvel vs DC war, but competition is good and we can all have different things from different universes.

 

 

I think WB Had done, so far, a very good job of selling the film given they had a real problem with the main star being in legal trouble.

Of course, they were lucky in they were able to switch the focus to  Keaton as Batman.

IT will be interesting to see what Gunn does with DC. The problem he might be a bit too late; very clear that the non nerd audiences are losing theri taste for CBMs and that theater attendeance has taken a big blow from streaming.

Oh CBM will survive, the occasional one will make a billion, but they won't be aht automatic cash cow they have been.

[keysersoze123]

Flash is almost a JL movie with so many characters and it has tons of cameos that help build buzz. That said let us wait for ticket sales to see how strong the anticipation is. I thought Guardians would do well with presales and you know where we are. 

 

Key thing for Gunn in regards to DCU is start with well made Supes movie. Introduce not so known characters as part of team up or something. But we are definitely past peak SH phase. At least until we can see another Guardians kind of breakout. 

[ChipDerby]

I mentioned it in the GOTG3 thread, but with those reviews being where they are, and this seemingly getting similar or possibly even not quite as good of a response, we may only be getting a score in the 70s on RT which would be frustrating.

[belblazer]

The second trailer is doing amazing numbers and it's already at 23M in 3 days on the DC account against 16M of the first trailer on the WB acount.

[Dragoncaine]

13 minutes ago, ChipDerby said:

I mentioned it in the GOTG3 thread, but with those reviews being where they are, and this seemingly getting similar or possibly even not quite as good of a response, we may only be getting a score in the 70s on RT which would be frustrating.

Yeah, it's a tough call. We saw more mixed reactions to Flash, but we also saw more hyperbolic ones like "One of the best CBMs ever" "One of DC's best". The only franchise-wide superlatives I saw for GotG3 was "Best since Endgame" or "Best since NWH". I could see the scores be close to each other, but a wider array of both euphoric and disparaging/neutral reviews for The Flash, instead of Guardians where many like it but few love it.

[Veclozy]

18 minutes ago, belblazer said:

The second trailer is doing amazing numbers and it's already at 23M in 3 days on the DC account against 16M of the first trailer on the WB acount.

23M views with only 200K likes, it's pretty obvious WB is running it as an ad in front of videos

[ChipDerby]

1 minute ago, Veclozy said:

23M views with only 200K likes, it's pretty obvious WB is running it as an ad in front of videos

 

Sure, but this is what all the other studios do. WB/DC almost always does a bad job of promoting their trailers, and this time it seems they made a point to do it.

[cax16]

57 minutes ago, Dragoncaine said:

Yeah, it's a tough call. We saw more mixed reactions to Flash, but we also saw more hyperbolic ones like "One of the best CBMs ever" "One of DC's best". The only franchise-wide superlatives I saw for GotG3 was "Best since Endgame" or "Best since NWH". I could see the scores be close to each other, but a wider array of both euphoric and disparaging/neutral reviews for The Flash, instead of Guardians where many like it but few love it.

I think gotg 3 will be a lot darker then the flash will be so I think they may help the flash more with some easier passing scores to fresh. But not sure how much the Ezra situation will pull reviews the other way. We’ll see what happens, I’m not really overly concerned tbh. 

[poweranimals]

10 minutes ago, cax16 said:

I think gotg 3 will be a lot darker then the flash will be so I think they may help the flash more with some easier passing scores to fresh. But not sure how much the Ezra situation will pull reviews the other way. We’ll see what happens, I’m not really overly concerned tbh. 

Yeah, that was one of my concerns that critics might give this movie a bad review because of the Ezra situation. That doesn't seem to be happening so far but I wouldn't be surprised to see some of it surface when the review embargo is lifted.

[cax16]

Just now, poweranimals said:

Yeah, that was one of my concerns that critics might give this movie a bad review because of the Ezra situation. That doesn't seem to be happening so far but I wouldn't be surprised to see some of it surface when the review embargo is lifted.

It will definitely happen though people will try and be subtle as possible about it.

 

Also, just saw this on twitter;

 

 

Probably didn’t show the after credit scenes cause they have a new flash already for that lol. 

[poweranimals]

Yeah, Ezra's obviously going to be out but I have my doubts that this movie will introduce the new Flash.

[cax16]

6 minutes ago, poweranimals said:

Yeah, Ezra's obviously going to be out but I have my doubts that this movie will introduce the new Flash.

Ya I was just kidding, I expect a few fun after credit scenes that’s about it. I doubt they attach anything of substance to this movie for the new projects.