When a silver-haired Bruce Wayne pulls on the cape and cowl once again after emerging from many years of self-imposed retirement in Frank Miller’s classic 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, he realises Gotham City has fallen so far into the depths of hell that Batman must adopt unprecedented methods to turn things around. Warner/DC now faces a similar challenge with its nascent cinematic universe, which has got off to the worst possible start thanks to the impenetrable mess that was Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The good news is that the studio does seem to be finally moving in the right direction. Warner this week announced the creation of DC Films, a standalone unit perhaps aimed at mimicking the success of Disney-owned Marvel Studios, whose movies have just passed $10bn at the global box office. The new studio will be led by the DC Comics stalwart Geoff Johns and Warner Bros’ own Jon Berg. The aim? Well, one has to hope it will be to build a style and personality for DC movies that allows multiple superheroes to flourish, and to turn back the Snyder-fueled shift into furrow-browed, death-by-CGI territory that hamstrung Batman v Superman and its predecessor Man of Steel.
It will be a tough task. The failure of Snyder’s turn at the tiller shows the one-size fits all approach to world-building simply doesn’t work when you have such disparate comic book titans existing in the same universe. Neither can Warner continue with its “director-led” approach to superhero movies, if this means giving film-makers free rein to murder the reputations of its best-loved heroes.
Batman v Superman borrowed heavily from The Dark Knight Returns, which ought to have been an encouraging development. After all, Snyder’s greatest previous successes, 300 and Watchmen, also cleaved closely to DC Comics’ greatest hits. But this time around, something got lost in translation.
Miller’s comic features a Superman whose hopeful decency is heavily contrasted with Batman’s grim-browed cynicism. The gaping chasm between the two heroes’ outlooks – one trusting in the powers that be to maintain order, the other convinced he is the only true hope for Gotham – is the key dynamic in the graphic novel.
In Batman v Superman, meanwhile, the two heroes are both hamstrung by cynicism. The caped crusader has become a thoughtless killer whose Batmobile is fitted with machine guns, rather than an ingenious detective who would save the life of his greatest enemy without a single thought. And the man of steel has become a gloomy, introspective outsider who everybody hates, rather than a wholesome all-American farm boy who everyone loves.
The rival Marvel cinematic universe has been labeled bland by a minority of critics. But at least Kevin Feige and his team have created a fabric that allows heroes as disparate as Iron Man, the Hulk and Spider-Man to flourish. Though it should be noted that the younger Warner/DC universe has a harder task to achieve: it’s dealing with key heroes and villains whose origins stretch over a far longer period, from as early as the 1940s to as late as the 2000s.
This is where the director-led approach doesn’t work and the establishment of DC Films might help. Audiences cannot be expected to accept that hokey boys’ own hero Shazam and razor-edged femme fatale Harley Quinn, or the wonderfully liberal 2011 reboot of Batgirl, can exist comfortably in the same universe. Yet we already know, thanks to a pair of upcoming Justice League movies, that Warner/DC plans to adopt the same multiple superhero, world-sharing blueprint that has been so successful for Marvel. It’s a have your cake and eat it attitude.
Perhaps Johns’ first move should be to push some of the older, 40s-based superheroes back on to the comic book shelf to allow newer counterparts to flourish. Giving Shazam the boot from Warner’s upcoming slate, and putting everything into the studio’s rumoured Harley Quinn-led all-female superhero movie would certainly be a good place to start.
In the meantime there are more immediate challenges, like those two Justice League movies. A big problem here is that Snyder has been placed in charge of both, and part one has already started shooting. Johns and Berg might have to move quickly before the Watchmen director relocates Aquaman to space, or transforms the Flash into a moody slowcoach.
