DC, we need to have a talk.
The last 3 weeks have been pleasantly surprising and hopeful. Within days, the thoughts surrounding DC comics existing within my mind that have been composed of a swirling miasma of anger, hurt, and general negativity for the past 5 years has been replaced with an uplifting reminder of why I fell in love with this genre in the first place.
I’m just sad to see that it took so long to get back to this point after years of doing the exact opposite of what worked in the first place.
After 5 years of chasing the “dark and gritty” rabbit with diminishing returns, the pot of the DC dark age has finally boiled over with the box office disappointment and critical slamming of “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” a movie so obsessed with chasing a style that doesn’t fit its own subject matter over the substance that would have made it work, that it practically forgot about that whole story thing that the moving pictures were supposed be conveying to the audience.
Between the restructuring of DC Entertainment to downsize Zack Snyder’s role in future productions while increasing the power of Geoff Johns with an official Kevin Feige-esque creative consultant position, the criticism over the aforementioned franchise starter and the critical acclaim of the newly released DC Rebirth line in the comic book territory, it would seem that DC has finally had their eyes opened to the toxic reality that they have created that is so desperately in need of course correction.
While it will be important for the DC Extended Universe to carve out its own distinct identity from that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the X-Men Film Universe, the fact of the matter remains that there are several lessons that they can apply from said franchises if they hope to build and sustain a viable competitor for the coming years.
Clarity in Character:
Superhero movies are built on strong characters; people that the audience follows who are well defined by their actions, have some element of relatability drawn to the surface by a great performance, and are compulsively fascinating to watch in different scenarios.
In using “Man of Steel” as the launch pad for such an expansive production project, Warner Bros. unfortunately took off on the wrong foot, as the 2013 Superman reboot was so concerned with trying to not be what had been done before that it forgot to nail down a solid foundation for what it was going to be.
The Superman of the DC Extended Universe feels like a response driven creation to the public notion that the very idea of Superman is dated.
While I may disagree with said notion, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with creating a new, even slightly gritty interpretation of a classic character. Sadly, while his reactions give off a solid sense of what he’s opposed to, it’s never decently established what he’s fighting for.
He spends the origin portion of “Man of Steel” aimlessly wandering for answers to questions that he doesn’t truly have and despite taking agency in the events unfolding onscreen, his character never truly forms a well defined arc.
This may have been a tad more hidden in his inaugural film due to the chaos that the plot descends into but this lack of grasping character would return to bite the production team in the ass come the release of “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” As a result, the production presents us with a murky undefined Superman, peppered with a Wonder Woman that feels superfluous to the plot at hand and a Batman that only works if metaknowledge of prior cinematic Batman portrayals are brought to screen (and even then, there are some contradictions) going against a villain with no clear motivation.
There are a lot of things that superhero stories can survive but weak characters are an instant death sentence. Comparatively, let’s look at corresponding examples within the MCU.
Steve Rogers is a physically weak man with noble nature that drives him to do more than he knows he can. He holds himself with the same level of confidence that his fellow army applicants do despite his smaller and weaker stature and pleads to be given a chance to do his part and fight alongside them to help people.
Instantly, we know that he’s passionate about fighting a particular cause. How does this inform his character? In a movie theater, he stands up to a bully that could easily beat him down, sacrificing his own well being for everybody else’s comfort and peace of mind, i.e. defending the people.
Why does he do this? When recruited for the super soldier program, he clearly states that he wants to fight the war, not to kill anybody but because he simply doesn’t like bullies and later claims that he always fights because once you start running from bullies, they don’t ever let you stop, implying to be speaking from personal experience.
The first half of “Captain America: The First Avenger” perfectly lays out its main character’s motivations and characteristics, setting up the dynamics that he will have to contend with upon actually receiving his abilities.
Similarly to Batman in “Dawn of Justice,” “Captain America: Civil War” had the task of introducing a new cinematic Spider-Man to audiences without recounting the origin story. Rather than use a precious 5 minutes or so to depict a piece of iconography from the character’s origin that has been beaten into the ground, they instead summarize its effects on the character with a subtle illusion to what happens when good people do nothing, in a dialogue in which Tony Stark and Peter Parker bond over motives while he gradually transitions from guarding his secret desperately to eventually sharing it with the man that can help him take his work to the next level.
In these sequences, acting, camera work, dialogue, music, and all other aspects of production blend together in order create strong and organic characters with clear motivations and endearing qualities that make them relatable. This small human touch is what keeps audiences coming back.
DC is so concerned with the mythological significance of their properties with no sense of humor or irony in regard to their portrayal that they’ve only succeeded in alienating the same audience that they’re chasing; An audience that ironically once praised DC for pulling this off with flying colors before.
One of the things that made Clark Kent so awe-inspiring in “Superman: The Movie” was watching him reach the decision to use his gifts to do great things in honor of his father, whom he “couldn’t save” despite all of his power. One of the things that makes “The Dark Knight” one of the best superhero movies of all time was watching Bruce Wayne struggle to keep up the fight as Batman long after he’s grown sick of doing it. This is in turn enhanced by watching his transformation into the noble and self-sacrificing Caped Crusader from a spoiled rich boy with anger issues who learns just how far he’s willing to chase justice.
Their insistence of chasing what these characters aren’t has betrayed the very elements that have made them viable franchises in the first place, something that their competition over at Marvel seems to have take note of.
Only time will tell if their lessons in proper character building have managed to stick but there are still more lessons to learn.
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