A More Connected Cinematic Universe Than Marvel ?

This past weekend at Comic Con the newest trailers for DC and Warner Bros. movies Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad were shown. The Batman v Superman trailer was immediately released online after it was shown at Comic Con, but the Suicide Squad trailer was just released yesterday. WB probably released an HD version due to the fact that there was a leaked version floating around on the web. There is no doubt that after watching the Batman v Superman trailer 2016 is going to be the year for DC superheroes, and now with Suicide Squad it looks like it will also be one heck of a year for villains as well.

Some people might be confused as to why we’re seeing the character of Joker who will now be played by the very talented Jared Leto in a film that doesn’t have “Batman” or “Dark Knight” in the title. The short answer if this was Marvel would be “it’s all connected” and the truth is that it really is. In the comics there are multiple crossovers between heroes, villains, and even crossovers between Marvel and DC.

In the comics the Suicide Squad is a team of antiheroes and incarcerated supervillains who are ultimately deniable assets for the government. They undertake high-risk black ops missions in exchange for reduced prison sentences and they operate under the directorship of Amanda Waller. She is a recurring character in DC comics usually as a government agent, or the head of a top secret group, sometimes she is an ally for DC’s heroes although she is an antihero character, she’ll be portrayed on screen next year by Academy Award nominee Viola Davis. Overall, The suicide squad’s existence helps explain why many villains in the DC Universe roam free without having heroes tracking them down…that is until they end up committing another crime of course.

Marvel. Ever heard of them? Chances are my question is rhetorical. Of course you’ve heard of Marvel, who hasn’t right? I don’t anyone that has no idea who Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Thor are. Everyone knows that they are the Avengers and up until last year the majority of people had no clue as to who The Guardians of the Galaxy were but they do now. Marvel has done a great job thus far on creating and expanding their cinematic universe, they established their main characters in stand-alone films before putting them all in movie called The Avengers.

Marvel has even gone as far as connecting their television shows Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Netflix’s Daredevil, and soon to be on Netflix as well Jessica Jones. The videos below are summaries of the entire MCU and of the events that happened during AoS season 2, Agent Carter season 1, and the trailers for Daredevil which up until now is Marvel’s darkest show and definitely worth watching.

There was a time when superhero films didn’t make all the money that they do now and they certainly weren’t as good either (there are exceptions). While Marvel started with The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man DC and WB only had one of their biggest cash cows bringing in money at the time and that was Batman, but of course let’s not forget that the Batman film franchise was pretty much dead after 1997's Batman & Robin. Christopher Nolan gave all of us a much needed reboot of the caped crusader and Heath Ledger gave us the best Joker performance in the Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight.

DC seem to have taken long to get the ball rolling with their films and after sitting back and watching the enormous success that Marvel has had they now found a way to get them on the right path. It’s good that they have taken their time with the DCU because they really couldn’t afford to take another flop like they did with Green Lantern. They’re also not setting out to make terrible films, they want to make fans happy, they want the general movie going audience to enjoy their movies, and they are showing us.

It’s unfortunate that the other DC properties on television are not part of the same cinematic universe as the films, but again…they aren’t Marvel and they aren’t going to copy them. I firmly believe that the DCU will be more of a connected universe than the MCU. Did you watch the Suicide Squad trailer above? Did you catch the scene where Batman was hanging on top of the Joker’s car? The DCU only has 1 film so far and that’s Man of Steel, they’re aiming high by putting Batman against Superman for their second film, and they aren’t even the only one’s that will be in the film. The beautiful Gal Gadot from the Fast & Furious movies plays Wonder Woman, Ray Fisher was cast as Cyborg, Ezra Miller was cast as The Flash, and Jason Momoa will be our Aquaman.

It’s still not certain as to how much screen time Aquaman and The Flash will get in Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice or if any at all but it’s rumored that Amanda Waller has Aquaman’s staff and that we will see it in Suicide Squad. Just by everything we’ve seen in the trailers for the DCU it screams cohesiveness. Marvel on the other hand didn’t have that until 2012's The Avengers, it then went back to focus on each individual heroes up until Age of Ultron. Next year’s Captain America Civil War movie almost feels like it’s trying to copy Batman v Superman by fitting in so many characters, so who’s copying who now?