UPDATES BELOW
Given it’s slow, tottering, if self-inflicted, demise, and with a fresh DC Universe coming on line (which I face with both anticipation and dread), I thought I would take the opportunity while my wife is away this week to watch (in a few cases rewatch) the DCEU.
I’ll kick that off by asking, once again, what the heck this is:
While the initial appearance of a standard DCEU intro clip for all its movies got me excited peering at the fuzzy images in the final tableau to figure out who they were, I very quickly got kind of ticked off that they weren’t actually making use of the characters in the form they were making movies of them.
That’s not Henry Cavill as Superman. That’s certainly not Superman’s suit. (What is with those gauntlets, people?) That’s definitely not Jason Momoa’s Aquaman. Nor is it Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern (own it, DC!).
Now, obviously, they are meant to be generic versions of these super-heroes, perhaps alluding to DC’s rumored liberality with how their characters are visually represented in comics. But why introduce an Aquaman movie — heck, an Aquaman sequel movie — with an image of Aquaman that doesn’t align with the movie the audience is about to see? Especially when only a small percent of that audience has ever seen or read the comic book version of Aquaman?
Branding, people! That’s why you have this universe in the first place!
(Marvel, for all its sins, understands this. It’s studio intro is, itself, too long, but there’s never any doubt that it’s focused on the MCU, complete with scripts, and, more brilliantly, it evolves with time as new movies come out.)
Anyway, with that off my chest for likely the last time, on with the movies!
Update!
And, eleven movie (re)watches later, I am done.
Here’s an index to the reviews here on the blog, linked to the individual entries. Due to time constraints, I did not rewatch Aquaman (2018) or the first Shazam! (2019); I have included links to my previos Letterboxd review to them.
Bolded movies are ones I had not seen before.
| Movie | Year | Acting | Production | Story | OVERALL | ♥️ |
| Man of Steel | 2013 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 3.5 | |
| Batman v Superman: DoJ | 2016 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 1.0 | 2.5 | |
| Suicide Squad | 2016 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | |
| Wonder Woman | 2017 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 4.5 | ♥️ |
| Justice League | 2017 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | |
| Zack Snyder’s Justice League* | 2021 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | |
| Aquaman** | 2018 | – | – | – | 3.0 | ♥️ |
| Shazam!** | 2019 | – | – | – | 3.0 | |
| Birds of Prey: … Harley Quinn | 2020 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | ♥️ |
| Wonder Woman 1984 | 2020 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| The Suicide Squad | 2021 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 | ♥️ |
| Black Adam | 2022 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.5 | |
| Shazam! Fury of the Gods | 2023 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 |
* 4-hour event; ** Did not rewatch; numbers from previous viewing
Do I have any conclusions from all this?
¶ The above judgments are my own; your mileage almost certainly varies.
It is ironic (and wholly unintended) that the top two and bottom two are Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad films.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed some movies I hadn’t seen before, and also by how much I disliked some of the movies I hadn’t seen before.
¶ The DCEU ultimately failed because there wasn’t a strong leader guiding the creative and meta-creative process, creating an actual shared world, analogous to a Kevin Feige on the Marvel side of things. They had Zack Snyder, who wanted that role, and de facto sort of held it (but never officially, in WB’s eyes), but whose vision was not shared by a majority of the viewing audience (just a very vocal and dedicated fraction of it).
As a result, the DCEU became more about creative wrangling, toxic fandom, and nameless suits in the studio trying to micromanage creativity in the worst possible way: as a reaction to the previous film released, not in pursuit of a coherent narrative. “Order, counter-order, disorder” became the DCEU way, and the desire to create movies people would want to watch was thrown overboard in trying to avoid more losses.
¶ Executive turnover at WB didn’t help things any. Some of these movies went through three different regimes at the studio, each with its own priority, budgeting, and desire to tinker. Creativity and good movie-making is not improved by all that.
¶ The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — in terms of delaying movies, delaying the release date of movies (surely the plague will be over then and people will want to go out to the movies!), and the mish-mosh of theatrical and streaming releases certainly hurt any creative momentum and net profits.
¶ Ironically, just as I do my (re)watch, one of the ultimate DCEU films is finally dropping into theaters, Blue Beetle, and its predecessor, the much lambasted The Flash, falls into streaming in a week. Aquaman 2, assuming it is ever released and isn’t simply written off for taxes by WB, comes out later this year.
Ah, well, grist for future viewings.