Movies

I can’t write about the DCEU anymore. It’s too sad.

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Didn’t kill me, just hurt me really, really bad

Jads

Being a DC fan can be so very trying. On TV, we’re killing it; the Arrowverse is as popular as ever and Titans was pretty much everything I ever wanted and more from a DC show. In animation, Young Justice season three cannot get a bad review, and the DC Animated Universe puts out potentially the best on-screen adaptations, full stop.

But when it comes to cinema, DC just cannot get its act together, and it’s utterly heartbreaking.

Worlds of DC in review

I’ve been writing about the DC Universe pretty much since it started proper with Batman v Superman, and in that time we’ve all been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. The theatrical release of ‘Dawn of Justice’ certainly left a lot to be desired, but both visually and tonally I was absolutely hooked. By the time of the extended cut’s release, I was sold on Zack Snyder’s vision.

Unfortunately, I was in the minority, and fans and critics alike turned on Snyder and the franchise itself in a big way.

Then Suicide Squad came along and things went from bad to worse. The plot was paper-thin and barely fleshed out enough for an episode of Arrow, let alone a two-hour plus movie. Oh and there’s the small matter of the characters – everyone seemed to love Margot Robbie’s Harley, but there was incredibly loud disdain for Jared Leto’s Joker (primarily because he committed the unspeakable crime of not being Heath Ledger).

While Wonder Woman was, for the most part, a very strong showing, it did little to bolster confidence for the upcoming Justice League movie which, after a string of production problems and an almost complete bastardisation from the original plan, looked just awful. The trailers, posters, reshoots, Henry Cavill’s ridiculous moustache removal – everything was just so poor.

Sidenote: Cavill had to keep his gross moustache as it was stipulated in his contract for (wait for it) Mission Impossible: Fallout. Yup, that’s right folks – terrible Tom Cruise managed to ruin yet another film, and he wasn’t even in it! This man must be stopped.

The problems with the franchise are so many, and already so well-documented, that I won’t go into depth here. I would suggest, as far as my limited sight can tell, that Warner Bros have demonstrated a staggering lack of backbone in this franchise though. It has consistently looked like WB/DC’s M.O. for the last three years has been a desperate appeasement of whoever’s shouting the loudest on Twitter on any given day.

“Do the comics!”

“Don’t do the comics!”

“Stop trying to set up Justice League!”

“Deliver 10 years of world-building in one movie!”

You need look no further than the straight-up absurd coverage of the Titans trailer last year to see that some fans really do not know what they want. A lot of folks were upset that the show wasn’t a campy remake of the 00s cartoon, but when the series finally released on the DC Universe streaming service (and now on Netflix), it received an incredibly respectable 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and I for one simply adored it.

What’s happened now, Jads? Tell auntie…

Oh it’s all this stuff about Matt Reeve’s The Batman (name TBD) movie. I’m trying so hard to give this project the benefit of the doubt, but every new bit of information breaks my wee heart. It was going to be in the DCEU then it wasn’t. It was going to star Ben Affleck, then it wasn’t. Like any announced DC project, the thing doesn’t exist in my mind until cameras start rolling, but this one does seem likely. Apparently it’s going to be more a detective movie, which is cool – but why couldn’t Ben Affleck do that? The scenes in Dawn of Justice where Bruce is snooping about at Lex Luthor’s party had a very James Bond feel to them – they sold Affleck as Bruce Wayne (as opposed to just Batman) for me.

I dunno, I just don’t get why you’d throw off a talented actor/writer/director who clearly had so much passion for the character and the franchise, and replace him with a guy who *might* fit us into his schedule, at some point, and whose most recent film I actually kinda hated. I talked about how annoying this film had become in this post from a year ago.

I was watching this IGN video the other day where they discussed potential stories for the Reeves movie, and it’s all so frustrating. They suggested Hush, sure – good shout. Kinda like Snyder set you up for that one with the Jason Todd Robin suit in Dawn of Justice, no? (One of Hush’s speculated identities in the course of the story is a resurrected Jason, FYI).

Batman exists best as part of a universe – one that WB/DC started building three years ago, and then just threw away.

It always felt like DC were rushing to get their cinematic universe in a similar state to Marvel’s, but lacked the patience, planning, and confidence to do it. The sad thing is, had they just stuck to the plan and produced a couple of DCEU films in that time, they would have accomplished that by now.

The universe has lamented in development hell for so long now, I’m not sure it can be saved.

What more’s to be said?

I’ve written a bunch of articles about the DCEU (now rebranded as Worlds of DC) for The Newplex which pretty much cover off everything I have to say about the state of this franchise (most recently I felt compelled to write an obituary for this sinking ship). You may be reading this and thinking “come on Jads, get a grip – they’re just movies.” And I hear you, in the greater scheme of things, these are just movies. But I feel incredibly passionately about DC, and these stories deserve their place on the big screen alongside their Marvel colleagues.

I saw a tweet this week, and it pretty much sums everything up in one sentence.

I don’t care about cricket, but this must be how it feels to be an England fan.

It’s OK, I can fix everything

I love movies. And I love DC. In not sure what my dream job title would be in Hollywood, but I know that if I ever worked there, my dream work would be to be part of the team that plots out the DCEU. We’d probably have the scrap the current one, but I would love to help craft a Bat/Gotham-centric series of movies to play out over the next 10 years. I appreciate that is an exceptionally arrogant thing to say – I write blogs on the internet, who am I to tell these highly-paid executives how to do their jobs? Well, gang, you’ve kinda screwed it up so far, so what have you got to lose?

I’d also happily take a Bat-family role off your hands, if you’re offering. Not Batman necessarily, I’m not greedy. But I’d make a mean Jason. Or maybe Damain? Or Nightwing? Ok, fine, I’ll just do it all…

PS. We all know I’m not gonna keep the promise of this being my last DCEU article, right?

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