Disclaimer: This article represents the view of this contributor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Dark Knight News as a whole.
This is getting ridiculous.
Ever since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice failed to impress critics, the anti-DCEU bandwagon has been non-stop, and its getting out of hand and downright unprofessional. Many thought that Warner Bros. had won back the hearts of the fans at International Comic-Con: San Diego when they blew everyone away with content for Justice League, Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad and more. But then, Suicide Squad released, and the negativity train came right back around again.
Let’s examine some of the ridiculousness that has occurred over the last week:
1. In the middle of Suicide Squad‘s record-breaking opening weekend, a weekend that was vastly outperforming the previous week’s Jason Bourne (an almost sure bet), media outlets were quick to report on an apparent drastic drop in attendance figures between Friday and Saturday. Of course none of these articles commented on how this is a regular occurrence with films, nor did they attempt to clarify that Friday’s figure was actually a combined amount of Thursday’s and Friday’s attendance numbers. When taking this into account, the drop was actually only about 14% (hardly justifiable for any such scrutiny).
2. After the opening weekend closed in record-breaking fashion, news outlets still labeled it a failure and immediately predicted it would die out in the cinemas fast. One article, for example, immediately jumped to call the weekend a “bigger disaster than Batman v Superman.”
3. When the film continued to push through the week and even broke the all-time Tuesday August domestic record, news outlets started to report on a Sub-Reddit in which a fan threatened to sue Warner Bros. for false advertising due to a lack of Joker in Suicide Squad. Did you read that right? News organizations were making headlines based on a conversation thread in Reddit! Since when does a rant on Reddit qualify as news?
4. If the Reddit thing wasn’t ridiculous enough, news organizations then found a similar rant on another forum website called Pajiba. The rant was in the form of an open letter to Warner Bros. from an anonymous writer claiming to be a former employee of Warner Bros. The rant goes on and on with false claims that Warner Bros. had a weak presence at International Comic-Con: San Diego, as well as supposed insider information (remember this is allegedly a former employee) about Wonder Woman‘s production being a mess. With absolutely no amount of verified information as to who the anonymous writer is, if she truly was an employee of Warner Bros., or even what her inside source was for the Wonder Woman mess, this rant has been reported on by several outlets. The convenient release time of this rant (just before Suicide Squad enters its second weekend) absolutely stinks of a campaign effort to negatively affect box office numbers.
Furthermore, a majority of the same news organizations failed to report on the retort posted by Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, stating the following:
This is some made up bs right here. Made up! Produce a source, anyone. Zero about the movie we are making has been called a mess by anyone in the know. Fact.
Zero about the movie we are making has been called a mess by anyone in the know. Fact.
— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) August 12, 2016
Those media outlets that have reported on the director’s response have, in most cases, done so in a tone and manner that questioned the validity of her statements in favor of the anonymous rant with absolutely zero verifiable information.
Predictably, media outlets have continued this nonsense into the second weekend for Suicide Squad, as articles have highlighted and exaggerated Sausage Party‘s success over Suicide Squad, which racked in $13.3 million behind Sausage Party‘s $13.5 million. This hardly constitites as one film destroying the other; more like one barely beats the other.
This is not a conspiracy theory involving Disney or Marvel paying off people to talk bad about a DCEU film. No, instead it is one of several clear examples, this week alone, where the news media has desperately sought out any kind of negative news regarding DC Films without any care to validate their findings or question the substance of this reports. It is simply ridiculous, and needs to stop.
