Will’s Unpopular Opinion – The Career Suicide Squad – 7-26-17
This will likely be the most insensitive piece of writing I’ve ever posted. (And I did an entire article of the Dallas shooting from the shooter’s perspective.) I have no doubt that a haters are gonna hate and I’ll be described as inconsiderate, thoughtless and heartless. It’s tinfoil-hat time ladies and gentlemen, and I just bought a whole case of Reynolds Wrap.
So here it goes…
Zack Snyder’s daughter’s suicide was probably the best thing that could have happened to the DCEU at this moment. Financially speaking, not fanatically. This is not from a crazed fan perspective of attaching Joss Whedon to everything so we can have more lofty dialogue spouted out by the caped-crusader that will instantly be more reminiscent of the 60’s TV show than you could imagine, but rather from a bean counting, number crunching standpoint that has used this tragedy for one of the most audacious and incredulous marketing spins ever.
Let’s be clear. The story was never about Zack Snyder’s daughter. It was always about Joss Whedon on Justice League. If it was about his daughter, we would have heard about it when it happened, and not 2 months later.
To play catch up, on May 22nd of 2017, it was announced that Zack Snyder would be stepping down from his directing role on the upcoming 17 trillion dollar Justice League movie, so he could be with his family after the tragic suicide of one of his adopted daughters. It’s important to note though, that his daughter had actually passed away two months prior to any announcement about her death. The news was held until the confirmation of Whedon’s involvement was finalized. Granted, this timetable makes some sense. You can’t just instantly change directors on your multi-zillion dollar flagship flick in a week’s time. There’s too much red tape. First you need a fix. In advertising we would call this the “problem/solution” technique. We would present a problem on one page, and the solution on the next. You place an add for skiing on one page, and one for flannel shirts on the next. Snyder’s stepping down? We got Whedon right behind him willing to helm the rest of the film, and see the production wrap in accordance with the WB group think machine; like a dad who’s got his hand on the backseat of a bicycle as his kid wobbles back and forth trying to get out of the garage.
Also, let’s not forget, nobody really wants to talk about suicide. Writing an article like this could be considered… not good. So all of the fan theories and curtain peaking abstains from the mainstream because that’s not a conversation anybody wants to poke holes in or question. (But I’m Will Valle.) Now I’m not saying that WB had this poor girl killed (This isn’t Columbo), but to not be able to see the marketing advantage taken in regards to the situation, means you’re being pandered to. Initially I wanted to raise my hand and speak up at the time of this announcement in late May, citing what I had noticed, however the story was still fresh and unless I wanted to look like a single Musketeer fencing against 100 French soldiers, I had to keep my mouth shut, because as we all know, the internet is where ideas go to die. [And so I wonder where all of the people who obtained overnight law degrees with regards to whatever the most recent cop shooting was, are now. We tend to forget the stories of yesterday (as pertinent as they were) when the next sun comes up, don’t we? Or we’re hit with the distraction vehicle that is every passing day in the Trump Administration…]
But why is this important now? Yesterday it was announced that Snyder would now be taking on a more diminished role in the DCEU. He’s essentially being phased out. A shift is occurring at the WB headquarters and it’s doing so to compete on a higher level. “If you can’t beat’m, join’m” has become WB’s new motto. Recently the ‘Wonder Woman’ film used the Alamo Draft House controversy (amongst others) to usher in a decent Rotten Tomatoes score for their golden lassoed heroin; as they successfully sold people on the idea that a mediocre film was the answer to Hollywood’s anemic female fueled cinema output. Which isn’t really the case, right? ‘Aliens’, ‘Resident Evil’, ‘Underworld’, ‘Hunger Games’, etc etc all feature a strong female character as the lead, that for the most part, pass the Bechdel test. So we know the industry isn’t completely bereft of positive female reinforcement, and yet a campaign was launched to empower woman to see the film. If the movie was as strong as they’d claimed, would have they had to do that to begin with?
[Coca-cola never tells you how much better it is than Pepsi. Pepsi does that for them. How many times have you seen an ad where Pepsi is telling you it’s better than Coke? Now think of that the other way around? Coke never competes because it’s above competing. It let’s its product do the talking.]
Another thing to consider is Whedon himself as the choice to replace Snyder. Obviously a fan favorite, it’s a slam dunk idea to incorporate him into the franchise. (Clearly people have by and large, forgotten about how truly awful ‘Avengers 2’ is.) But the guy who’s gonna bring his feminism crayon box to color in the ‘Batgirl’ flick can’t be all the bad, right? After all, he did do ‘Buffy’! People don’t care what you say. They care how you say it, or who says it. It’ll be a fun test as fans debate for years and claim to know which scenes were Snyder scenes and which were Whedon scenes in the final cut of the film. It’ll be the ‘Superman 2’ of this generation.
But on that note, negative marketing, if done right, could be positive marketing. Now this is important. These companies rely on their customers/followers emotional knee-jerk reactions to facilitate their growth. When someone tweets “Wishing Snyder the best.”, they’re helping push WB’s agenda. People are low key associating that comment with the new ‘Justice League’ movie. When someone posts a statement like “Woman should be allowed in the Alamo Drafthouse” they’re missing the bigger picture, and instead are creating free marketing for the Drafthouse. No one wants to challenge the concept of these statements because to do so would be to speak out against feminism or suicide, and for reviewers, critics, and other online personalities, that there is the true career suicide. Which brings me to my final point, would any of what you just read above be happening if BvS was well received? Or would we instead be hearing a story about how Snyder persevered through tragedy; in an effort to give the fans the movie they always wanted?
-Will Valle
NOTE: The headline was selected to drive home the point that anything associated with Snyder and the title was based off of a pre-established complacency of audience awareness, and their tendency to refuse becoming emotionally charged after reading key words, regardless of the context. The piece mentions “career suicide” multiple times throughout it. Any further correlation to the word or it’s intentions are done so solely by the reader ahead of time. You may argue that this is “click bait”, but that only demonstrates and qualifies furthermore the marketing tactics the article is trying to expose. Tactics, that address specifically the effectiveness of phrasing and their correlation to outside events, and how certain words when in conjunction with said events, can elicit an emotional response that people feel the need to debate over; even when that’s not the true issue at all. It’s called misdirection. -WV