There is a scene from the new movie The Flash, in which Barry Allen has to save a bunch of babies falling from a collapsing building. I've only seen versions of it on YouTube, which are not of the highest quality, but I immediately knew what they were trying (and failing) to reproduce. There are 2 scenes from the X-Men franchise that do everything Warner Bros. tried to do in The Flash, but the X-Men actually succeeded. (Links were getting taken down or reduced in quality, so you will have to search for yourself.)
First, the scene we will look at is from X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) in which Quicksilver saves everyone from an exploding mansion. The action is better. The music is better. The comedy is better. Even the dog is better.
Second, the scene from X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) in which Quicksilver, Wolverine, Dr. Xavier, and Magneto are escaping from the Pentagon by way of the kitchen. Again, it is a scene in which Quicksilver saves the day. This movie came before X-Men: Apocalypse, and while it is good, they learned from this movie and set out to make the other scene better. And that other scene IS better.
But with these 2 examples to copy, DC still couldn't get it right. Are we shocked that The Flash looks like it will lose $150 million or more at the box office?
Further, the saving of a bunch of babies in The Flash, seems like it is only there to be a set piece. They probably shot that sequence before they knew what the script was going to look like. To be fair, it sounds like the movie was in post production before they knew what the script would look like. And while the exploding mansion scene from X-Men is a similar set piece it isn't a completely random bit stuck into the movie. And the kitchen scene fits nicely into the escape-from-the-Pentagon section of that movie.
I haven't seen The Flash, and I probably won't. There have been a few clips online, but they were being taken down - or severely reduced in quality - with regularity. (One clip was listed as "Full 1080 HD," and by the time I saw it, it had been limited to 320p.) Given that DC is still trying to get back some of its production costs, I guess I can give DC and Warner Bros. the benefit of the doubt on that. Here is Critical Drinker's take on the movie, and everything wrong with DC/Warner Bros. films today.
OK, Disney/Marvel is also failing, Warner Bros. is not alone in that, but in 2014 and 2016 they were not failing. It's almost as if something in Hollywood changed between 2016 and 2019, making them incapable (almost) of producing a movie that people actually want to see. There are a few successes, but many more failures.
Consider the top 50 movies that came out in 1984 (also see the image below) - a year not selected at random. The list includes Sci-Fi blockbusters like The Terminator and 2010: The Year We Make Contact to more typical Hollywood dramas like The Natural and the biopic The Killing Fields. I've seen most a lot of those movies more than once. Two cult classics were produced that year, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension and Repo Man.
Firestarter was based on Steven King novel, and The Killing Fields was based on a true story, and a few others, like Dune, were also adaptations, but the rest were written to be original movie scripts. What can you say that about today? (And in case anyone is keeping track, Gremlins IS a Christmas movie, just like Die Hard.)
Oh, and Dune (1984) is almost a textbook example of how NOT to do an adaptation. I know some people like that movie, but I am not among them.
