A Justice League Postmortem
With the theatrical run of Justice League beginning to reach its conclusion, it’s time to take stock of where the DC Film Universe currently stands.
The box office figures of the the earlier movies are not terrible, but fall under the expectations of a big budget superhero flick. Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice both have respectable worldwide earnings by the end of their screenings. Justice League and Wonder Woman are notable outliers for different reasons. Wonder Woman has the second highest worldwide results despite having the lowest budget. Justice League’s $300 million production budget was double of Wonder Woman, yet had the lowest opening weekend, failing to even reach the hundred million mark. None of this accounts for the heavy marketing budget for these films, shrinking the profits of high earners like Batman vs Superman substantially.
When looking at the Rotten Tomato scores for these films, an interesting trend emerges:
Batman vs Superman had a lower critic and audience score than Justice League, yet had a better opening weekend and is likely to bring in more money. This is because audience reaction to a film can have a lag effect in a multi-movie saga. Man of Steel’s mediocre reviews were enough to convince its audience to see its sequel, however the back-to-back absolute critical failures of Batman vs Superman and Suicide Squad were enough to drive audiences away from trusting DC films enough to watch their movie on opening weekend. Justice League’s poor initial showing reflects more on the failure of those two movies than on itself, which received similar reviews to Man of Steel. This is all a long-winded way of saying that Warner Brothers has lost the consumer’s confidence in its movies, creating an uphill battle on opening weekend for each film that follows the string of poor performances before it.
It never had to be like this. In 2003 when Warner Brothers wanted to have another go at a Batman film, they enlisted indie phenomenon Christopher Nolan to helm the project. Like Zack Snyder, director of the three main DC movies in the current edition, Nolan was a new director, with Insomnia and Memento as his only wide releases. Yet in contrast to the newest round of DC movies, Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy was unquestionably a critic and box office success.
Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises are an example of a positive lag effect, opposite of the negative one affecting the current DC films. Batman Begins was a critical success, yet had middling box office numbers compared to today’s standards. The film’s success in appealing to the movie-going public allowed The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises to reap the rewards of some of the highest earnings ever for a film, bringing in over 1 billion dollars each.
Why did the Batman movies work in the 2000’s, but the recent DC flicks fail? There are plenty of directorial and story reasons each film (outside of Wonder Woman) cratered, but there are three main points why the DC film universe has been terrible as a whole.
- Giving the keys to kingdom to one person for any multi-film franchise is extremely risky. It worked out beautifully with Christopher Nolan, and it failed with Zack Snyder.
- Even though Snyder struggled to direct successful movies, Warner Brother’s decision to be more controlling of their directors leads to bland, uninspiring movies like Justice League and Suicide Squad.
- Tone is difficult to juggle over multiple movies in a franchise. Snyder’s serious tone came off as pretentious as an undergrad paper on Milton, but at the very least it was consistent. Suicide Squad and Justice League both struggled with deciding if they want to be humorous or somber, without ever finding a tone that fit with the previous movies or creating a new feel entertaining enough to change the franchise’s tone going forward.
Wonder Woman’s status as the outlier in the DC film universe serves as an example of how Warner Brothers should make the rest of their comicbook movies. Employ a director with a successful track record (Patty Jenkins) and stay the hell away from them. The film hit all the right notes. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) was more interesting than Superman and Batman, the story was solid, the main score was instantly iconic, and the tone was the right mix of humor and seriousness. More important that all of that, the film was entertaining. I cannot say the same for the rest of the movies. Without Wonder Woman, I would say that this iteration of the DC universe is a lost cause. However, the film has shown there is still hope in this franchise.
In Batman Begins, during Bruce Wayne’s lowest point in his fight to save Gotham, Alfred says to him:
“Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
The DC film universe has repeatedly failed its audience, but it can learn from its mistakes. The next three films on the docket, Aquaman (James Wan), Shazam (David Sandberg), and the untitled Wonder Woman II (Patty Jenkins) all have inventive directors and a strong group of actors. The studio needs to give them free reign in creating these movies if they want a successful story. A franchise like Marvel can afford to have a bad movie infrequently, but since the negative lag effect of DC’s failure has already set in, all of these need to be a hit to build goodwill with their fans again. If these films fail, it’s likely the end of the current DC film universe. But maybe that’s not so bad after all.
