While the Marvel Cinematic Universe was rolling along and breaking box office records, the DCU movies were primarily hit or miss during the same time period. This was disappointing because DC was successful in Hollywood before Marvel, with the Superman films from the 1980s and the Batman movies, both with Tim Burton and later Christopher Nolan. However, one thing that stopped the DC movies from truly succeeding was that they often tried to give comic book fans what they wanted, but many times, they fell short. This was partly due to storytelling issues and at other times, due to studio interference.
From failing to deliver characters that matched what comic fans loved so much about them to the studio failing to deliver what it promised, here are the times when DC came incredibly close to giving fans what they wanted, but ultimately fell short.
Batman Begins helped revive the Batman franchise in movies after Batman & Robin killed it. Christopher Nolan delivered a fantastic origin story for Batman, something the previous franchise didn’t really bother with. The fact that he spent more than half of the movie with Bruce training before becoming Batman made it even more effective. However, the movie wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t until The Dark Knight that Nolan delivered his masterpiece.
Having Ra’s al Ghul as the main villain was a great choice, but ultimately, the film didn’t deliver what fans really wanted to see from the villain. There was a significant twist, where the man portraying Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) was not the real leader of the League of Assassins; instead, it was Liam Neeson. This was similar to the twist in Iron Man 3, but fans didn’t hate it as much. Despite this, Ra’s wasn’t as important as he should have been, and this made his daughter’s appearance two movies later less effective as well.
The DCEU delivered what many fans had wanted to see for years: a female-led superhero team-up movie. Wonder Woman was incredible, and Birds of Prey was a nice step in the right direction. However, while it was a fun movie and featured another excellent Margot Robbie performance as Harley Quinn, it didn’t quite reach the level of excitement that Birds of Prey fans had hoped to see. That was because it made some significant changes to the team that disappointed fans.
The movie portrayed Cassandra Cain as a young pickpocket who bore no resemblance to the DC Comics character. While Jurnee Smollett-Bell delivered an excellent performance, it was also not what fans of Black Canary had wanted to see from her DCEU debut. Huntress was also a pale imitation of the comic character. The only character that seemed to work was Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya (and, of course, Harley Quinn). The biggest problem was omitting Oracle from the group, which made this Birds of Prey in name only.
When Dwayne Johnson said that Black Adam was his passion project, it seemed that he knew what he needed to bring to the character to make it work in the DCEU. However, what resulted was a movie that was high on action, but didn’t really make Black Adam the next big thing for DC movies like Johnson had assumed he would be. The character, of course, has undergone several changes over the years, but it’s clear that Johnson had his eyes set on the character as it has been presented since the 2007 series 52.
The problem is that the movie was too simple for that story. For it to work, Black Adam needed to rule over his country, fall in love, and still face the world’s attacks, as if he were a villain. He needed to lose something special to him and then finally cut loose. Instead, Johnson and Warner Bros. delivered a generic story about the character, and in the end, no one really wanted to see him again. That is the most tragic thing about his movie. If the movie had stuck closer to the comics, Black Adam could have been incredible.
The biggest problem with Zack Snyder’s Batman V. Superman was that he set up the movie without ever introducing this world’s version of Batman. The second biggest problem is that Snyder wanted to do too much with one single film, and the entire thing was a bloated disappointment. The movie should have had an epic fight between Batman and Superman as its center point, and that was what fans wanted to see.
That isn’t what happened. Batman inexplicably wanted to murder Superman to “save” the world, which made him sound more like Lex Luthor than Batman. Lex was also in the movie, which contributed to the bloating of the story. Additionally, there was Doomsday and the retelling of the Death of Superman storyline. This movie attempted to tell two epic stories in one film, and neither had a chance to shine, ultimately diminishing both in the end. Batman and Superman deserved better.
The Dark Knight Rises was an overlong and overly complicated movie that attempted to tell two different stories within its runtime. First up was the Bane storyline, which was executed well, as he appeared in Gotham City and broke Batman’s back, with Snyder shooting it to look exactly as it did in the comics. That was perfect. However, the movie also tried to tell the story of No Man’s Land, with Gotham shut off from the world.
Talia al Ghul showed up to get revenge for her dad’s death and try to achieve his dreams, but that never really worked. Catwoman was there, but was almost shoehorned into a story with way too many characters. In the end, No Man’s Land was ironically done better in the polarizing television series Gotham, and the movie never seemed to get it right despite having Christopher Nolan behind the camera.
Zack Snyder had big plans for his DCEU world, and when Justice League concluded, he had laid the groundwork for the next step in his massive world-building. However, thanks to factors beyond his control, Snyder lost control of his franchise. Snyder had to leave the Justice League production after his daughter’s death, and by the time he returned, he had lost the franchise entirely, as Warner Bros. had planned a reboot.
This meant that he never got to pay off his Darkseid storyline. As it stands, Darkseid only appeared in brief moments in Justice League and never made it to Earth, which would have initiated the storyline shown in his post-credit scene, where Superman turned evil due to the Anti-Life Equation. This storyline looked massive and would have delivered Darkseid on the big screen, but in the end, it never happened. Warner Bros. never gave fans what they wanted from one of DC’s biggest villains.
The last DCEU movie to hit theaters before James Gunn was hired to reboot it as the DCU was The Flash. The entire purpose of this film was to reboot the universe anyway, but it doesn’t really matter since James Gunn’s movies have little to nothing to do with anything that came before, outside of The Suicide Squad (and maybe Blue Beetle). However, in the end, Warner Bros. didn’t even give fans of Flashpoint what they wanted from its adaptation of the storyline.
Flashpoint rebooted DC Comics in the same way Crisis on Infinite Earths did years before. In the comics, the Flash changed the past, which in turn altered the future. Bruce Wayne died, and his parents became a violent Batman and a deranged Joker. Aquaman and Wonder Woman had an all-out war. In the movie, Flash recreated the universe to introduce a new Supergirl, rather than Superman, and to reintroduce Michael Keaton as Batman. It was a fun movie, that is a fact, but it was a disappointment considering what it could have been.
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