GUNNING FOR DC

 

Gunn and Safran. It's like Kibbles & Bits, but different.

            As part of the new merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery, it was announced that DC Entertainment was getting its own dedicated studio within the organization; similar to Marvel Studios. Becoming DC’s Kevin Feige was announced to be James Gunn, who will handle the creative end of things, and Peter Safran, who will handle the business side.

The DCEU logo: things that were and may never be.

            This is something they desperately, DESPERATELY needed. The current DC film universe, known as the DCEU, was a mitigated mess. You had the original Snyderverse that was heralded by Zack Snyder; which saw the DC Universe presented through his pretty dark-toned filmmaking lens. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were the prime examples of this, while Wonder Woman was allowed to drift off a bit with a touch more lightheartedness under director Patty Jenkins.  Those first two, while financially successful, were polarizing with audiences. You have your fans, and you have those who weren’t pleased with the depictions of Superman in particular. The studio took the opportunity to rejigger Justice League by putting Joss Whedon on it to try and duplicate the success of Avengers; however, the tonality of his footage clashed with what was left of Snyder’s shoot resulting in an underwhelming final product. Aquaman, Shazam!, and Birds of Prey, while set in the Snyderverse continuity, were allowed to be brighter and funnier, although only two of them were successful (Birds’ lackluster performance could also be attributed to coming out right as the pandemic hit). Wonder Woman 1984, unfortunately, had a little too much fun with itself to the point that its story was a mess and a complete miss with fans. The Suicide Squad, while better-received than Suicide Squad (yes, those are two different movies), didn’t get much of a chance to prove itself as the pandemic forced it onto HBO Max rather than a pure theatrical run. To try and earn back some good will, WB brought Snyder back to finish his version of Justice League, and, well, that opened a whole other can of worms I’ll deal with in a later entry. And that doesn’t even include the Multiverse projects that have no connection to the DCEU at all, like Joker, The Batman and the scrapped Batgirl.

The MCU.

            So, yeah, DC’s films were pretty directionless. WB had little faith in Snyder’s vision achieving what they wanted—to compete with the MCU—and kept hemming and hawing on keeping their own voice or trying to duplicate the fun and comedy of their competition. Additionally, DC wasn’t willing to put in the work of achieve what the MCU did. The MCU started slow: they introduced Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow across several movies before they ever came together as The Avengers. Their stories were already told, their origins already given (mostly), so that moment together had a lot more impact. Now, let’s look at the DCEU: they introduce their Superman, then introduce Batman fighting Superman with a cameo from Wonder Woman and Superman dies, and then BOOM! Justice League. Whose premise was partly based on the world mourning Superman’s passing—something else that was unearned via the narrative of the three films.

The DCAU: giving us a plethora of DC characters for 14 years.

            And what’s funny is DC already had the blueprints to make this kind of thing work. I don’t mean following Marvel film for film. I mean looking inward at their own output. Specifically: the DC Animated Universe. That’s the name for the 14 years of shows spanning from Batman: The Animated Series through Justice League Unlimited. Batman was its own standalone thing when it started. When it ended, they shifted gears to Superman, which was a tonally different show with a completely different feel meant to fit their interpretation of the character. Batman was eventually brought back for a brief time in a revamped form that matched the look of Superman but kept the feel of Batman. And the two characters interacted with each other. After a brief stopover in the future with Batman Beyond, we got Justice League. That series managed to introduce the rest of the team in itself while still including Batman and Superman and making it feel like an organic extension of the two shows while not feeling like either specifically. It had its own tone and methodology. See, DC already did what they tried to do in the films, except their animated division did it better.

Honestly: how many of you non-comic readers could've named these guys before 2014?

            I’m optimistic that Gunn was the right person to bring on board to get DC’s act together. He turned Guardians of the Galaxy into a viable property familiar to non-comic fans. He resuscitated the D.O.A. Suicide Squad franchise, going so far as to get it its own spin-off show with a second season on the way. Above all else, Gunn is a comic fan. He knows these characters. He’s read and followed their adventures. He respects the source material (your mileage may vary on that statement, but regardless of whatever changes he might make that literally EVERY OTHER MOVIE does, he does respect it). Further, it goes into another favorite mantra of mine: creative people should be in charge of creative industries, not suits.

DC is nothing if not constantly reinventing itself. And sometimes successfully!

            Hopefully, upper management gets out of the way and lets these guys do their thing. Their meddling is what caused their films to flounder in the first place (and led to the failure of many, many, MANY other films across time).