Death of the DCEU
WARNER BROS
I admit that I’ve always been more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan. When I was a kid when I dressed up for Halloween it would be in that Spidey red and blue not the Clark Kent red and blue. But that doesn’t mean I’m overly critical of DC as compared to Marvel, in fact it’s the opposite. I tend to be more critical of the things I am fans of versus their rivals. When the Dallas Cowboys make a trade I’m always a lot more critical of it then I am of a trade the Philadelphia Eagles might make, although that may speak more to the quality of the trade than anything else but I digress. The DCEU certainly struggled to get a firm footing in the movie industry until it ultimately shuttered to make way for a new DC Universe. In this article will look into 4 reasons that the movie going audience, me included, never really latched on to the DCEU in the same way that we latched on to the MCU.
The Big Movies Sucked
I know a lot of people are in the camp of all DCEU movies suck. I’m not a person that’s in that camp. I thought Man of Steel was fine, Shazam was good, and Wonder Woman was great. Hell even Black Adam was fun if nothing else. But do you see what is missing from this list? Some of the biggest and most important movies in the history of DCEU were heaping piles of trash. Justice League was supposed to rival the Avengers in scale, scope, and interest levels. I admit I got caught up in the glitz, glam and hype of this movie but boy did it disappoint. It sucked so bad Joss Whedon kept the screen pitch black so we couldn’t even see it! How can you have so much riding on a movie and put out something so ugly and off putting. It’s not hyperbole to say that The Justice League was the beginning of the end of the DCEU.
Don’t think I forgot about the other colossal shit show at the beginning of the DCEU. Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was comically bad. It introduced us to Batman, Wonder Woman, had a massive war between Batman and Superman settled by the name Martha and killed off Superman all within a convoluted two and a half hours at the local cinema. This is the movie that perfectly encapsulates the DCEU. A half-assed poor excuse for an MCU rip-off. Batman vs Superman was Captain America: Civil War, if Captain America: Civil War wanted everyone to hate both main characters after watching. And seriously why are all these DCEU movies unwatchably dark!?
And then there is The Flash. This movie was supposed to be how the DCEU got out of the mess it created. It was supposed to allow for a reset of the universe and give them a clean slate, while still keeping the characters we’ve grown to be acquaintances with. But instead, even a year before its release, it effectively shut down the DCEU. The movie that had been touted as the savior of the DCEU was effectively complete when James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to create a new DC universe. The powers that be had little to no faith in this movie and on its release is was pretty evident why that was. The Flash put the final nail in a coffin that was already lowered 6 feet.
Tried Playing Catch-Up
It’s no secret that the executives at Warner Brothers saw what their rivals at Disney were doing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and wanted a piece of that money pie. The problem with this, in the eyes of the big wigs at Warner Brothers, was that the MCU had a five year head start in creating their universe. Thus, they felt that they needed to speed into a situation where they would catch up to Marvel.
As a side note, I never really understood this thought process by the DCEU. The Avengers movie in the MCU only worked so well because we had gotten to know each member well through their own movies before bringing them together into one glorious film. Had we never gotten a Captain America, Hulk, or Thor movie before they joined Iron Man in The Avengers, the plot of the movie would have been sporadic and messy. Enter both Batman vs. Superman and Justice League. How can you even think of having a Batman vs Superman movie without ever introducing Ben Affleck’s new Batman? If they wanted to go this route then they should’ve showed up with Batmobile loads of cash outside of Christian Bale’s residence.
Keep the uber-successful Batman that everyone knew and loved and brought him in to rival the Man of Steel’s Henry Cavill. Or and the more realistic scenario, give Ben Affleck his own movie first. Ben Affleck was not a bad Batman by any stretch and he could’ve easily held us compelled for a couple of hours. But unfortunately, the powers at be felt like they needed to catch up to where Marvel was in their cinematic universe. This also led to the massive problems in The Justice League. We had only seen Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman of the Justice League in any movies prior to the creation of the movie. We had never had a mention of either Cyborg, the Flash, or Aquaman in the DCEU let alone a stand alone Ben Affleck Batman movie. We were essentially forced to watch a sped through version of a team up movie with characters we had never seen before. And the worst part? They didn’t even use this as a launching pad for standalone movies. Sure we got a sequel to Wonder Woman and a couple of Aquaman movies, but we still never got to see Ben Affleck in a standalone Batman, or Henry Cavill in another Man of Steel movie. Hell we never heard anything about Cyborg again! And to top it off it took us 6 years for Flash to finally make it to the big screen just for it to suck! It’s exhausting thinking about how we rushed up to a bad Justice League movie just to abandon those characters completely for a bunch of ancillary heroes and antiheroes. Instead of setting up a world to explore and unite Warner Brothers decided to shove all their biggest heroes into movies incredibly quickly and cost themselves a whole universe in return.
WARNER BROS
Lack of Direction
This is a path that we can see mirrored by another massive movie enterprise. Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars has struggled to map out any coherent plan to the future of the franchise just like Warner Brothers has done with the DCEU. So why is Star Wars still kicking while the DCEU has been canned? Well to start, Star Wars has had decades of success and continuity to it while comic book movies have never before been interconnected. Before 2008, every comic book character and actor playing a role was simply wiped away as soon as a new movie and actor was ready to replace it. In addition, while Star Wars movies have been subpar to say the least, they have in recent years been buoyed by a superb television division. Television and a large amount of goodwill earned up overtime has been able to keep Star Wars in power, unfortunately neither are a luxury that the DCEU possessed.
Early evidence of a lack of direction can be seen within Warner Brothers with the choice to separate their television and movie departments. As mentioned before, Star Wars is able to keep their business booming even when the movies they are churning out have been underwhelming, due to the fact that they are creating fantastic television products. Another example of this to an extent can be seen in reverse with Marvel. They were creating fantastic movies at a time when their television department was struggling. While they have largely changed how their television division is operated, we are starting to see some of those former television stars crossover to now appear on the Disney Plus Marvel shows. DC chose to not have crossover with uber successful heroes like Green Arrow and The Flash from the small screen and it ended up sinking both ships simultaneously.
It wasn’t just that questionable decision that showed the lack of direction within the DCEU. Perhaps a more obvious tell was the amount of cancellations as well date changes within the DCEU. By my count, (and there’s probably more I’m missing) they announced roughly 15 movies that never even got made. Some of the biggest of those announced were Man of Steel 2, a Ben Affleck Batman movie, Justice League Dark, Jared Leto’s Joker movie and a Justice League sequel. Just from seeing this it’s clear that the DCEU had little directional vision as to what they wanted to happen in their universe and when. It’s difficult enough to launch and succeed in a cinematic universe with a clear directional purpose but when you do not have that Warner Brothers showed us it’s essentially impossible.
The Movies Were too Dark!
Okay this final section is a little facetious but seriously what was the purpose of having the movies so dark? Even watching at the theaters it was difficult to at times impossible, to see what was happening in a majority of the early DCEU movies. While a lot of the lighter toned movies that Warner Brothers flipped too later on didn’t have these problems, the biggest and most hyped movies did. In both Batman vs. Superman and Justice League there were whole sets that were virtually impossible to see. Were they cheaply made? Were some set parts rehashed? If they answer is no to both then we should’ve been able to see the movies and if the answer is yes then it becomes clear what the DCEU was from the beginning. A rushed money grab that never had a true chance of competing with Marvel for the top cinematic superhero universe.