The year 2016 has been a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s been the year of one of the most tumultuous elections ever; it’s been a year where many famous figures have passed away. But for me, among many things, it was the year the DC Films screwed up royally. A year in which Warner Brothers and DC was finally kickstarting a universe akin to the incredibly popular Marvel Cinematic Universe was met with incredibly disappointing results.
This year, Warner Bros. released two films featuring characters from the DC Comics universe. The first being Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, featuring two of the most famous western icons in all of popular fiction uniting on screen for the first time ever. The second was Suicide Squad, a lesser known property featuring very popular characters such as The Joker and Harley Quinn from the Batman mythos. Both of these films were highly anticipated and buzzed about throughout this year and years before. But both were given poor reviews and varied box office success, worst of all. They left the majority of fans unsatisfied.
Batman v. Superman suffered for a lot of reasons. For one, it was simply a poorly made movie with too much plot without any substance. It also had a core misunderstanding of characters such as Superman that really alienated audiences (Not a pun). It didn’t help the film that it had been hyped to audiences for years as the next big thing. It would be better than all of the Marvel Studios films that some found to be too simple and silly. This was the dark, introspective, character film that people wanted out of superhero films. But what they got was something much worse and arguably dumber than the films they were claiming to be better than. Its punishment was a box office intake much weaker than expected for a film starring Batman and Superman. It made a lot of money, but the studio didn’t feel it reached its full potential.
Suicide Squad is a film that’s problem’s stem in a way from Batman V. Superman. After the release of BvS, the studio thought that the darker, serious tone of the film had turned off audiences. Suicide Squad was being sold as a neon colored roller coaster with a lot of dark humor from recent trailers, but those were apparently not indicative of the feature film itself. So Warner Bros. called for massive reshoots and tried to make the film what audiences wanted. They went as far as to give the company that edited the popular trailers for the film the final edit, a poor choice. What was released was another jumbled mess of a film that was incoherent, uninteresting, and plagued with clichés and plot devices that audiences were growing tired of. This film has fared better than BvS, with audiences liking this film slightly more. But in the end, that does no favors for the quality of the films.
So what happens next? In the next four years, over eight DC Comic films have been slated and are currently in production. Some are currently being finished; some are in early stages of preproduction. The DC Film train may be poor, but it is going at full speed with no signs of slowing down at this point. A Wonder Woman film is being released next year, along with a Justice League film. All of which have been doing there best to course correct after poor reception on all sides, especially Justice League.
But the big question is? Can this series be saved? If one were to look at their outlook and make a judgement call, the answer would be No, but that’s the thing about movies. These kinds of films are special and being worked on by many different directors and writers, some of which are great talents. Making great films can be hard, if there was a pattern to doing it, it would always be used. But there isn’t. So for now, the best answer is to have hope. That’s all that can be said.
