Who Killed the DC Extended Universe? (YouTube Cut)

[Applause] [Music] aquaman is finally here and while normally a movie about cal drogo learning how to talk to fish wouldn't exactly pique my interest the film serves as a very strange cultural artifact signifying the definitive end of perhaps the most elaborate and spectacular franchise failure in hollywood history i speak of course of the so-called dc extended universe warner brothers ambitious attempt to match the success of the marvel cinematic universe using the beloved dc comics pantheon of heroes unfortunately ambition doesn't always equal success something i first learned when me and my cousin jon attempted to set up our own intercontinental backyard wrestling league an endeavor that eventually ended with several broken limbs and one very awkward funeral you guys okay and so in the same way that me and my young friends watched sergeant murder boy ascent to the squared circle in the sky so too must we watch as this botched abortion of a film franchise is scattered to the wind leaving us asking the only question that can be asked who allowed this to happen in the case of sergeant murder boy the answer is my idiot cousin john and his invention of the so-called gun chucks for the dc eu the answer is assuredly hollywood director zack snyder a man who showed us how it's possible to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the cinematic equivalent of stuffing a corpse in a freezer not once not twice but three goddamn times so today we'll be taking a look at zack snyder's dc trilogy trying to figure out how you can take some of the most beloved characters in the history of american folklore and somehow produce something less competent than the average episode of super friends so yeah let's just get into it number one zack snyder is an edge lord now this is a term some of you may not have heard before and it's honestly a bit hard to define an edgelord is somebody who thinks their attempts to be shocking are more profound than they actually are like that kid in high school who made flash cartoons about danny phantom characters going on school shootings now it is possible to be edgy without being an edgelord a good example would be a director like tarantino whose plots and characters are so intriguing that his use of stylish violence and profane dialogue accentuate his films rather than turn them into schlock but zack snyder at least in these films seems to lack tarantino's self-awareness demanding the audience indulge his thirst for shocking content without working to earn it there are so many examples of this that i honestly had trouble deciding on the best one there's the pivotal watchman scene he replaced with smashing a guy's head in with a meat cleaver the time he said that if he were directing the dark knight he'd have batman get raped in prison that's a real quote by the way you can look that up but i think the best example of zack snyder going outside the boundaries of good taste comes from an early scene in batman vs superman in that movie lois lane is sent to san gaffistan to interview a racist stereotype while she's there it's discovered that her photographer is secretly working for the cia an organization that has apparently made sure their agents will never lose their secret spy equipment by having it blink suspiciously 24 7. in the extended cut of the movie we actually learned the name of this photographer a name that will likely be familiar to long-time dc comics fans miss lane jimmy olsen photographer obviously in the comics jimmy is a young photographer working for the daily planet who regularly finds himself in a variety of hilarious predicaments like the time superman forced him to marry a gorilla or the time superman refused to lift him out of homelessness or the time superman became his dad and angrily burned the sweater jimmy bottom of her father's day look comics were kind of weird back then anyway i'm sure superman readers got a big kick out of seeing jimmy in the movie looks like that lovable red-headed scamp sure is in some trouble this time i wonder how i'll get out of this oh my god they just shot him in the [ __ ] head jesus christ i honestly could not invent a better scene to explain zack snyder's approach to storytelling the man is a parody of himself jimmy olsen photographer it is scenes like this that set the tone for the entire trilogy and that's a problem because while this kind of shocking content might have worked in a standalone batman movie the character at the center of this trilogy is superman and thinking you can go full dark knight with everyone's favorite flying boy scout just leads us to the next thing on our list number two man of steel is worse than a certain real-life tragedy that youtube does not want discussed or depicted on their platform now look man of steel is the closest thing zack snyder's dc trilogy has to a good movie it's definitely not a good movie but michael shannon does turn in a fantastic performance as general zod and the film has penis rocket ships which is a pretty ballsy thing to try and get away with in a pg-13 movie partially designed to sell action figures to children now while the movie has a number of problems perhaps the most obvious one is zack snyder's desire to explore what it's like when superheroes inhabit the real world all the other movies i've made are are relatively you know fantastic concepts with this he's a fantastic character but i really said no the way superman is awesome is that if you believe that he's real but what's strange is we already have a perfect example of what it's like when superheroes inhabit the real world it's called watchmen a comic series for which zack snyder himself directed the movie adaptation watchman showed us very clearly that the second you start trying to solve real world problems with colorful costumed heroes you just end up with a depressing farce one where a giant blue god blows up fleeing vietnamese soldiers aging superheroes grow fat and alone and all that talk of truth justice in the american way sounds like a sick joke when spoken beneath the looming shadow of total nuclear annihilation i'm deep in watchmen i'm deep in deconstructing like superheroes hey do you want to make a superman movie he's like well i'm about to tear him down i'm going to kill him right i don't mind interested in fixing him or making him interesting right like he's the enemy right now point is superhero comic books work because they know they are set in the realm of the impossible when comic book superman gets punched through a building you know it's all just make-believe but when you try to do the same thing in a universe you've spent two hours trying to convince the audience is a real place you get what looks like a hundred certain real world tragedy things occurring all at once oh my god that building probably had hundreds of people in it oh my god oh my god get out of the city all you're killing all these people now i hate to use this word but it is honestly pretty gross to use imagery which so clearly invokes the specter of a national tragedy in a goddamn blockbuster superhero movie i can only picture a team of korean cg artists looking at file footage of certain real world tragedy and saying stuff like all right look at this closely see when when the upper floors collapse we need the fireball to be bigger okay we got to nail this thing man it's a superman movie so yeah zack snyder's desire to make a realistic superhero movie combined with his inability to recognize the boundaries of good taste has resulted in the most shockingly tone-deaf action scene i think i've ever seen rather than pull me into snyder's supposedly realistic superhero universe all it's done is remind me that the real world is far too complicated to pretend that a magic sky god is coming to save the day which leads me directly into my next point number three superman is not jesus now i'm not a real religious guy not ever since i got kicked out of bible camp for saying dinosaurs were more than 2 000 years old and refusing to sing along as the camp band butchered rock and roll classic louis louis [Music] that being said i've read enough of the bible to know that trying to strongly insinuate that superman is the second coming of christ is [ __ ] ridiculous remember that part in the bible where jesus had to snap a guy's neck no of course not if superman was really jesus he would have let zod beat the [ __ ] out of him with a whip while screaming daddy hurt me plenty now if you don't believe this is what zack snyder is doing just look at the insane number of lazy religious allegories jammed into these films cross cross superman is a fisher of man giant laser beam cross batman with the spear of destiny classic t-pose descending from heaven to save the sinner's cross gotcha double cross superman with jesus and nazareth that's jesus y'all seriously snyder was pushing this jesus narrative so hard that warner brothers actually tried to market man of steel as a christian movie encouraging pastors to talk about how jesus was the original superhero i really wish i was making that up now look the traditional superman story does have a few new testament parallels most obviously being a child delivered from the heavens onto a virgin couple but the good zack snyder had to push forward with what reads like an unmedicated 12 year old's version of the bible where jesus dies fighting the cave troll from lord of the rings then after three days pushes the rock away from the cave so he can fight the final boss of soul calibur 2. point is in the same way i don't want to see certain real world tragedy even in my kids movie i also don't want to get tricked into watching a superhero version of the passion of the christ if i'm going to watch a christian superhero movie i'll just watch bible man there's nothing trivial about jesus christ number four martha all right we have to talk about this scene one that will surely go down in history is one of the most bafflingly stupid moments in the history of blockbuster cinema now this is supposed to be the most pivotal moment in the entire film the climax of the movie's titular fight batman vs superman how will it end and this is the answer superman with his dying breath begs batman to save martha save martha then batman rather than consider that the world contains thousands upon thousands of martha's seems to make the assumption that superman is playing a weird kryptonian mind trick on what is going on but the real tragedy here is that there is a perfect line for this situation one that is so utterly obvious that i honestly believe it must have been in the script at some point only for zack snyder to argue with his scriptwriter that some nonsense about their mom's names would be better the line that should be in the movie is please save my mom now remember the only real reason batman has for wanting superman dead is that superman is an unknown element he is a literal alien who descended to earth one day bringing with him doom and destruction batman is actually being completely rational when he comes to the conclusion that no matter how many space shuttles superman might save they'll never offset the fact that superman could enslave the entire human race overnight it's a risk not worth taking especially since superman refuses to reveal anything about himself even going so far as to rip government satellites out of the sky so they can't track his movements however the revelation that superman has a mom changes everything superman is no longer an unknown element he's the adopted son of kansas dirt farmers a man who grew up on old school christian morals and a big weepy baby who doesn't want his mom to die with this one line batman would be forced to recognize that though superman may not be from earth he's still essentially human the fact that batman knows quite well the pain of losing one's parents is really just icing on the cake but instead of this beautifully simple revelation we instead get this bizarre contrived version of it batman goes from being a total badass to a blubbering [ __ ] while the audience is forced to wonder if superman would be dead had his mom's name been something like francine save francine [Music] the line is so clunky and stupid that lois lane is forced to helicopter across town just so she can try to explain it to batman why did you say that name it's his mother's name it's his mother's name thanks lois for reminding us that you are the worst character in this entire franchise which brings me to number five lois lane is the worst character in this entire franchise hey do you guys remember when i made that star wars review and i said some of the female characters sucked and then a bunch of blue checks on twitter called me an incel man baby for the next six months well let's do that whole thing again now look amy adams is a good actress she was great in the criminally underrated arrival she played a fantastically spooky passion the master and i really think she knocked it out of the park as jim's girlfriend on the office but as lois lane she is awful again because these scripts are so bad as to defy explanation in every scene she is a doe-eyed idiot who has no idea what's going on in zack snyder's universe lois exists for only three reasons one to have annoyingly long and pointless romance scenes with superman two for her to be in lazy exposition scenes that exist only to give the audience some sense of what the hell is going on if that thing is making earth more like krypton won't you be weaker around it maybe and three as a deus ex machina who lazily helps move the plot along either as a helpless victim or as a dumbass who randomly shows up to toss the magic kryptonite spear into a lake then five minutes later almost die trying to retrieve the magic kryptonite spear from a lake also she gets a scene where she doesn't know how to insert a usb stick all the way good going there lois point is this is perhaps the most boring interpretation of lois lane i've ever seen what happened to the fun sassy city girl showing a big dumb hick how to cut loose not at all i'd say it's been swell swell you know clark um there are very few people left in the world who feel comfortable saying that what word swell really sounds kind of natural lois lane isn't supposed to be just a helpless damsel in distress she's supposed to be a strong independent career woman who doesn't take from anybody daddy was a black belt all i can say is thank god zack snyder had the sense to cut lois's pointless b story from beaver s and we can all rest easy knowing that the death of this franchise ensures that we never have to find out why lois was the key to everything lois lane wasn't the key to anything she was just awful seriously though how hard is it to write decent female characters which brings me to my next point number five zack snyder hates women alright now this one's for the social justice people i'm actually going to virtue signal about fighting negative depictions of women in media y'all better move me up a notch on the progressive stack now i'll be real that title is inflammatory i don't actually think zack snyder hates women but he does have a terrible habit of portraying them almost entirely as helpless victims either as a shortcut to adding emotional sympathy to a scene or as another lazy way to move the plot along think i'm exaggerating let's take a look at all the helpless women in these movies ma kent lady on the roof little girl all these little girls token muslim the senator lex luthor's asian girlfriend this black lady all these black ladies a bunch of asian slaves jesus christ drowning school girls deleted scene with iris west lois lane lois lane lois lane lois lane lois lane lois lane lowest light now i know some smart aleck is going to go into the comments and point out every time a male character was in a similar situation but it seems like any time a man gets in trouble zack snyder typically has them doing something stereotypically masculine oil drilling flying a jet fighting some hot kryptonian lady damn she looks good and whereas a military man asks hard questions of superman how do we know you won't one day act against america's interests his female counterpart just says i just think he's kind of hot i'll just say this you never see a scene of superman flying around with a man gently cradled in his arms you know because that would be gay kind of like how when we do have a male victim he's being force-fed candy in an almost homoerotic manner i don't know maybe i'm reaching point is this isn't just me saying oh we've gotta save the women i've got plenty of love for the classic save the princess storylines i play zelda everybody loves zelda it's really just about lazy storytelling zack snyder's commitment to this hyper-masculine universe he's created seems to treat women almost entirely as token victims and no wonder woman being a badass is not enough to balance it all out also did you really have to redesign the valkyrie outfits so that everybody's midriff is showing like they were already pretty hot ah whatever it's your movie number six all of the villains are terrible now riding a good bad guy can definitely be a challenge just look at the marvel movies which despite their success are full of completely forgettable villains such as murder smurf hulk's cousin and roid rage thing is the marvel movies are loud colorful popcorn entertainment and they sell themselves by visual spectacle alone but zack snyder promised us a more serious take on the superhero genre and that should have included villains with truly interesting motivations not just i want to turn earth into a copy of my home world or i want to turn earth into a copy of my home world now of the dc eu villains clearly doomsday and steppenwolf are at the bottom of the barrel a pair of cg monstrosities about as thrilling as victorian era pornography yeah show me those stocking tops you filthy michael shannon zod comes closest to being a great villain but again his motivations don't really make sense why exactly does he want to turn earth into krypton what does he miss the dragons does he miss the weird etch-a-sketch video phones which i don't understand how that's better than just a tv and i get that he wants to use the magic skull inside of superman to reproduce the glorious kryptonian race but why don't you just settle down on earth and be worshipped as a literal god it seems to be working out pretty good for superman now i like to think that the best villains usually act as the ideological opposite of the hero that's why the joker is such a perfect foil for batman batman is the ultimate embodiment of societal order believing the world can be fixed once all the bad guys are behind bars conversely joker is the ultimate embodiment of chaos believing that any attempt to impose order on an inherently chaotic universe is a ridiculous joke on the other hand the character of superman represents empathy and compassion the idea that the strong should protect the weak whereas the best depictions of lex luthor show him as a ruthless pragmatist a man who believes the weak or beyond saving and exists only to be ruled by the strong what would you do if you had his powers help people you probably would you lack the imagination to see the alternatives that's why this version of lex luthor is the worst villain in the entire franchise because he doesn't seem to believe in anything he seems to be some sort of religious nut job obsessed with angels and demons and he's mad at superman because his dad beat him as a kid i don't know no man in the sky intervened when i was a boy to deliver me from daddy's fists and abominations he just doesn't have any clear ideology he's really just a crazy person and being crazy is the most boring possible motivation for a villain compare luther to somebody like thanos who is compelling because he has an ideology he believes in something and what he believes differs from everything the heroes stand for and when we faced extinction i offered a solution genocide that's what creates the conflict at the center of the movie and it's very compelling jesse eisenberg as a b grade version of the joker is not in fact this lex luthor is so bad that he's getting a second entry on the list number seven lex luthor's plan makes no sense now if you want to play a fun game find somebody who likes beaver s and ask them to explain lex luthor's plan in full this is an impossible task because lex luthor's plan makes absolutely no sense and forces the audience to accept that lex luthor is an omega level telepath who somehow knows everything about every single character in the movie including where they are where they are going what they are thinking and how they will react to the complete nonsense he's concocted let's just look at the first part of lex luthor's plan and all the things he somehow knows for no reason whatsoever 1. lex luthor somehow knows superman's secret identity clark joseph kent this is what allows him to construct a plot using lois lane as bait i'm actually going to allow the movie a gimme and say that this one is fine but then we move to number two where lex luthor also somehow knows lois lane's schedule finding out that she's going to san gaffistan to hang out with isis not only that but he knows her schedule so far in advance that he has enough time to hire a private team of mercenaries to join the bad guys before she gets there i mean what you can just show up and join isis i guess okay sure number three he also somehow knows that lois lane's photographer is going to be a cia agent and he knows that that agent has a secret transmitter in his camera this is a necessary part of his plan because he needs his goon to reveal the secret transmitter putting lois lane's life in danger so i guess we're forced to assume that lex luthor somehow has the ability to influence the assignment of cia operatives i thought he owned facebook what is going on number four he also somehow knows that lois lane will be taken hostage rather than just immediately shot in the head number five he also knows that superman will show up to save lois lane but only after the village has been massacred this is despite them clearly showing in these movies that superman can instantly show up the second lois lane is in danger so i don't know why this time he had to wait until all the black people were dead maybe lex luthor knew he was secretly racist i don't know number six he also knows that superman will be blamed for this massacre despite the fact that the bodies are clearly littered with bullets and shrapnel not to mention that a cia drone camera is watching the whole thing again this is just step one of luther's plan i'm not even getting into the bomb wheelchair and the the checks with the weird messages on him kryptonite that he wants batman to have but why don't you just give it a batman why is it chase just just leave it in a place where he can have it point is these constant leaps of logic just disorient the audience it's very hard to enjoy a movie when you're constantly asking questions about the plot why is congress blaming superman for this why is the world's greatest detective not able to consider that superman was obviously framed and why did this supposedly brilliant mastermind give his troops special lexcor bullets that can be directly traced back to him this is the exact kind of nonsense logic that ruined the last jedi between these two movies i honestly have to wonder whether script writers are getting stupider or just phoning it in because the audience have proven themselves willing to watch pure trash i honestly don't know which is worse number eight joss whedon is not a miracle worker so after the disappointment of both batman vs superman and harley quinn's hot topic merchandise adventure watching justice league was kind of like having someone piss all over your sundae it already tasted like so adding a bunch of piss to it really wasn't all that shocking really the only truly surprising part of the movie was just how [ __ ] boring it was i really don't know how you can hand someone 300 million dollars as well as the rights to five of the most exciting comic heroes in history only for them to make a movie about a bunch of people arguing in an ugly airplane hangar stop arguing go go punch things now after the release of batman vs superman warner brothers executives kind of lost their minds we put batman and superman in the same film and made less money than a ryan reynolds movie what the [ __ ] so after zack snyder turned in his first cut of justice league he stepped down from the project which is a fun hollywood way of saying he got fired wait what fire yeah so you've now got a half-finished zack snyder movie another dark gritty romp through this supposedly realistic superhero universe and who do you get to polish it up joss whedon known exclusively for his bright colorful characters fun quirky dialogue and cheating on his wife now it's obvious what warner brothers was thinking they wanted to throw a marvel colored paint job all over their dark gritty movie and they decided to get the guy who helped the avengers make a billion dollars at the box office but i think it's obviously insane to try and turn a zack snyder movie into a joss whedon movie their two styles are almost the polar opposites of each other so what exactly did joss whedon add to this movie to supposedly make it better number one they added more hallmark moments sappy nonsense like superman inspiring children or him in the flash saving russian apartment buildings these scenes are basically whedon's trademark and boy does he ladle them on thick but here they just feel inserted at random and don't fit the tone of the movie at all oh look superman loves lois lane now let's hard cut to batman firing a laser gun at space bugs it just doesn't work number two dumb jokes now sure i got a quick chuckle out of aquaman sitting on the lasso of truth i don't want to die i'm young there's [ __ ] that i want to do but again these moments don't really seem to fit into the scenes that snyder has already directed we'll be in the middle of a very serious zack snyder scene only for one of the characters to randomly say something stupid to try and lighten the mood shut yourself down for a century so let's not talk about me moving on you know that if she kills you will cover for her number three changing the lighting i think it's obvious that this was a huge mistake it seems clear to me that zack snyder purposefully sets up his shots to look good when bathed in shadows and those same scenes look like a bunch of people in cheap halloween costumes when you try to brighten up the lighting maybe this is subjective but looking at the footage from the original trailers compared to what we eventually got i think it's clear that the original color grading worked much better and i know there's a bunch of youtube videos about how brightening up man of steel supposedly would have made it a better movie but honestly zack snyder's visual style is the best part of all of these movies i know they wanted to brighten up the tone of the movie but i don't know why that means you also have to brighten up the lighting now look i can't really give a jaw sweden too much [ __ ] trying to turn a zack snyder film into a family-friendly marvel movie is an impossible task i also really can't blame zack snyder while his first cut of the movie might be as bad as people say it's still quite possible he could have found a way to make the movie work in fact if anyone's to blame it's warner brothers for desperately trying to copy popular trends rather than let the director they hired run with his original vision it also doesn't help that they clearly wrote this movie off as a loss and completely slashed the special effects budget not only do we have superman's weird computer generated lip but they also clearly told the cg animators just stop whatever you got now just render it out and we don't care and as far as reshoots go you get one cop one cop car is gonna show up six superheroes are fighting in the middle of the city oh there's one cop that's the only guy who's around to deal with it so at the end of the day we have an ugly boring unfinished movie a product designed in a corporate boardroom lacking any real artistic soul what a sad way for this trilogy to end anyway i guess that's it this week we'll watch the adventures of fish boy and aqua world and watch as the strange sad experiment known as zack snyder's dc universe comes to an end many of the people involved have already moved on henry cavill is playing legolas ben affleck realized that when you win the golden globe for best director you're supposed to keep directing movies and the guy who played the flash just got a job as assistant manager of a togo's subs so i guess things are working out for everybody now on a more personal note i want to say that these movies came out at a very weird time in my life a time when i too was suffering through a number of personal failures as such i want to say this zack on the very unlikely chance that you just sat through a 20 minute youtube video [ __ ] all over your work please know that i rip on you because i love you you are a man of many talents your visual style is honestly unparalleled and i think you've proven that given the right project you're able to deliver some truly classic cinema yes these movies are failures but i also think that there's a certain nobility in failure in taking a long hard look at where you went wrong and using that knowledge to propel your work to ever greater heights i honestly look forward to whatever you do next and i think your talents will truly sing when they aren't shackled to a billion dollar toy franchise in conclusion i just have one final thing i want to say release the snyder cut do it hey guys this is veto thank you so much for watching this video took a lot longer than i expected took me about a month of writing recording editing and i really hope you guys like the final product if you aren't already subscribed come on i mean i'm a small creator really every subscriber helps and don't forget to click the bell next to the button youtube kind of has me on a bit of a blacklist because i don't exactly make family-friendly content so if you really want to see my videos when they go live definitely click the bell i'm hoping i can keep doing long-form videos like this but unfortunately these videos don't really make a lot of ad revenue point is i want to thank all of my patrons you guys definitely help make these videos possible i also want to thank everybody who backed my card game enemy weapon if you missed out on the kickstarter and you still want to get in i've set up a website at enemyweapon.com anyway it's been a hell of a year i'm uh happy this youtube thing is still working out people seem to be liking my channel my audience is slowly growing and i'm hoping i can keep coming up with ways to entertain you guys peace and love in 2019 and we will be back in the new year with more awesome videos love you guys peace

Channel: Vito

Views: 102,405

Keywords: aquaman review, aquaman movie, dc cinematic universe, dc movies, dc comic movies, dc comics, dc extended universe, dceu, zack snyder, man of steel, batman v superman, batman vs superman, justice league, what went wrong, everything wrong with, how it should have ended, worst dc movie, worst comic book movie, worst movie 2018, worst dc character, what's wrong with, cinematic failure, wonder woman, dc universe, Snyder cut, the snyder cut, justice league snyder cut

Id: 9x0CpMthZIM

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020