Batman V Superman: 10 Mistakes It Made That Justice League Must Avoid
Less Snyder, less marketing and a better villain, please.
One of the few upsides to making a poorly-received movie is that, for your next effort, you've got a lot of feedback to build on. That's the scenario facing Zack Snyder and co. as they head deep into production on Justice League, and it's safe to assume that the criticisms of Batman v Superman will have lasting repercussions for the remainder of the DC Cinematic Universe.
Batman v Superman wasn't the complete trainwreck that many made it out to be - the film grossed almost $900 million worldwide and there are plenty of fans that enjoyed it. But it did make mistakes, and with Suicide Squad recently receiving a similarly negative backlash, it's about time that Warner Bros learns from both films if they want their movie universe to survive.
And fortunately, Justice League is still miles away from its current November 2017 release date, so the creative team still have plenty of time to craft something that builds on the weaknesses of their earlier movies. If Justice League is to succeed, it has to please a commercial and critical fanbase that became extremely divided after Batman v Superman - and one way to do that is to avoid these 10 mistakes that the latter film made...
10. Spoiling The Movie With The Marketing
As soon as the 'Doomsday' trailer dropped for Batman v Superman last December, it became gut-wrenchingly clear that Warner Bros' marketing team had just spoiled the third act of the movie. We all knew that Batman and Superman would team up to thwart a baddie at some point, and now that final threat had been unveiled - and sure enough, the film itself contained little to no surprises in terms of its broad story beats.
This is an issue that all movies must work to overcome, especially comic-book tentpoles like Justice League - it negatively impacts the reception of a movie come its release, and strips the story of tension, stakes or surprises. Justice League is a film that will rely heavily on action and spectacle, so blowing that load too soon would just make the film a little more... dull.
Moreover, movies like Batman v Superman and Justice League sell themselves - why show us so much? We're going to buy a ticket regardless! The footage we've seen from the latter has managed to dodge this issue so far, giving us the overall gist of the plot without revealing too many details, and that's exactly what the rest of the marketing campaign needs to do.