Zack Snyder proved yet again that he is one of the most controversial directors of Hollywood after giving a recent interview to Entertainment Weekly.
The interview was for Superman’s supporting player Jimmy Olsen, which is quite fitting for these franchise-stuffed times. Olsen’s character appears for a few minutes in Batman V Superman before he was identified as a CIA plant and subsequently shot in the head.
He is DC Cinematic Universe’s version of the plucky photographer who was best pals with Superman in the classic comic series. Snyder said, “We don’t have room for Jimmy Olsen in our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right?”
It is awkward that he decided to gloss over the fact that it involved recasting a beloved character as a liar and then murdering him next.
This change is not quite unusual as Directors tweak their source material all the time. Frankly speaking, Olsen’s character would indeed be a poor fit for Zack Snyder’s vision of the DC Comics Universe.
There’s a reason why Snyder is so loved by some and so hated by the others and this remark bears testimony to that. Snyder has major ambitions about turning pop iconography into a new myth for our times but he is a director with genuine visual aesthetic.
However, his visuals and his themes work at cross purposes, which further results in deeply confusing movies. He is a highly gifted filmmaker but sadly, every one of his projects has been a little worse than the one preceding it.
Batman V Superman has largely received negative reviews but the main question was whether it would affect the box office. Thankfully for Zack Snyder and the rest of the team, it hasn’t. Due to the critical adulation, the numbers have been pushed up higher, but nobody can actually call the numbers disappointing.
The film opened in the UK with £14.62m over the three-day weekend, with Easter Monday pushing the four-day total to £17.96m. Man of Steel began with 11.2 million pounds in 2013. The Dark Knight kicked off in July 2008 with 11.19 million pounds which further included previews of 2.5 million pounds.
The Dark Knight Rises started with 14.36 million pounds and no reviews. When you consider all the three opening, Batman V Superman has grossed a little bit higher than Dark Knight Rises but this comes after a benefit of four years of ticket-price inflation.
When you compare it with Marvel titles, Avengers Assemble started off with £13.22m plus £2.55m in previews, while sequel Age of Ultron began with £14.42m plus £3.6m in previews.
Batman V Superman has emerged a little ahead of Age of Ultron with the benefit of simply one year of ticket price inflation. Thankfully, in terms of pure box office, Warner Bros. and DC Comics now have the bragging rights on the biggest ever opening weekend for a superhero movie at the UK Cinemas.
This is a genre which faces drops in the subsequent weeks, for instance, Man of Steel fell by 55 percent in its second session. We should see a relatively rapid burnout if the negative reviews by MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes have any impact whatsoever. The runner-up is Zootropolis which was nicely positioned with its crosshair on family audiences.
The animal animation debuted with 3.57 million pounds and previews took the tally to 5.31 million pounds. The Easter Monday came with a splendid 1.72 million pounds and the total has risen to 7.03 million pounds. The film will enjoy two weeks of further solid play before kids start returning to school on 11th April.