Notes on the DCEU

I'm going to be recording a podcast discussing the DC Extended Universe films later today and I thought I'd do a gut-check on current thoughts about them that have differed from my views in the offered posts...it's a way of putting things into perspective and eliminating free-ranging thoughts that aren't pertinent—the panel is going over five films and detours and dead-ends won't help much.

To review, here are the posts of the five films in question:

Man of Steel:
https://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2016/03/man-of-steel.html
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
https://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice.html
Wonder Woman: 
https://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2017/06/wonder-woman.html
Justice League:
https://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2017/11/justice-league.html
Aquaman:
https://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2019/01/aquaman.html

1) There are films missing: Suicide Squad, Shazam!, Birds of Prey. There is a shared Universe aspect to these...Ben Affleck's Batman and Ezra Miller's Flash appear in Suicide Squad, and Henry Cavill's SUIT appears in Shazam! but these films are back-channel/alleyways to the main streets of the other films...the way Guardians of the Galaxy appeared when its trailer plunked down in the middle of the Marvel run of movies.*

Also, there are other films missing: Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films—it was Nolan's success with these that steered Warner Brothers to expand their DC Comics properties and drag them out of development hell, and they pegged Nolan to spear-head Man of Steel as executive producer. He was part of the decision-making team that hired Zack Snyder to direct and helm the project and oversee the accelerated the roll-out of the DCEU.

The biggest difference between the Marvel and DCEU game-plan is that DC had no executive overlord like Marvel's Kevin Feige to master-plan the films and the hired-hand directors must do battle with the Warner Brothers studio over all strategic matters. There once was a time when Warner Brothers would champion the films of directors like Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman and so many others—the priority was the films. Now, it's the bottom line.

The money has always been important, of course. Everything about a film, especially its budget, is concerned with making that money back and extend it to profit. But, these superhero movies are considered less than movies: the goal is not to tell a good story or make a good film, but to make as much money as possible. They are properties, but more than that, they are considered "tent-poles" on which studios depend for their very existence lest they fold. That's a lot of weight to be put on a pole.

The emphasis should be on making one good movie, rather than a series of them. Don't count super-chickens before they're hatched; make a good one and then you have the right to make any further ones. But, not until. There's a story about Sean Connery: Christopher Reeve called him (when he was cast as Superman for the 1978 Richard Donner film) and asked the man who was James Bond how to avoid being typecast and Connery's reply was apt: "First, be good enough that you DO get typecast, then worry about it..."

Studios should heed the advice.

2) The reviews were written of their time; If the movies had premiered in a media-vacuum, there might have been less time spent on the reactions, assumptions, speculations...and outright mendacity upon (and even before) the films' releases. My reviews are a bit too much a push-back against all that noise; better to stick to the subject than the echo, of course. Perhaps I'm giving the two "Batman" films too much credit—I do think they took admirable chances—and the display of the fallibility of Batman (exploiting his cynical cautionary nature) is a good choice, but at the expense of the Superman-dark emphasis, which might have been a fatal flaw in Batman V Superman. Snyder's Superman is so morose and misunderstood, one doesn't feel tragedy at his death, merely a deepening depression—we never see "the big blue boy-scout," only Superman under siege and doubting, never sure of his purpose and offer inspiration. We only see Batman's view (exacerbated by Lex Luthor's machinations) and that is not a pleasant movie-going experience. At least Justice League allowed a glimpse of "that" Superman to offer the contrast, but by that time the murk of the DC Universe is so pervasive that it's almost jarring.  

3) It was announced this week that the mythical "Snyder-cut" (or "A Snyder-cut") of Justice League will be made available on HBO MAX next year. One wonders exactly if it's necessary or what it will entail. Some effects work needs to be completed, evidently, and this version is reportedly 4 hours long...whether it is the originally conceived two-part film or merely a really long part one, one can only speculate (and there's quite enough of that going on). One suspects it will be a mixture of good and bad, not unlike the "Donner-cut" of Superman II, but at least one would be able to see the original intention, rather than the make-shift corporate compromise Warner Brothers sanctioned. 

* And there is another one—2011's Green Lantern (plunked down between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) pre-dating Man of Steel by a year. No one has mentioned 2019's Joker.