Is the DCEU the Most Disappointing Superhero Franchise of All Time?

WARNING SOME SPOILERS FOR JUSTICE LEAGUE

So it’s been a few days since I watched Justice League. And I have some thoughts. But right off the bat, I want to address the headline. Notice it doesn’t say “worst,” but rather “disappointing.” Why the distinction? Because it is rare to see a franchise make so many POTENTIALLY good moves and still muck it up. After rewatching Suicide Squad in the form of the Extended Edition, I’ve decided to rescore the DCEU films out of ten, and rank them. Now the EE of Suicide Squad doesn’t really change the film very much, unlike the Ultimate Cut of Batman v Superman, so I don’t have a separate rating like I do for BvS.

1. Wonder Woman 8.5/10

2. Man of Steel 7/10

3.  BvS Ultimate Cut 6.0/10

4. Justice League 5/10

5. BvS 4.5/10

6. Suicide Squad 4/10

Wonder Woman was legitimately great film with a slightly disappointing third act. Man of Steel is a more sci-fi epic take on the character and mythos that is watchable and even enjoyable in parts. BvS Ultimate Cut TRIES to earn its operatic scope and tone, but falls short with its schizophrenic dream sequences and random third act development. The rest suffer from studio post-production handling of the material.

Justice League could have been better. No, it SHOULD be have better. Instead fans are left with a film that doesn’t know what it wants to say, buried under a mountain of terrible CGI, and paper thin characters being played by a game cast. I’ve heard it described as “fun,” and I think that’s true for about 15 minutes of the film. Don’t get me wrong, Gal Gadot is still great as Wonder Woman, Cavill finally gives us a Superman who seems to enjoy being Superman, and Ezra Miller tries his damnedest to try give us a Flash who is the comedic relief of the group.

But never am I given a reason to care about The Flash or Aquabro- I mean man. Cyborg almost has an arc. He certainly has the beginnings of one. But the film decides the audience would rather see him blasting henchmen than have any sort of development. Cyborg starts off a Frankenstein monster, unsure of his humanity, and distrusting of the alien technology and his father, both of which are instrumental in the creation of the character. Fisher tries his hardest, but we can’t buy the performance buried underneath the shiny CGI that is 95 percent of his body when he’s not in a hoodie.

You see The Flash has a dad in jail. You see Aquaman has a complicated relationship with Atlantis. But that’s it. The Flash is socially awkward. Aquaman is a loner. This is as close as the film gets to adding layers to its characters. Instead the film tries to rely on Gadot’s arc as Wonder Woman and Affleck seemingly sleepwalking through scenes to pull the film along.

The worst part of Justice League is how forgettable everything is. The action is not interesting, the villain is a essentially a plot device, and the characters don’t really get much in the way of character defining moments. It feels like a movie the studio was forced to make at gunpoint. Which they absolutely weren’t.

Over five years ago, Marvel released The Avengers, and changed the game. It was understandable that DC, felt the pressure since the MCU kicked off in 2008, but the success of Avengers proved how lucrative this sort of enterprise could be. In 2013, Man of Steel was released as a mostly stand alone film, with a few references here and there, much in the spirit of Iron Man. It was a good, albeit slightly polarizing film. Critics did note that it was extremely joyless, particularly when compared with the Marvel counterparts. But it made lots of money, and this was encouraging.

BvS was announced next, and fans kind of lost their minds. Then DC officially cast Wonder Woman in the film, with the subtitle “Dawn of Justice.” We already knew Justice League was on the horizon, but putting the Trinity of DC together was a huge deal. Then the film came out. Instead of an epic encounter built upon philosophical differences with a sensible story, Zach Snyder and Warner Brothers gave the audience a choppy, dark trek through the young DCEU, with the final battle due to Lex Luthor blackmailing Superman into trying to fight the Dark Knight. Much of the first act seemed superfluous and nonsensical, and the third act intro of Doomsday was appropriately derided as an overblown CGI fight. There were a few brightspots, including Gadot’s Wonder Woman, but the film overall was a massive critical failure. It also made lots of money, and this was encouraging.

When the Ultimate Cut of BvS was released, the plot became much less choppy and more cohesive. You could certainly see what Snyder was trying to accomplish, but his project in many ways from doomed from the concept. See, Snyder was essentially trying to make Watchmen but with Batman and Superman. The cynicism, unhinged depiction of Batman, and godlike adoration of Superman were seemingly lifted straight from the acclaimed graphic novel, which Snyder had adapted himself years earlier. But at least his vision, as misguided as it is, tries to say something about these characters. Yes, Batfleck does little to convince the audience he’s some great detective when he’s being manipulated by literally the world’s least convincing psychopath in Luthor.

Worth noting is that the audience responded very well to early screenings. The hype train was in full force, before the crushing disappointment hit many of us in the theater. Later that year, Suicide Squad was released to similar audience responses. And just like BvS, the film about c-list villains forced to comet together as a team was panned by critics. It’s probably the worst DC film since Jonah Hex, maybe Catwoman. While BvS was choppy, SS is damn near incomprehensible with its editing. I’ve written at length the problems of this film, but it really is a chore to try and sit through. But it also made lots of money, and this was encouraging.

Wonder Woman was released next, and the audience scores were similar to SS and BvS. Luckily for everyone, this one turned out to be a great romp into the DCEU. Gadot emotionally anchored the film, and Patty Jenkins showed us what a comic film made without the much maligned “male gaze” looks like. It was, for me, an eye opening experience. Even thought the third act devolved into the standard DCEU fare, this movie grabs your heart, and by the time you get to the No Man’s Land scene, you want to believe in heroes again. The DCEU looked like it got a jolt energy, and things looked up. It also made lots of money, and this was even more encouraging.

Then Justice League was released. Like the previous entries, audience scores during the screenings were high. And, much like MOST of those films, this was also panned by critics. It also had the smallest opening of all of the DCEU films. We now live in a world where a sequel to the Guardians of the Galaxy opened to more money than the first Justice League film. And it didn’t have to be this way.

All of these films have talented casts. Suicide Squad also had a proven director behind at the helm. These movie COULD have stolen the crown from the MCU and formed a new legacy of a more mythic superhero shared universe. The DC universe has a wonderful, rich history and a cast of diverse, dynamic characters. The ingredients were there. But the one thing the DCEU is missing is a studio that trusts its filmmakers. Notice the top three in my list, while varying in quality, are the ones with a singular directorial vision. No alternate cuts made by trailer companies. No deep cuts to the story. No mandated run time to crunch the flagship of your shared universe into a measly 2 hours.

The DCEU isn’t disappointing because most of the films are bad. It’s disappointing because there are glimpses of okay to great movies in each installment, and that potential is consistently unfulfilled. It’s disappointing because the studio seems to have forgotten how movies are made, and instead opted to make feature-length trailers with moments that may seem cool in the abstract, but in reality come off entirely unearned. There’s not a lot of connective tissue between action scenes, few if any character arcs, and nothing resembling competent editing.   It’s disappointing because the man steering the ship has a fundamentally flawed, cynical take on the material while at the same time not given the freedom to develop that vision. My heart goes out to Snyder for his personal tragedy. I do not mean to attack the man, and certainly my criticism is limited to the product that he had hand in developing. The behind the scenes story of Justice League may have more to do with its disappointment than anything.

But the worse thing that can be said at this point regarding the DCEU is that I don’t care one bit about a Flashpoint, Aquaman, Batman, or Cyborg film. Justice League didn’t give a reason to care. I am very excited about a Wonder Woman sequel. But that’s about it. And that’s a shame. I think when DC announced these plans, we all hoped they’d be trying to compete with MCU, and financially speaking they have. But quality-wise? I’d say they are the third-tier superhero shared universe behind the MCU AND the X-Men films.

The potential was there. It still is. Although the DCEU has been disappointing so far I have some hope for the future because of that. Like Wonder Woman- I’m a “believer.”