How Not to Build a Cinematic Universe

In early December, DC Films announced its updated slate of comic-book movies in development, and it looked a little different from the long-term list revealed three years earlier. Aquaman, Shazam, and Green Lantern Corps were still there, but some things had changed or been added, and a few things had intriguingly gone missing. Yet the altered slate wasn't the only thing making the news; there was apparently a shake-up in the top personnel at DC Films, only a year and a half after the division was established at Warner Bros. So, what had happened to precipitate these shifts?

The easiest way to answer this is to roll back time to 2008, when movie wunderkind Christopher Nolan and his plotting partner, David S. Goyer, were working on the story for their highly anticipated next project, The Dark Knight Rises. Following a break during which they mulled over ideas separately, Goyer returned and unexpectedly told Nolan, "I have this thought about how you would approach Superman." Nolan found the new concept so fresh and exciting, he immediately pitched it to Warner with himself aboard as producer. Based on the global critical and box-office success of their previous film, The Dark Knight, Nolan and Goyer were hired to reboot the Superman franchise.

The way Nolan saw it, his Dark Knight trilogy, a comparatively realistic take on the Batman mythos, worked so well because of its self-contained nature; Bruce Wayne is the only superhero in that world. He felt that Superman should be treated the same way, and that's how he and Goyer approached the project that became Man of Steel. But WB president Jeff Robinov had different ideas: he wanted to include hints and suggestions of other DC Comics characters co-existing with Superman. Obviously, Robinov's eye was on Marvel Studios, which was by that time starting to develop a shared continuity of stories and characters, based on those from Marvel Comics, through the films Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2, with more having been announced. So, when visionary director Zack Snyder came aboard the MoS project in 2010, he was game to pepper the film with nods to the four-color universe.

Man of Steel benefitted from Snyder's technical and camera talents and from Goyer's knowledge and understanding of comics, but it was still very much a Christopher Nolan production. It opened with no title (saving it for the closing credits), featured a nonlinear storyline and an innovative Hans Zimmer score, and treated the fantastical premise as realistically as possible. It also continued Nolan's habit of casting Brits (and Aussies) as Americans, this time bestowing the mantle of our greatest hero on a young Englishman. But Henry Cavill proved himself to be a very capable novice Superman, someone with the traditional upbringing of the comics who must reconcile that with a suspicious modern world.

It was not a flawless film, but Man of Steel was a novel, well-made take on the familiar legend, and it proved successful in theaters. Immediately, WB announced that Snyder and Goyer would return for the sequel, with Nolan stepping back into an executive-producer role. Snyder revealed that inspiration for the script would come from the acclaimed 80s comics miniseries The Dark Knight Returns--a Batman story. As it turns out, when Snyder sat down with the Warner execs to discuss the MoS follow-up, he started hinting that Superman's next opponent should be the Caped Crusader himself.

That apparently opened the floodgates on universe building. WB decided that this was their opportunity to finally get a cut of the box-office bonanza that Marvel was then reaping. The rival studio had followed the Iron Man films and Hulk with the equally lucrative Thor and Captain America before breaking out with the team-up tentpole The Avengers, which raked in well over a billion dollars worldwide. But Marvel hadn't stopped there; they were already into Phase 2 of a comics-movie plan that could roll on for many years.

So, Warner instantly started piling on structural pressure that was almost guaranteed to collapse the MoS sequel. Goyer's writing deal included a script for the next project as well as for a movie featuring the Justice League, DC's own resident superteam. Obviously, those films were meant to be back-to-back, with no build-up stories in between. Then, in December of 2013, Goyer's commitments to other work led to the hiring of Oscar winner Chris Terrio, who started talking about his rewrite of the new screenplay as being inspired by an Umberto Eco essay and a W.H. Auden poem. To Terrio, Batman was Pluto, underworld god, and Superman was Apollo, sky god. But WB wasn't as interested in the metaphors as much as they were in shoving as many DC characters into the story as possible.

When it was announced at the end of 2013 that Fast & Furious co-star Gal Gadot had been cast as Wonder Woman in the film, fans knew that this was no longer just a Man of Steel sequel. And by the time the title Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was revealed in May 2014, it was clear to all that it wouldn't be only a titanic throwdown. It had become both a backdoor pilot for Justice League and a kickoff for an eventual new Batman film series. The next thing anyone knew, Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, was being crammed into a movie that was also to feature cameos by Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash. Plus there would be the de rigeur backstory for Batman, which would include his murdered parents and mentions of Robin the Boy Wonder, and there were wild rumors of appearances from Batgirl and the Joker, the latter of whom had already been cast for the separate-but-related villain-team film Suicide Squad.

Then, in October of 2014, WB proudly unveiled its ambitious new film-development roster, which had been masterminded by Snyder. Besides BvS and SS, there were Wonder Woman, Justice League Parts One and Two, The Flash, Aquaman, Shazam, Cyborg, and Green Lantern Corps. This meant that all of the JL members would get solo outings after the two-part team-up, the exact opposite of Marvel's highly successful model. The Warner execs had their unwavering gaze on that Avengers money.

But they apparently weren't quite ready to face off against the Avengers, because they opened BvS in March 2016 to avoid competition with the sure-fire hit Captain America: Civil War, which would be released that summer. That gave BvS a clear shot at the box office gold, which it enjoyed for one week before critical excoriation and tepid word of mouth sent it into a nosedive from which it really never recovered. Audiences had initially been intrigued by the historic first cinematic meeting of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, but they were clearly turned off by the uber-dark tone and palette, the cobbled-together story, and the fact that Superman was given nothing to do but brood, to say nothing of the downbeat ending. In what sort of mood will people leave a superhero film that begins and ends on a funeral? Plus, the jarring, momentum-killing insertion of future Justice League members into the movie by corporate command left few excited by the prospect of the inevitable next chapter.

As this fiasco was taking place, writer-director David Ayer had wrapped production on Suicide Squad, a film he'd directed from a script he had been forced to write in only six weeks due to an already-locked release date. Also, Snyder was about to start shooting Justice League from a script by Terrio, not Goyer. This meant JL was on track to looking and feeling exactly like BvS, on which Snyder had enjoyed carte blanche control (there was no sign of Nolan's fingerprint). But WB didn't have time to deal with that latter issue just yet; they had the fast-approaching debut for Ayer's film in their sights.

The first trailer for Suicide Squad was well received, with viewers citing its humorous attitude. Based on this and on the criticism of BvS's relentless grimness, WB ordered Ayer to shoot new footage in an attempt to match the lighthearted tone of the trailer. Interestingly, the previews heavily featured Jared Leto's controversial take on the Joker, establishing fans' expectations that he would play a significant part in the film. Then, shortly before the movie was released, Warner announced the formation of the DC Films division, to be headed by DC Entertainment VP (and acclaimed comics-writer) Geoff Johns along with WB executive VP Jon Berg. This team-up was meant to ensure the consistency and creative quality of future comics-based features.

Despite lackluster critical response as well as fan outrage at the exclusion of many Joker scenes, Suicide Squad had a positive box-office experience. The supernatural main plot was a dud and the tone was still much darker than the marketing had suggested, but the characters--especially Margot Robbie's sexy Harley Quinn--were a hit, and there was immediate talk of not only a sequel but of spinoffs as well. It must be stated, however, that SS wasn't a smashing success; after all, its budget was lower than BvS's, thus allowing it a better chance for recouping expenses. This meant that Ben Affleck's Batman, who appeared in the film, had yet to demonstrate the magic touch WB was obviously banking on.

No doubt intentionally, the connection of Wonder Woman to the larger cinematic continuity is very slight. In fact, out of context, it's almost nonsensical and pointless: the film begins with a frame story featuring Diana Prince, an old photo, and a note from Bruce Wayne. Other than that, it pretty much stands on its own, and that may have played a small part in its unequivocal box-office victory. WW finally proved to studio execs that a woman could be the center of a big action-adventure flick, making it onto lists of favorite comic-book movies and certifying little-known Gadot as an engaging movie star. And it showed Warner that the DC Cinematic Universe might still have potential.

So, a lot was riding on Justice League, due to be released in November 2017. As evidenced by the first film development slate, the initial plan was to make JL a two-part movie, with the November release ending on "To Be Continued." And that's the way Snyder shot it. Then, still smarting from the dark-tone backlash on BvS and SS, Warner talked Snyder into bringing in Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon for some humorous script-doctoring that would make it into reshoots. But when Snyder decided to step away in order to grieve for the loss of his daughter, Whedon was left in charge of an extensive post-production that included a new ending that wouldn't carry over into a second film. It seems that Snyder's expectation was that his successor would simply "punch up" the movie while maintaining the look and feel of it. But WB's agenda trumped that expectation: the execs had already deemed Snyder's director's cut to be "unwatchable" due largely to its dystopian texture, and they clearly wanted to seduce the fans of Marvel's more colorful palette. Plus, they apparently wanted to cut their losses by giving the film a definite conclusion.

Whedon, therefore, wrote and filmed (or refilmed) enough material to earn a co-scripting credit with Terrio (which requires a 33% contribution to the final film). He added humor (some of it painfully forced) while tying up loose ends that would've been left hanging by Snyder's original ending. The suits ordered the runtime chopped to two hours, a surprisingly brief duration for a film with so many characters and such an epic story. And Whedon had to have it all done, with massive amounts of CGI, in time for the set release date, because the execs' bonuses were on the line. Justice League never had a prayer.

The movie that "escaped" to theaters was, by most accounts, a Frankensteinian bastard of two fathers that was birthed by greedy godparents. It's not even really fair to compare Snyder and Whedon as filmmakers because they're so different, Snyder being the visual and technical dynamo while Whedon will always be a writer first, therefore they should not have been expected to produce a picture that was wholly consistent. But the differences in their footage are so glaring, fans have easily been able to point to what was shot by which man. Add to that the horrendous overuse of rushed CGI--especially in pickup scenes where Henry Cavill's facial hair had to be concealed--and top it with Danny Elfman's uninspired, even self-derivative, musical score, and you're left with a very unhappy hybrid of a motion picture.

Since the estimated budget for Justice League was $300 million (not counting marketing), it's unlikely WB will ever call it a box-office triumph, especially given that by mid-December it had only grossed twice that budget. But no one was expecting the studio's near-instant reactions. Jon Berg stepped down from co-heading DC Films to become a regular Warner producer, and rumor has it that Geoff Johns may remain only in an advisor capacity. Then arrived that aforementioned new list of coming movies, which includes the already-shooting Aquaman, the inevitable Wonder Woman II, Shazam, Suicide Squad 2, and Green Lantern Corps. But there's now also Justice League Dark, Batgirl (to be helmed by Whedon), and The Batman, the first of a hoped-for series by writer-director Matt Reeves that may not even star Ben Affleck. And The Flash has been retitled Flashpoint, which means the plot will be based on the comic of the same name, in which Barry Allen changes all of reality. The comic led to a reboot of the DC Universe. Could Flashpoint mean that Warner is planning to reboot the DC Cinematic Universe?

That would certainly follow the studio's pattern of apparently having no pattern at all. At any rate, Cyborg is now inexplicably absent from the slate, the once-certain Justice League sequel is MIA, and there's no sign of a follow up to Man of Steel, the modest little movie that started it all. An objective observer can only conclude that Warner Bros has forgotten where it came from and knows not where it's going with DC's superheroes.

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