To be fair,
WB is stupid.
WB said Snyder was trying to seize control of DC Films through Ray Fisher's exposure of the studio's nonsense, as if it's remotely plausible to become chairman/executive that easily by one actor calling for an investigation into what went on behind the scenes. Meanwhile Whedon threatened Gal Gadot's career (said in her words, "He kind of threatened my career and said that if I did something, he would make my career miserable and I just took care of it instead") and Kevin Tsujihara was right in the middle of a sex trafficking scandal they were pretending didn't exist while he was being promoted to bigger overseeing functions. Johns was too busy being precious about some nostalgiawank properties he wrote for and being tremendously out of touch. WB should be worried about the fact that they kept defending themselves that way while trying to smear Snyder.
WB, in relation to the above, would get the trades to release different headlines like clockwork every time Fisher tweeted about something. This includes Deadline's "Jason Momoa is in talks to play Frosty in Frosty the Snowman because his connection to Ohana captures the spirit of Frosty" piece that even Momoa called out as fake. WB promptly backpedaled the holy hell out of that news to it being an Untitled Snowman Comedy. Other great blunders include releasing the 4K trailer for Josstice League, and dropping the "WB's search for a Black Superman" bit right on Henry Cavill's birthday to cover up the "Toby Emmerich is looking for a new job" headline from the same trade.
WB placed unreal expectations on BvS's "star power" (in this case, "IP power") and threw Snyder under the bus just because Superman and Batman didn't individually pull in 1 billion USD each off of their names, even though no Superman movie has ever earned a billion dollars, and Supes is the most deconstructed character in comics history, often criticized as boring and one-note to begin with. Man of Steel still definitely made more money than Superman Returns, because if anyone (including WB) actually gave a damn about Returns's nostalgia and reliance on the Reeves aesthetic of the 80s, that movie would've done better. Even Batman by himself didn't even break a billion in the box office in the generally-well-received Nolan trilogy until The Dark Knight, and some of that billion-plus can't be placed squarely on Batman pulling people into seats but also the power of Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, as well as Batman Begins being TDK's predecessor and serving as "proof of concept". Even then, the grounded take on the hero is what makes people say things like "the TDK trilogy wasn't really a trilogy of Batman Movies, they were Movies With Batman In It" and going on about how in truth, Nolan's Batman isn't comic book accurate.
But speaking in terms of box office, MoS and BvS combined made more money than even the first three MCU movies in their respective cinematic universe, so they did something right in the most basic sense. In fact, movie-for-movie, DCEU's "Phase 1" slate (MoS, BvS, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Aquaman) beat the MCU's Phase 1 (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers) by a literal billion dollars, and it was Aquaman of all heroes that added that extra billion-plus even with the public perception of his character being the lame joke hero that "talks to fish", and the Momoa iteration of the character spent less than half an hour in JL2017, hardly anything to get a good grip of his character off of. To compare, Iron Man 3 needed its titular hero to feature in four films prior (2 solos, 1 post-credits cameo, 1 team up) to generate billion-busting hype.
Breakdown aside, WB threw Snyder under the bus and let him catch the heat for BvS being a mess even though a) they cut out a sixth of the runtime with their unreasonable mandate, and the script Terrio and Snyder had to work with was done by David Goyer at WB's behest, so it was WB's own fault the script was so dark and even had such ridiculous moments as Lois taunting African terrorists about how Superman wouldn't go easy on them because they hit her.
WB upset Christopher Nolan and Dennis Villeneuve. Need I say more?
WB tried to kill off Todd Phillips's Joker and refused to fund it fully, which is why two other production companies came in and added their money into the pile. Joker made over a billion even as a rated R flick with no "connected universe" to ride off of, and WB has to split the earnings with the other studios. There still isn't a DC Black Label run of films to allow directors to take that type of risk with other characters.
WB completely failed to capture the demand for Gotham City Sirens and instead gave the public Birds of Prey, which in their infinite wisdom they gave it the difficult-to-remember, tongue-bending title of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) which nonsensically gives Harley second billing in her own title when she's the one headlining the whole damn thing, hence the retitle to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey after its poor performance in the box office, which they blamed on COVID-19. Then Sonic kicked BoP's ass in theaters a week later and went on to become the highest grossing superhero movie of 2020, dethroning Marvel's decade-long run with that title, because of course it did.
WB canned New Gods and The Trench, with New Gods's speculated cancellation being due to Darkseid's appearance in ZSJL, even though the entire point of a multiverse is to have different iterations of the same character existing at once, on different Earths, as seen in CW's The Flash and related Arrowverse TV shows.
WB is attempting to use the Flash solo movie to rectify the issues with the greater DCEU and reboot the Justice League, literally making his solo movie about a bunch of characters that aren't him, which is what supposedly ruined BvS in the first place since Snyder initially was on to make a standalone trilogy solely about Superman the way Nolan worked solely on Batman and Gotham, and is what definitely ruined Marvel's Iron Man 2 (turning it into a glorified Avengers trailer).
And I mean, WB has been stupid ever since Richard Donner was replaced for Superman II and his movie got Frankensteined with another director and a whole new soundtrack all the way back in 1980 and it took 25 years and a lot of fan petitioning to deliver the Donner Cut. Time is a flat effing circle with these people.
BTW,
Update on the view numbers
Tencent Video: 28.771million (28,771,000)
Bilibili: 12.221million (12,221,000)
Miguvideo: 390million (390,000,000)
iQiyi: still inconclusive.
so it jumped from a combined 399,435,000+ views on Thursday, up to 430,992,000+ views as of this moment of posting. That's pretty much "one third of the entire population in China" watched the movie.
