DC Is Officially Stepping Away from Its Expanded Cinematic Universe

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Megalith

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Warner Bros. and DC will be de-emphasizing the interconnected DC Extended Universe for future films, following a template set by Patty Jenkins’ blockbuster hit Wonder Woman: it’s something that’s been hinted at before, with reports of the standalone Joker prequel and director Matt Reeve’s conflicting statements on whether The Batman would be part of the official connected universe of films, but now DC Entertainment has made the change official.

DC and Warner have adopted a new strategy: Let’s rethink that whole universe thing. They’re not giving up on the idea of continuity, but they want to deemphasize the idea that all of these flicks are occupying the same space. “Our intention, certainly, moving forward is using the continuity to help make sure nothing is diverging in a way that doesn’t make sense, but there’s no insistence upon an overall story line or interconnectivity in that universe,” says Nelson, drawing nods from the top brass around her.
 
It was a stupid idea anyway. I'm not so sure bringing comic books into the movies was a good idea in the first place. But in the era, of hollywood being completely impotent and refusing to try anything new, what can you expect? The nth re-hashing of stupid crap, reboots, and comic adaptations.
 
M76 said:
It was a stupid idea anyway. I'm not so sure bringing comic books into the movies was a good idea in the first place. But in the era, of hollywood being completely impotent and refusing to try anything new, what can you expect? The nth re-hashing of stupid crap, reboots, and comic adaptations.
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How was it not a good idea? It made billions upon billions. Most people that enjoy these movies have very little experience to none about the comic books. The very vocal minority that have a issue are the comic book nerds that rage at any minor change. I grew up read the comics and watching the old cartoon and love most the comic movies.
 
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If DC started this back when marvel was doing it then it would of worked. But it was big gamble, when marvel movies first starting putting this together a decade ago, I told my self it they pull it off it'll be huge.
 
Nothing wrong with the movies. Batman was alot better than I figured Afleck would be and Suicide Squad was great.
 
vegeta535 said:
How was it not a good idea? It made billions upon billions. Most people that enjoy these movies have very little experience to none about the comic books. The very vocal minority that have a issue are the comic book nerds that rage at any minor change. I grew up read the comics and watching the old cartoon and love most the comic movies.
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I don't really care about how much money they made, I care about good movies. They're not very good movies, their artistic value is close to zero. They're churning out these popcorn flicks like an assembly line. The art has all but disappeared from hollywood.
 
I agree, I find the DC movies to be refreshingly different......Ben Affleck....God Help Me for saying this but.....dude did a good job! Man of Steel is absolutely worth a re-watch, it's a shame they made the character so unbelievably wooden in BvS....they could have gone somewhere there, but maybe that's why DC is DC and not Vertigo. I was hoping for a cameo of John Constantine walking down the street but you know.....I gotta temper those expectations.

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This could be good as in they need to stop trying to copy and "catch up" to Marvel, and just focus on making good movies. Overstuffing is what I felt really killed Green Lantern and Suicide Squad.

I read about their idea of doing Elseworlds like one shots so they could attract major A-list talent that does not to be stuck under multi picture contracts.
 
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M76 said:
It was a stupid idea anyway. I'm not so sure bringing comic books into the movies was a good idea in the first place. But in the era, of hollywood being completely impotent and refusing to try anything new, what can you expect? The nth re-hashing of stupid crap, reboots, and comic adaptations.
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And yet Marvel's film side is making tons of money even with lesser properties all in a shared universe. The problem is the movie needs to fit the tone of the character(s) in it and actually be good.
 
DC rushed it because Marvel showed everyone it was a goldmine. When Marvel did it, it was a huge gamble done out of "Hey, wouldn't it be totally cool if..." and it worked.

DC saw Marvel do it and instead of taking their time, developing their characters, building a solid world etc., they thought "let's make ONE superman movie and immediately follow it up with a bash-up universe-tie-in with characters our audience has yet to meet, with new actors playing old roles and tons of heartless special effects!

Marvel made Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man 2 BEFORE they made their big universe bash-up. They took their time, introduced their world, developed their characters, tempered audience expectations, made people WANT to see these separate characters team up in a big blockbuster.

Marvel made money by making movies.

DC made movies to make money.

There's a difference.
 
But the last DCEU moves worked so well with absolutely no continuity errors or forced character appearances :confused:
 
It is oblivious that many people here have a complete lack of reading comprehension. They are not going to stop making movies. If you had bothered to read the posting you would see that what they are stopping is the connection between said movies. So when they make the stand alone batman movie that will be a different batman (batman B) and be a complete reboot of Batman separate from BvS, Suicide Squad and Justice League (Batman A). When they make the Harley and Joker movie that will be new actors and actresses meaning also a new Batman (Batman C) separate from the other the two others also giving. So there you have 3 batmans, 2 Harleys, and 2 Jokers. Then you have the movie Gothem City Sirens, which again will be all new actresses playing the people and be again separate from the Harley (giving us 3 Harleys) in the Suicide Squad or the other movie. Then when the Flash and Aquaman movies come out they will not be related to the Justice League movie but also will be complete reboots of the story with new actors and new stories not related to anything else. Who knows maybe now a Wonder Woman 2 movie could recast Wonder Woman and be another reboot separate from the first movie... How is any of the a pro for the people watching the movies? If they are going to start pumping out all these movies they need to work to make them connected to help make sense and tell a consist story. That is one thing that helps the Marvel movies. You get a small piece of a character in one movie then get to learn more about them in their own stand alone or get to see him interact with everyone else in another. You don't get a damn reboot of the story every over year because the Iron man in Iron Man 2 isn't the same Iron man in the Avengers and that isn't the same Iron Man in Captain America Civil War because they are all different movies that have nothing to do with each other. To have so many different movies out at one time with the same characters telling different stories they need to be connected to some degree. You need the same actors and actresses playing the roles from one movie to the next so that you don't have to remember that all these people are playing the same character but just that each movie is an island and not related. We already went through 2 superman reboots. Now we will have to have another when they decide to make another superman movie since it wouldn't be related to anything else. About the only thing that would do for them is be able to say that this is happening on Earth 1, this is on Earth 12, this is on Earth 97... then be able to play with that later for their who infinite earth's stuff. But that just makes it more confusing not better.
 
I think the first thing DC (Warner Bros?) needs to do is just knock one out of the park, and then do what Marvel (now Disney) managed to do is don't make fucking duds.

Thinking back maybe the Incredible Hulk was the only dud to be released after Iron Man cam out, yeah you can maybe argue Iron Man2 & 3 weren't as good, and Thor DarkWorld was meh... but the fact is those movies didn't bring everything down.

But Marvel did one really good thing, and was actually fortunate for this, and they only focused on one aspect of the Marvel Universe (you can argue maybe 2 & 3 with Guardians & Dr Strange) but the fact Fox owned the rights to "mutants" and the Fantastic Four basically means they didn't have to spread themselves too thin by incorporating every little piece here and there. But WB needs to do it right, do their Justice League movie, and let that be a standalone, we don't fucking need a Flash movie, a Cyborg movie, an Aquaman movie, we already had our umpfuckingteenth Batman movie (luckily the Affleck version didn't go with the whole origin bullshit again), Wonder Woman was meh ok... but IMO not necessary. Just make Justice League not suck if the Avengers absolutely bombed there would be no "MCU", however I don't have much faith in the Justice League doing well.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I think the first thing DC (Warner Bros?) needs to do is just knock one out of the park, and then do what Marvel (now Disney) managed to do is don't make fucking duds.

Thinking back maybe the Incredible Hulk was the only dud to be released after Iron Man cam out, yeah you can maybe argue Iron Man2 & 3 weren't as good, and Thor DarkWorld was meh... but the fact is those movies didn't bring everything down.

But Marvel did one really good thing, and was actually fortunate for this, and they only focused on one aspect of the Marvel Universe (you can argue maybe 2 & 3 with Guardians & Dr Strange) but the fact Fox owned the rights to "mutants" and the Fantastic Four basically means they didn't have to spread themselves too thin by incorporating every little piece here and there. But WB needs to do it right, do their Justice League movie, and let that be a standalone, we don't fucking need a Flash movie, a Cyborg movie, an Aquaman movie, we already had our umpfuckingteenth Batman movie (luckily the Affleck version didn't go with the whole origin bullshit again), Wonder Woman was meh ok... but IMO not necessary. Just make Justice League not suck if the Avengers absolutely bombed there would be no "MCU", however I don't have much faith in the Justice League doing well.
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It also comes down to not doing 20 movies at once. They are trying to get up the level of the MCU in the course of about 3 years. Either do an justice league movie or do stand alone series. But at the very least make the related parts be related. If you want to have a batman series, superman series, etc do that, but at least make them all be sequels and have any spin offs be related to at least those stories. They are too all over the place with their stuff. They had their tv series all being part of one universe (even though different earths) but then now created a new show that won't be tied to the other 4 in any way even though it is on the CW like all the rest. They could have just not mentioned the two but left a door open to have a small connection at some point but they made it very clear that they new series will never touch the others and that they are not connected in any way, shape or form.
 
The justice league movie is going to flop so hard it will just be sad.

Really who cares about any of the characters. Consider it this way....

Affleck.. and Gal. Those are the only 2 heros we are really going to know anything about as an audience. Sure we know supes is coming along too... but no way he comes back to life until the final 40 min battle scene. No way zombie superman is getting a bunch of heavy character building scenes. lmao

When marvel did the avenger movies they didn't have to sell who black widow was or what her relationship with Stark was exactly. When Thor clashes with Iron man in the first Avengers the audience already knew exactly what the story was behind both, people picked a side or just though oh no no your on the same side dumbos.

Those types of interactions between flash / aquaman / and that terrible cgi looking cyberman are going to be stiff and completely unearned uneven and plain confusing. They are not going to have the time even if they make a 4 hour cut to properly introduce 3 brand new heros and explore any relationship they have with 2(3) other semi established hero. Never mind any relationships that may or may not be there with any potential foils.

Looking at the Avengers... Iron man / Captain America / Thor all had their own movies previous. Black widow and Coloson where introduced in IM and Fury was teased... Thor brought us Hawkey, Loki and Dr Selvig + the return of Colson. Captain America set up the Avengers by showing the birth of Shield and ending with the first intro to modern shield and more Nick F.

So when they did the Avengers the only semi new face was Bruce banner after the recasting of Norton and I guess the erasure of the Ang Lee Hulk misfire. Every hero was known, the non-super powered support cast was also already introduced. The bad guy was already known.

I feel like I may be rambling now... but I think I made my point. DCs JL movie is going to have just a few min to introduce each new character of which there are at least 3 heros and at at least 1 but like 2-3 bad dudes. Marvel didn't have that issue with the avengers, every single character and actors choices in terms of performance was known. To make matters worse people are going to groan when they realise we have already seen all these new heroes stupid hey meet flackman intros in the trailers.

WB I know wants the big huge tent pole make a billion type flicks NOW. What they should be doing is hiring talented young film makers... taking some of the less mined DC properties to develop giving them 40-50 million dollar budgets and letting them go to town without to much interference. They will likely get a bunch of profitable movies as the geeks will make them back 50 million easy... they would have no issues doing 4-5 of those a year. Chances are one of them would catch and be their Iron man. From there they could sequel it to hell and back... or if they had a clue just keep making the small arty comic movies and hope at some point they would have 3-4 cult hits that would lead to some crazy smash up mega money shaker.
 
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There are niches both Marvel & DC do well at. Marvel did well at the connected universe blockbusters. DC, on the other hand, is really much better in the TV and animated series departments.
 
ChadD said:
The justice league movie is going to flop so hard it will just be sad.

Really who cares about any of the characters. Consider it this way....

Affleck.. and Gal. Those are the only 2 heros we are really going to know anything about as an audience. Sure we know supes is coming along too... but no way he comes back to life until the final 40 min battle scene. No way zombie superman is getting a bunch of heavy character building scenes. lmao

When marvel did the avenger movies they didn't have to sell who black widow was or what her relationship with Stark was exactly. When Thor clashes with Iron man in the first Avengers the audience already knew exactly what the story was behind both, people picked a side or just though oh no no your on the same side dumbos.

Those types of interactions between flash / aquaman / and that terrible cgi looking cyberman are going to be stiff and completely unearned uneven and plain confusing. They are not going to have the time even if they make a 4 hour cut to properly introduce 3 brand new heros and explore any relationship they have with 2(3) other semi established hero. Never mind any relationships that may or may not be there with any potential foils.

Looking at the Avengers... Iron man / Captain America / Thor all had their own movies previous. Black widow and Coloson where introduced in IM and Fury was teased... Thor brought us Hawkey, Loki and Dr Selvig + the return of Colson. Captain America set up the Avengers by showing the birth of Shield and ending with the first intro to modern shield and more Nick F.

So when they did the Avengers the only semi new face was Bruce banner after the recasting of Norton and I guess the erasure of the Ang Lee Hulk misfire. Every hero was known, the non-super powered support cast was also already introduced. The bad guy was already known.

I feel like I may be rambling now... but I think I made my point. DCs JL movie is going to have just a few min to introduce each new character of which there are at least 3 heros and at at least 1 but like 2-3 bad dudes. Marvel didn't have that issue with the avengers, every single character and actors choices in terms of performance was known. To make matters worse people are going to groan when they realise we have already seen all these new heroes stupid hey meet flackman intros in the trailers.

WB I know wants the big huge tent pole make a billion type flicks NOW. What they should be doing is hiring talented young film makers... taking some of the less mined DC properties to develop giving them 40-50 million dollar budgets and letting them go to town without to much interference. They will likely get a bunch of profitable movies as the geeks will make them back 50 million easy... they would have no issues doing 4-5 of those a year. Chances are one of them would catch and be their Iron man. From there they could sequel it to hell and back... or if they had a clue just keep making the small arty comic movies and hope at some point they would have 3-4 cult hits that would lead to some crazy smash up mega money shaker.
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Hawkeye was in Thor for all of five seconds.

I think its a bit early to call flop for JL. They have done a crap load of reshoots on the movie and Joss Whedon is in charge of editing the entire thing. When Snyder stepped down due to his daughter's death WB put Whedon in charge of everything. Reports point to a new trailer coming next week and I wouldn't be surprised if it has a much more Whedon-esque tone. Reports are saying that Whedon has even removed Jesse Eisenberg's Lex from the movie. For as much as Whedon royally fucked up Age of Ultron, I think the combination of him, Affleck, and Geoff Johns calling the shots will turn it into a successful movie.
 
Derangel said:
Hawkeye was in Thor for all of five seconds.

I think its a bit early to call flop for JL. They have done a crap load of reshoots on the movie and Joss Whedon is in charge of editing the entire thing. When Snyder stepped down due to his daughter's death WB put Whedon in charge of everything. Reports point to a new trailer coming next week and I wouldn't be surprised if it has a much more Whedon-esque tone. Reports are saying that Whedon has even removed Jesse Eisenberg's Lex from the movie. For as much as Whedon royally fucked up Age of Ultron, I think the combination of him, Affleck, and Geoff Johns calling the shots will turn it into a successful movie.
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Well for the record I hope your right I would enjoy a string of good DC movies as much as the next next geek. :)
 
ChadD said:
Well for the record I hope your right I would enjoy a string of good DC movies as much as the next next geek. :)
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Yeah, me too. Wonder Woman proved that giving directors a little freedom can provide good results. It was far from a perfect movie, but it gives me hope for some of the other solo films. I'm particularly interested in Aquaman, much less so in Flashpoint. Flashpoint has never been done well and jumping into that kind of story this early on could be a huge mistake. Even if they do get Robert Zemeckis to direct.
 
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Krenum said:
Good. Tired of all the lame comic book movies.
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This. A thousand times this. It seems like Hollywood farts out some new lame superhero movie every week now. Who can even keep up with all of the crap they are pumping out? Superhero movies have become the new John Wayne westerns. It's gotten to where they're scraping the bottom of the barrel with superheroes no one gives a shit about, like antman, squirrel girl, Aquaman or Semen or whatever his name is.

The Nolan Batman movies were good. But that was like a decade ago, and the exception rather than the rule. Most of these movies suck balls and people are getting tired of them.
 
vegeta535 said:
How was it not a good idea? It made billions upon billions. Most people that enjoy these movies have very little experience to none about the comic books. The very vocal minority that have a issue are the comic book nerds that rage at any minor change. I grew up read the comics and watching the old cartoon and love most the comic movies.
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I have close to zero comic book experience. I enjoyed Iron Man but since that it's just been the same crap over and over. They're enjoyable enough as mindless popcorn movies but I stopped seeing them in theaters (except Wonder Woman which was pretty awesome, albeit still a fairly typical comic hero movie).
 
As a kid and a comicbook lover and collector ( not so much these days ) I can tell you .. DC was never popular at our local Comicbooks store. It was Marvel this, Marvel that. For me and I think the majority of people out there, DC movies generally do not live up to how good and exciting Marvel movies are.

I've always thought DC movies were just not that great.

I just watched Spiderman Homecoming and was blown away. Great story. Look forward to more of this actor.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
This. A thousand times this. It seems like Hollywood farts out some new lame superhero movie every week now. Who can even keep up with all of the crap they are pumping out? Superhero movies have become the new John Wayne westerns. It's gotten to where they're scraping the bottom of the barrel with superheroes no one gives a shit about, like antman, squirrel girl, Aquaman or Semen or whatever his name is.

The Nolan Batman movies were good. But that was like a decade ago, and the exception rather than the rule. Most of these movies suck balls and people are getting tired of them.
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I'll take a Marvel or DC superhero movie any day over anything else (besides something Star Wars related).

I liked the Nolan Batman movies, but looking back they weren't as good as people want to make them out to be. I liked Batman Begins for the fact it used a different villain and didn't start off with the obvious choices for a villain we've seen a million times. By the third movie, I had gotten tired of the "we need to destroy Gotham" theme.
 
My issue with the interconnection is one of the public with in the movies. When you have a one off character or story arc, the public can be always be surprised or taken back by what is happening.

But when you start interconnecting everything, you have to expect that the public is aware of all these crazy fucked up things going on, and EVENTUALLY you will get an Incredibles or Watch Men moment where the public says "Hold on" and demands some level of resolve from all these super heroes. The normies aren't just going to sit back and cower in place while super heroes bring death and destruction upon the planet over and over again.

But by keeping it separate, you are able to have a state of shock or subversiveness to the public because there is no expectation that the public would be aware of these things.

Thankfully they haven't tried mixing Thor, Superman, and the X-men......the public just wouldn't stand for that (and to X-mens credit, that was a large part of the storyline).
 
best DC films bar the "dark knight" trillogy are all animated ones as they more or less stick close to the source material and capture the look and feel alot bette than live action. tho gotta say i was expecting wonder Woman to be a turd.

the problem with DC is almost everything seemes rushed. they shoulda fleshed out scripts for batman vs superman more and should release a dir cut of superman as theres been a ton shot footage left out.
 
I grew up reading DC and Marvel, along with a number of independents from the 60's thru the early 2000's. I mainly stopped because of the incessant restarts and it just got too expensive.

Not going to say that all of the MCU comes off smelling like roses. I will say that since Feige took over there is at least a consistent feel to them and it's not quite the mess it was in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's. Looking back some won't see that he really took a gamble on all the MCU movies. They each had some risk. Some worked better than others but none completely failed. Throughout it all, though, there's some consistency. Not sure which site but I did read an interesting list that showed a chronological order to the movies, netflix, and tv. Just an FYI in case anyone really has that much time to spare.

In the 90's and early 2000's I was amazed at how Bruce Tim, Andrea Romano, Paul Dini, and the many, many talented people created the animated universe. It was at a time when I thought I was done with comics and when Batman, Superman, even Static Shock, Batman Beyond, then JL and JLU hit their peaks I can't remember how many times I thought it couldn't get any better. The straight to disc features have really gotten formulaic and the animation hasn't evolved-sometimes quite the opposite. Some I like, but most I pass on at his point.

DC movies, well, I'm not very happy with them for the most part. There doesn't seem to be any kind of focus for identity and it feels more like lets throw this out there and see what works. I like parts of them but so far there's no one movie I find myself wanting to watch over and over. I own around half of everything since Nolan and usually struggle to watch the rest when on cable.

I think the WBverse is pretty awesome even though I don't watch them much. They at least seem to have some closer ties to the whole spirit of the comics and not just some marketed extrapolated piece. Extrapolation seems to be what DC is giving into at this point. They're basically saying they can't tell a multi layered linear story and aren't even going to try. It's pretty much one giant Spider-Man universe for them.
 
I wish they would have done a death of Superman series like the comics back in the 90's. I had all of the issues including the entire series in an Omnibus. I even remember when it came out, we had it on the front page of the local News Paper that Superman was dead. I never watched the abomination they released that had Doomsday in it, mainly because he looked nothing like the Doomsday in the comics and I didn't want to tarnish my memories.

The-Death-Of-Superman-Trade-Paperback-Edition-2nd-Print-With-UPC.jpg


Say what you will about DC. But this particular comic was epic!
 
Krenum said:
I wish they would have done a death of Superman series like the comics back in the 90's. I had all of the issues including the entire series in an Omnibus. I even remember when it came out, we had it on the front page of the local News Paper that Superman was dead. I never watched the abomination they released that had Doomsday in it, mainly because he looked nothing like the Doomsday in the comics and I didn't want to tarnish my memories.

The-Death-Of-Superman-Trade-Paperback-Edition-2nd-Print-With-UPC.jpg


Say what you will about DC. But this particular comic was epic!
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This was cool as was Death in the Family and the original Killing Joke in terms of when DC was at a turning point for sheer dramatic story telling.

If you really want a good laugh and haven't already seen it: Max Landis' Death and Return of Superman is awesome! It unfortunately explores the downward spiral that DC took after this.
 
HeadRusch said:
I agree, I find the DC movies to be refreshingly different......Ben Affleck....God Help Me for saying this but.....dude did a good job! Man of Steel is absolutely worth a re-watch, it's a shame they made the character so unbelievably wooden in BvS....they could have gone somewhere there, but maybe that's why DC is DC and not Vertigo. I was hoping for a cameo of John Constantine walking down the street but you know.....I gotta temper those expectations.
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It's hard to watch a Superman movies. It's a goody two shoes who's damn near invincible. It's just not a character you can relate to, nor really all that enjoyable to watch his fights. There's no cool martial arts or gadgets. It's nothing more than, throw this guy at random things that are far away, then do a flying punch. Once in a while, shoot some laser eyes or some shit. It's all very boring.

Man of Steel wasn't a bad movie, but it's not one you can really even remember. BvS I can at least remember the Batman parts. I don't even remember what Superman did in that movie, except almost get killed by Batman.


The only problems I see with these DC movies, is gap too big or things too rushed. We got Man of Steel in 2013, then BvS in 2016. That's way too big a gap for ppl to even remember what happened in Man of Steel. Wonder Woman came out at a good time, but all the sudden we're getting a Justice League movie. We haven't even gotten to know Aquaman, Cyborg, or Flash. They need their own seperate movies, so we can get to actually like them as characters, before you combine them together. Otherwise, we'll have a movie with ppl we really don't know or care about.

I can only hope it comes out good.
 
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