As the new Wonder Woman film approaches, fans of the DC Universe are filled with trepidation. The DC Extended Universe has not fared well critically and while it’s monetary intake hasn’t been terrible, it’s also not quite the success the studios hoped for. There have been truly ugly fan wars as a result.
What could the DC Extended Universe improve on? What could help them compete with Marvel on the big screen? What are the problems of the last few movies exactly?
Let’s take a look at some of these potential problems and their solutions and see how the DCEU might be able to change for the better.
The movies keep skipping over the important parts.
One big problem with the DC Extended Universe has been how it’s putting the cart before the horse. One thing that helped the Marvel Cinematic Universe reach the success and relative cohesion it achieved was the buildup. There were several movies leading up to The Avengers, establishing the characters, telling their stories and helping the audience care about them. When they finally got together, it meant something the audience.
In an effort to compete with Marvel, the DC Extended Universe has decided to skip all the build-up and try to go straight for the payoff. They introduce the characters but don’t establish who they are first.
A lot of this is apparent in Suicide Squad. A villain team-up movie is a fun idea- if you’ve actually established the villains before-hand and given the audience a reason to care that they’re teaming up. They introduced each villain with a quick snapshot of their background- Harley Quinn is the Joker’s girlfriend and helped murder Robin. Too bad we never saw this important murder onscreen. Deadshot is a longtime Batman villain who has a huge obsession with him. This just comes out of nowhere because we’ve never seen Deadshot fight Batman before this movie and only see the conflict between them is only in the briefest of flashbacks. It’s a basic rule of storytelling that before you have the big villain team-up you have to show what the villains are like on their own, but that was thrown out the window with Suicide Squad.
The whole fact Jason Todd/Robin was apparently murdered in the past and we’re supposed to care about that and what it means for Batman without having even seen the kid in action as Robin is a prime example of this weakness in storytelling. Killing Robin doesn’t mean anything if we’ve never met Robin. We’re introduced to a sad, bitter Batman, but we don’t see how he got there or even what he was like before. Who is this Batman? Is he the same one from the Nolan movies? Is he some sort of mish-mash of all the different Batmans? We don’t need to retread his origin again, but the audience at least needs to understand Batman’s place in this new universe and what’s been carried over and the movies just don’t bother to explain it.
A final example of the disordered storytelling of the DC Universe is how Superman is killed off after only being around for one movie that mostly focused on him growing up and then getting into one big fight that destroyed Metropolis, yet we’re supposed to see his death as some big deal and huge blow to the world. Superman’s death is supposed to be the death of an icon, but instead he’s killed off before even becoming that icon.
Unfortunately for the DC Universe, you can’t just skip to the end and expect people to follow along. One big thing they need to work on is building up their characters so it will matter when they break them down.
The movies try to do too much at once.
Another problem that plagues the DC Extended Universe is the fact they try to do far too much at once in each movie. Batman v Superman is a prime example of that. Several different stories were thrown together in a way that just detracted from all of them. We got Batman v. Superman, but we also got the Death of Superman, the introduction of Wonder Woman, the introduction of Lex Luthor, a little bit of Darkseid and his minions in an incredibly out of place scene that also involved a time traveling Flash but also was a dream (?) and very brief snapshots of future Justice League members. It’s all too much and it fits together too awkwardly.
Suicide Squad tried to juggle a huge cast of characters we’d never seen before. This resulted in a lot of characters with close to zero characterization. Some of them barely spoke one line.
Rather than trying to do everything at once, the DCEU needs to try to focus on telling one coherent story at a time that allows the audiences to get to know the individual characters and what drives them.
The strength of Marvel’s earlier movies was that while they set up things for The Avengers, they also worked well as standalone stories. The same can’t be said for Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, where there are tons of scenes that make no sense if you don’t get that they’re trying to set up this or that storyline from the comics and where there seems to be huge chunks of story missing.
The movies need to find a better color balance.
It’s a common complaint, but the DCEU Universe movies tend to be murky and monotone and not very fun to watch. It’s like a gray stormcloud is hanging over the movie at all times. Suicide Squad seemingly tried to fix this, but went about it the wrong way. We got eye-searingly bright colors and funky pop-art style intros, but then the fight scenes and the climax were as murky and dull looking as ever.
DC doesn’t need to have neon blaring left and right to fix its color problem. It would be enough just to inject a little bit of color where it’s appropriate. A splash of brightness can help fight scenes pop a little more. They don’t need to become Marvel, but they can develop their own distincitive visual style that’s more than just “gritty gritty gray”.
There's a problem with studio meddling.
Let’s face it, studio meddling is a problem in all movies. But the meddling in the DCEU is particularly sad and damaging. This was most apparent with Suicide Squad. The studio scrambled to do reshoots for it in light of the poor reception of previous movies and that might have hurt the movie a lot more than it helped it. Most egregriously, they put a company that edits trailers in charge of editing the whole movie. Being good at editing trailers doesn’t mean a company’s any good at editing movies, so this might explain why Suicide Squad came off as an extended trailer.
Director David Ayer was apparently really stressed out, exhausted and under a lot of pressure because of the last minute reshoots and the studio messing with the movie as well. Ultimately, this level of studio meddling isn’t helping anyone. The companies involved need to focus on recruiting directors who will make the kind of movie they want and that will be successful the first time around and see to it that these directors carry through a singular, coherent vision that works. All this last-minute editing can’t cover up the messy parts of the movie. Suicide Squad’s disjointedness proves you can’t put a band-aid on a gaping wound- you have to sew that sucker up at the start.
There's not a cohesive continuity.
Another problem with the DC Extended Universe is it’s very hard to establish a timeline for it. This is a problem that plagues comics and comic book movies in general, but it’s especially egregrious in the DCEU due to that habit they have of skipping around and hitting fast forward on events. It’s hard to even figure out in what order events happened, much less how they fit together.
The continuity questions lead to a whole lot of other questions too What has Batman been doing in Gotham the last few years? How the heck did Clark Kent not know about a famous guy like Bruce Wayne if he’s supposed to be a reporter? What has Wonder Woman been doing for 100 years if she gave up on being a superhero? Where do the Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman even fit? Does Dick Grayson exist? Does ANYTHING exist? Okay, I got carried away with that last one. But you get what I mean. It’s pretty confusing and there’s a lot that needs to be cleared up.
There's too much reliance on Zack Snyder.
Zack Snyder had proven to be a very divisive director and general creative force with his work on the DCEU. His work is controversial among fans, critics and the general audience. Due to this, it’s a bit baffling the DCEU keeps relying on him so heavily. He’s involved in the production of most of their upcoming movies, even after the mixed reception his previous work has had. I’m not saying Zack Snyder should be ousted entirely, but DC needs to move away from relying on him so completely. They need to find a few different creative forces to oversee this universe, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket.
It seems like they’ve started doing this, with new directors entering the mix and Geoff Johns taking a more prominent role in production. But it’s really direction they need to focus on with all their might. Snyder is fine for a lot of people, but also very not fine for others. The entire DC Universe shouldn’t be something that rises or falls with only one man supporting it.
There needs to be more for the villains.
It’s widely agreed that one of Marvel’s greatest weaknesses is not really having memorable villains. This is one area the DC-verse has a potential to totally outdo Marvel at, which will keep them competitive. DC has a great stable of villains and they were even able to carry their own movie. However, the villainy hasn’t reached its full potential thus far. Zod was pretty good, but there was a very mixed reaction to the new interpretation of Lex Luthor. Many found him annoying and his plan didn’t make much sense. Jared Leto’s version of the Joker didn’t really set the world on fire either and he earned a lot of ill will with his bad behavior on set.
The baddies from Suicide Squad have potential, but they weren’t really established before the movie threw them all together. And now they’re not really baddies anymore.
DC has some of the best villains in fiction in their arsenal, so they could really do good with them. But they need to try a little harder than they have been.