Warner Bros Do Not Deserve DC!
You know, I’m going to come out and say it…
What the hell, Warner Brothers?!?
Longtime readers know that I’m a big supporter of Superman
and DC Comics. Of course, when I first
read Superman comics, DC Comics was self-owned.
Then it got purchased by Time-Warner, which owns the film titan Warner
Brothers. And for the longest time, this
partnership helped, because Warner Brothers could call on DC heroes for
superhero movies. Superman and Batman,
of course, were the big guns for the WB.
They were the money-makers. And
when they weren’t spending money on live-action movies, they were doing TV
cartoons and animated motion pictures.
It was a win-win for them.
They owned the rights to all the characters they could use for their
productions. This was something that
Marvel Comics could not claim, after selling the movie rights of their biggest
money-makers to Universal and Sony and 20th Century Fox.
But lately, the overpaid executives in Warner Brothers have
been screwing up as bad as the Democratic Party when it comes to their DC
heroes and villains.
First, they countered the financial success of Marvel Studio
with “Man of Steel”, which was a controversial reboot of the Superman cinematic
franchise. Instead of the iconic
superhero, we got a brooding and sullen drifter. A “Superman” that quite literally was made by
the same people that just rebooted the “Batman” series for the “Dark Knight”
trilogy. It did okay in the box office
and it divided diehard Superman fans as to whether or not we got the hero we
deserved.
Then director Zach Snyder hit the “reboot” button again for
Batman and putting him in the next movie: “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of
Justice”. The problem being that he
pitted his newly-rebooted legends against each other, made Superman into a
villain (no, really, he did), and
then killed him off. (Oops.
Spoilers.)
But that would be okay, right? It made money. It made good money. Who cares if it pissed off fans? Who cares if it alienates the very people
that have kept these characters alive in their hearts and minds for
three-quarters of a century? It made
Warner Brothers almost a billion dollars and that is all that matters to them.
And then afterward... “Suicide Squad” was good, but pissed
people off simply because it was in the same universe as BvS. But then “Wonder Woman” did good, mostly
because of director Patty Jenkins keeping it light and upbeat and optimistic
and not “BvS”.
And then…
Loyal DC fans have been nervous about Snyder’s third movie,
“Justice League”. Snyder and his wife
were the overseers of the DC Cinematic Universe since “Man of Steel”, and with
the exception of “Wonder Woman”, we’ve been left a little disappointed. We’ve been wanting a DC version of Marvel’s
success, being able to have a string of movies that bring DC’s characters to
the big screen just like the Disney-owned competition.
And in between these movies, we’ve been teased with ideas
about other movies. A sequel to “Suicide Squad” and “Wonder Woman”, solo films
for Aquaman and Flash and Cyborg, a movie about the Green Lantern Corps and Shazam,
even a solo movie for Batman. These gave
us reasons to hope and to endure the disappointments.
But then came the rumors.
All those great ideas end up being just that. The solo movie for Batman gets a new director
and then the script gets wiped and suddenly rumors are abound of Ben Affleck
wanting to leave. The solo movie for
Flash becomes “Flashpoint”, the storyline that rebooted the DC Comic universe
into something worse. That’s pretty much
like going from Issue #0 right to Issue #500 and expecting people to just go
with it. Someone decides to come up with
a Joker and Harley Quinn movie that has no connection to the DCCU at all and
make it like a “young romance” deal.
And then comes “Justice League”. The movie that had to be finished with
“Avengers” director Joss Wheedon because of a Snyder family loss. A good movie, but not great, hacked to
conform to some micromanaged artificial timeframe, and quickly mocked by
haters. And then, to add insult to
injury, it gives a mediocre return at the box office.
Now everything is up in the air. The solo “Batman” movie may or may not happen
and it may or may not have someone other than Ben Affleck as Batman. The Flash movie is missing a director. The “Wonder Woman” sequel is supposedly a go,
but that is still just talk right now.
The solo “Aquaman” movie is done shooting, but that may very well be the
last DCCU movie.
And that makes me again ask… what the hell, Warner Brothers?
Let’s get brutally honest here… Warner Brothers has been
doing the world of DC Comics a huge disservice when it comes to movies. Sure they have ideas and money and talent,
but they lack the means of translating all of that into putting DC’s characters
onto the big screen and keep doing it.
They want the kind of money Marvel has been bringing into Disney, but
they just can’t seem to make it happen.
What the executives at Warner Brothers need to do is to swallow
their arrogance and their pride and put the DC Cinematic Universe under better
direction. They need to stop talking
about hitting the “reboot” button and stop talking about ending the DCCU and
instead go all-in with someone in charge of the vision. Warner Brothers already has a division called
DC Entertainment, which has been doing a great job coming up with
direct-to-video animated movies. Maybe what
Warner Brothers needs to do is to put all of their live-action DC worlds in
there as well; movies and TV and online and direct-to-video.
The other thing that Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to
understand is that DC is not like Marvel.
Marvel’s characters are supposed to be more down-to-Earth. They’re supposed to be more practical and
more realistic. Well, with the exception
of Thor. But that’s their schtick. DC, on the other hand, is meant to be iconic
and legendary.
If you ever saw the documentary “The Death of Superman Lives”,
then you’d know that Warner Brothers really screwed themselves over the multiple
attempts to remake Superman prior to “Superman Returns”. That’s how you turn a good idea into an existentialist
abomination featuring Nicholas Cage as Superman. That’s what WB execs did to Superman because
they simply did not understand the character.
“Wonder Woman” succeeded because director Patty Jenkins understood
the character. “Justice League” redeemed
itself to many fans because Joss Wheedon knew how to make superhero movies work
and made the right tweaks to Snyder’s vision.
DC needs to follow through and move forward, not look for a reset
button. They don’t need to remake
anything. They have all the material
they need already. They just have to be
allowed to make it happen, and in a timeframe that the fans would appreciate.
There is an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. It is high time that Warner Brothers learn
from their mistakes and let the DC world show them how to make superhero
movies. Make the good story first, the
kind that the fans want to see, then the money will follow. That’s how you match Marvel and eventually
beat them.
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