On its opening weekend,Justice League, the big crossover event that supposed to be Warner Bros.’ answer toThe Avengers, opened to just $94 million. That was well beneath predictions of $110 million and the lowest opening weekend of any DCEU movie. Although Warner Bros. has future superhero movies on tap—specificallyAquaman,Wonder Woman 2, andShazam!, the fate of their cinematic universe is somewhat up in the air. They have lots of superhero films in the various stages of development likeBatgirl,Suicide Squad 2, aJokerorigin movie, and more, but no real clear vision of what comes next.
If I may offer a humble suggestion, I think that Warner Bros. has to do three things to right the ship going forward.
1) Start Focusing on Individual Characters
The blockbuster marketplace is competitive, and audiences have no shortage of options when it comes to superhero movies. From a business standpoint, it makes sense for Warner Bros. to try and offer something “bigger”. They tried that first withBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which offered not only the two biggest superheroes of all-time sharing the screen for the first time, but also the first big screen appearance of Wonder Woman. Building between that andWonder Woman, the concept was thatJustice Leaguewould be another big superhero event and that everyone would need to see it.
Except you can throw as many logos and character posters at a marketing campaign as you want—most viewers don’t know why they should care about Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. Rather than do the unglamorous work of doing smaller, individual films that lets an audience decide whether or not they like these characters, Warner Bros’ strategy was to put the cart before the horse and hope that they could reverse engineer affection for these characters. Unfortunately, asJustice Leagueshowed, it’s hard to tell a storyandhandle a bunch of introductions, and even if it wasn’t, you still have to convince audiences to show up in the first place.
Would individual Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg films have been successful had they been released beforeJustice League? It’s impossible to know, but at least it would have given each character a chance to shine. Instead, they all got swept up in the “event” ofJustice League, and that event lacked weight, which leads us to…
2) Leave Events Behind
Again, it’s a competitive marketplace, and Warner Bros. wants to stand out. But if you’re a studio that wants to play the long game and make a valuable brand with DC movies, then you have to do the hard work of getting people to care first. That’s whyFlashpoint, the current pitch for the Flash’s first solo film, seems like the same problem that’s been dogging the DCEU.
Rather than just getting a regular Flash story where he’s the sole focus and it’s about his journey,Flashpointwill likely operate as a giant reset button for the DCEU. For those unfamiliar with the story from the comics, basically Barry Allen wakes up and everything is different. He realizes he’s in an alternate timeline, so he has to readjust to set everything right.
Obviously, aFlashpointmovie wouldn’t follow all the beats of the comic, but even if you go through the broad strokes—Flash sees the entire DCEU is different and has to set it right—you have a story where A) We still don’t have a great baseline for who Flash is as a character and B) The DCEU isn’t established enough to where any change would be incredibly drastic. Oh no, Cyborg is really different in Flashpoint? What does that mean? What are the stakes of this story if you don’t know and care about the characters involved?
That’s not to say that the DCEU can never do big events again, but the current strategy seems to be to try and build a penthouse without the 50 stories below. Yes, events arguably have bigger payoffs and could translate to “cultural” events, but it’s a moot point when there aren’t the smaller movies to support that event.
3) Find a Path and Stick to It
Every time a DCEU movie underperforms, it seems like Warner Bros. decides to panic.Man of Steeldidn’t quite meet expectations, so instead of a Superman sequel that only focuses on Superman, we gotBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The logic behind the decision is sound—WB needed a way to spur fans into seeing the sequel, and the best way to do that was to add Batman and present a path towardsJustice League. But in practice, that panic shortchanged the Superman character and the films that followed. The rush to right the ship only ended up pulling it off course.
That happened again withJustice League. Because they were on such an accelerated timetable, there was no room to just hit “pause” and say, “Is Zack Sndyer the right director for this going forward?” Even if Snyder hadn’t left the project, his tone and sensibilities had already been well established, but Warner Bros. was now in the position of knowing that audiences didn’t like the dark-and-gritty attitude ofBatman v Superman. The studio was stuck, and then they decided to overcorrect by bringing in Joss Whedon to try an liven up the film. The result is an odd mish-mash of two different sensibilities. Warner Bros. didn’t want Snyder’s dark tone, but they also were in too deep to simply made a lighter film. That’s how you get a movie where the first scene is Superman talking to kids and the next scene has newspapers with the headline, “World Without Hope.”
The need to “course-correct” every time a film doesn’t quite perform how the studio wants leaves future installments without a strategy. That’s not to say every new DCEU movie has to be upbeat or that they can only tell stories a certain way.Wonder Womanis a great movie and a huge success for the studio, but I would be bummed if Warner Bros. said, “We’re going to make 20 superhero movies and they’re all going to be uplifting origin stories likeWonder Woman.” But they also shouldn’t try to change everything up and chase what they think the audience might want.
The only thing we know the audience wants for sure are good characters and good stories, and there’s no simple solution for creating those. It’s hard work, it takes a lot of talent, and the final product may not end up as the year’s biggest hit. But stability and a plan will go a lot further than radically realigning and that this time something clicks.
