Four years ago, we lived in a world without a Superman. We were five years removed from Superman Returns which had been dubbed a failure and the word reboot was on everyone's lips. With the end of Christopher Nolan's highly successful Dark Knight trilogy, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment saw their opportunity to use the Superman reboot Man of Steel to begin a new shared universe a la Marvel's Avengers. Fast forward to last week when we DC fans finally got our big team up movie, Justice League which quickly became a massive financial failure with some reports expecting WB to lose up to $100 million. While no radical course corrections have been announced yet, with a loss that big it's only a matter of time before that word, reboot, begins to rear its head again. So what happened to place the DCEU on life-support and can it survive this latest blow? Maybe not.
Right from the beginning, there were rumblings of a problem. When Man of Steel was announced and Zack Snyder was tapped for the director's chair, Sucker Punch had just come out. Sucker Punch, written by Snyder himself, is one of those rare movies that blew me away by how atrocious it was so I understood those who were vocal about their fears. Would he ruin this beloved character? Ultimately, though, I was comforted by the fact that Snyder's track record with adapting stories he didn't write (Watchmen, 300), was excellent. My faith was rewarded when Man of Steel was released; I genuinely loved it.
Read my original Man of Steel Review
Unfortunately, the wider audience didn't share my enthusiasm. Many fans took issue with the darker, Batman Begins-esque tone and the suggestion that Superman might take a life. Others, myself included, thought that the tone fit the character's origin story and that now that it was established, future movies would give us the true Superman. Critics and fans were starkly divided; we loved it or we hated it. Even with the controversy, the movie still made $291,045,518 domestically. So WB soldiered on with Zack Snyder placed at the helm of all things DCEU.
Snyder and WB then announced Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. While disappointed we weren't getting another Superman solo movie, I was excited to see the two most iconic superheroes of all time on screen together for the first time. The movie's release came in 2016 and was met with even more negative reviews. Once again, most took issue with the tone of the film. While it worked well for Batman, the one universally applauded aspect of the movie, most fans felt the ultra-dark tone did a disservice to Superman and that the story in general was weak. While I still enjoyed the movie and gave it a high rating, I would be lying if I said it didn't let me down. But again, the movie made money and so the DCEU staggered on, in the not-so-grand tradition of the Transformers franchise: financially successful but panned by critics and most fans.
Next in the Snyder-directed DCEU films comes Justice League. Now, as most of those reading this will know, Snyder had a very tragic event happen in his personal life that caused him to have to step away from the movie before it was finished. WB chose Joss Whedon, who it is important to note had already been working on the film in other capacities, to step in and complete the movie. Part of completing the movie was picking up re-shoots, a normal process almost all big movies go through; but rumors swirled that WB wasn't happy with the direction of the movie and wanted to make some changes. And so changes were made.
The movie came out and things got really interesting. The reviews were mixed once again, but this time they skewed more positive. Many of them calling the movie flawed, but a step in the right direction. What changed between BvS and Justice League? The tone. Whereas BvS was largely humorless and deadly serious, Justice League lightens things up tremendously. The two movies differ visually as well. Even the darker colored scenes in Justice League have a light filter. Opening weekend came and went and then we got the news: lowest box office opening of any DCEU film. How could this movie lose money if it had more positive reviews?
The answer is that Zack Snyder's tone and aesthetics have turned audiences off of DC movies. People saw Man of Steel and it didn't sit well with them. They hoped for better in BvS and found that WB had doubled down on Snyder's style and they hated it. Why would they come back for a third time around? Especially when the movie's marketing failed to SHOW them anything that proved the DCEU was changing.
To prove the concept further, let's look at the two DCEU movies that weren't Snyder's responsibility: Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. First, Suicide Squad boasted a similar, dark aesthetic and tone, but lured audiences in with a new iteration of the Joker, the first ever live-action appearance of Harley Quinn, and Will Smith. Unfortunately, while the movie made money, critics and audiences both tore it apart for its disjointed story line and silly villain.
On the flip side, Wonder Woman was a bright, optimistic origin story devoid of the "grittiness" that Hollywood has been hooked on since the mid-2000's. The story itself even addresses the battle between the darkness and the light within mankind and proposes that the light is stronger and that "only love can truly save the world." The movie went on to be a financial, critical and audience success. Easily the most all-around successful movie in the franchise.
When we look at the franchise as a whole, from beginning to (maybe) it's end, we can see that the DCEU movies directed by Snyder carry with them a darkness and heaviness that audiences have not responded well to. And while Justice League, by all accounts, has begun taking the franchise in a brighter direction, it may be too little too late.
So what now? Can the DCEU recover from its current predicament? Well, Warner Brothers really has two main options: reboot the whole thing or press on, making the right changes going forward.
Option one, rebooting, will be the simplest way forward. Throw out all the good with all the bad and start over in 5 years. A new Batman, a new Superman, a new Wonder Woman. Start from there and do it right the second time around. But if you do that, you lose Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and the positive momentum that franchise has. And of course, you lose Henry Cavill who is perfect as Superman when the director allows him to be.
Option two, pressing forward, is much more expensive. It requires WB to take a bath in the money they'll lose on Justice League and face major obstacles and uphill battles getting audiences out to their movies. But if they do and if they do it right, they can turn this thing around. Give audiences the lighter tone, character driven stories they're responding well too. Stay true to each character in their own context and blend those tones intentionally in team up movies.
Personally, I feel like WB should resist the urge to reboot and be patient. In time, if the filmmakers can grasp and communicate the things about these characters that audiences love, they can bring the DCEU back from the brink.
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