The rise, fall and resurrection of the DC Extended Universe

The decade-old DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has finally come to an end. Despite featuring some of the most famous IPs of the modern world, and some of the best talents coming together to promise a franchise like no other, the DCEU never really took off. After three consecutive duds earlier this year culminating in last week’s underwhelming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it’s safe to say that the franchise had very little scope to recover. It’s quite ironic to have a team of superheroes when a franchise can’t be saved!

Thankfully, it’s not all over for the fans of Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman, because the DC Universe (DCU) is coming up to soft-reboot the franchise and our beloved superheroes are probably yet to hang up their boots. As a franchise that has seen soaring highs and brutal lows, the story of the DCEU — filled with enough controversies to fill up its fictional planets and more drama than what most of its films had — has been quite a journey for the studio and its die-hard fans. Here’s a recap on the journey of DCEU which, for the lack of a better word, has been extremely bumpy.

The origin story

Warner Bros., just like the DC comic books, wanted to bring the various DC Comics superheroes together in films since 2002 and there were plans on various crossovers, including a Justice League film. But the box-office bomb of Green Lantern of 2011 — which lead Ryan Reynolds even joked about in Deadpool — made the studio scrap their initial plans. Two years later, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) came out and officially started the DC Extended Universe.

A still from ‘Man of Steel’
| Photo Credit:
Warner Bros. Pictures

Snyder set a darker tone with the plots and characters, which the franchise will be known for. While Marvel took four years and five films before coming up with their first crossover film Avengers (2012), the DCEU did it with their second film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It’s safe to say that the film’s announcement broke the internet!

The beginning of the end

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was the first time two of the comic world’s biggest superheroes, who have had multiple solo outings, were seen together.

A still from ‘Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice’
| Photo Credit:
Clay Enos

The film set new box-office records but experienced a historic drop in its second weekend from which it never recovered. What should have turned out to be one of the biggest success stories of Hollywood ended with less than favourable reviews. Amongst many reasons, what stuck out predominantly was the introduction of a villain like Doomsday at such an early stage of the franchise, a step Marvel brilliantly circumvented with Thanos. The final nail in the coffin was how the film, just the second entry in the DCEU, kills off Superman… only to bring him back in Justice League (2017). And let’s not even talk about Jesse Eisenberg’s take on the villainous Lex Luthor.

The fall of the Titans

Speaking of villains, 2016, which gave us Batman v Superman, also gave Suicide Squad. If the minor cracks in the studio’s plans of making the DCEU big became evident in that year’s first film, the second one made huge dents to the plan by arguably becoming the worst entry in the entire franchise.

Just like the previous film’s Lex Luthor, this entry’s Joker, played by Jared Leto, is often regarded as the least favourite interpretation of a crowd-favourite character. The fact that the character was just handed over to him from Heath Ledger who posthumously won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight made it a tough nut to crack.

Gal Gadot in a scene from ‘Wonder Woman’

On the flip side, if Batman v Superman introduced us to Wonder Woman, a character that got a standalone film that worked wonders for the franchise, Suicide Squad became the first feature film to showcase the infamous Harley Quinn. Similar to Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Margot Robbie’s Harley became an integral part of the DCEU and Wonder Woman is unsurprisingly the highest-rated DCEU film right now.

Only when it felt like the franchise had finally gotten a hang of itself, Justice League was released. On paper, it had everything to be as much of a success akin to the Avengers films for the MCU. But a personal tragedy caused Snyder to back away from the film and the studio brought in Joss Whedon who had directed the first two Avengers to take over the project. And, as difficult as it might be to say this as a fan, this film was a disaster.

Unfulfilled projects and unrealised potential

This fiasco also caused the studio to pull the plug on a sequel that would have been helmed by Snyder featuring a far more intense storyline involving Darkseid killing a pregnant Lois Lane that would have given us the Knightmare sequence. But, the film never happened and Snyder had to part ways with Warner Bros; while Justice League was supposed to be the franchise’s $1 billion film, its successor, a relatively smaller film Aquaman surprisingly pulled off that feat. The DCEU tasted success once again with Shazam!, but by then it was clear that all the films were separate entities that the studio was trying to tie around a franchise that was not working out. The repercussions of Justice League not working out in their favour also disrupted the DCEU’s slate which saw the scrapping of films that were supposed to be standalone films for Superman, Batman, Cyborg, Green Lantern and Nightwing. And to add insult to injury, they made a Batgirl film which was called off despite it being ready for release.

ALSO READ: Jason Momoa says his fate as Aquaman in future films not looking good

The fact that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn couldn’t repeat their magic for Wonder Woman 1984 and Birds of Prey respectively, made it clear that the DCEU was sinking. But thanks to fans’ outcry, the studio brought back Snyder for his cut of Justice League which was considered by most to be superior to the 2017 theatrical release. Surprisingly, despite its success, Warner Bros. still considers the theatrical version to be the cannon and we will never know why!

A still from ‘The Suicide Squad’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

What followed was another pleasant surprise in the form of The Suicide Squad which had a fantastic cast, and John Cena’s Peacemaker which went on to be DCEU’s only television series and also one of its best titles. This was also the time we got Robert Pattinson’s The Batman and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker; two successes that were not a part of the DCEU.

The studio though, thought Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam would take the franchise to new heights and the actor himself was often quoted saying, “The hierarchy of power was about to change”. But the film did not walk the talk and DCEU got to a point of no return.

The future looks bright

Discovery Inc. acquired DC and Warner Bros. parent company WarnerMedia in 2022, forming a new company named Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). James Gunn and Peter Safran were brought in as the co-chairmen and CEOs of DC Studios and they pulled the plug on the DCEU with just four more films coming out after Black Adam, with none of them turning out to be profitable ventures.

James Gunn and Peter Safran

Earlier this year, the duo came up with their slate of ten DC projects which were to be part of the DC Universe (DCU), and the new franchise will be a soft reboot and spiritual successor to the DCEU. Their first step is a decade-long plan consisting of two chapters with the first one titled Gods and Monsters. It will feature the films Superman: Legacy (2025), The Authority, The Brave and the Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and Swamp Thing, and five series in Creature Commandos, Waller, Lanterns, Paradise Lost, and Booster Gold.

ALSO READ: Henry Cavill confirms he is not returning as Superman after James Gunn announces new film

Considering it’s a soft reboot, actors like Viola Davis (Amanda Waller) and John Cena (Peacemaker) are set to reprise their roles but the fate of bigger characters is yet to be clarified. They also stated that any project that did not fit into the DCU’s shared universe would be categorised (just like their comic counterparts) as DC Elseworlds, and the upcoming sequels to Joker and The Batman as well as a slew of other films that are already in the pipeline would fall under this label.

For a franchise that has got the plots to be one of the most entertaining and profitable ones in Hollywood, the DC Universe has barely made a dent in its decade-long stint with most of its films struggling to break even. Now, with the reboot plans in safer hands, promising a fresher and more pragmatic approach, the new DCU seems to have everything that takes to bring us out of superhero fatigue. After all, if characters like Superman and Batman can’t pull it off, who else can?

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Earlier this month, the school district in Martin County, Florida, purged at least 84 books from school libraries after complaints from the head of the local Moms for “Liberty” chapter under the state’s school censorship law, HB 1467, passed last year. PEN America notes that most of the books were removed following challenges by a single objector, “who filed forms indicating that she did not actually read any of the books in question.” No problem; in keeping with the law, a DeSanctified “media specialist” in the district reviewed the books, or at least the list, and the books were gone.

Among the familiar suspects like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved,the banned books also included 20 by a single author, Jodi Picoult, who writes novels for the young adult market. Picoult notes in an op-ed that the complaints — again, all from the one Moms for Censorship lady — inaccurately described all her books as “adult romance that should not be on school shelves.” Picoult, who we suspect knows her books better than the mom who didn’t read them, points out that most of the books that were targeted “do not even have a kiss in them.,” but they do deal with social issues that make rightwingers sad, and they “encourage kids to think for themselves.” Can’t have that.

Picoult also notes that one of her books marked for culling was The Storyteller, a novel about the repercussions of the Holocaust.

It chronicles the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism in Nazi Germany. There was a strange irony that a parent wanted this particular book removed, because it felt a bit like history repeating itself.

Julie Marshall, the Mom for Purity who lodged the complaints, told the Washington Post by email, “At this point, we believe we have challenged the most obscene and age inappropriate books,” but didn’t specify what her issues with The Storyteller were. Apparently there’s sex, including depictions of Nazi guards committing sexual assault, so maybe we wouldn’t want kids thinking Nazis were rapists.

The removal of all those books meant that Tuesday night’s Martin County school board meeting was packed, with about 200 people there. Many of the 40 who spoke at the meeting called for the books to be restored, although a few also worried about all the nasty sex in books available to high school readers, giving the very laziest local news stations an excuse to present one quote from each side and call it good coverage.

Marshall was there, in a Wonder Woman T-shirt, to explain that while she filed almost all the complaints, she works with many many concerned parents both locally and nationwide, and sadly she didn’t actually say “There are dozens of us! Dozens!” But she did say

“If you guys want to continue making me out to be the sole parent in all of this and give me the power that I can have all these books removed and make me out to be Wonder Woman, so be it … Persecute me for standing on morality, I really don’t care.”

We really do hope someone lets her know that Wonder Woman is a queer icon, that Lynda Carter thinks bigots suck, and that the character was created in the first place by William Moulton Marston, who lived very happily in a throuple and deliberately included a LOT of bondage references in the comic, what with that Lasso o’ Truth and all. (He was also a lie-detector crank who always looked for a way to cash in on his dubious inventions, so there’s that.) Marston included this illustration, by Harry G. Peter, of what a real Wonder Woman believes, in his article “Why 100,000 Americans Read Comics” in American Scholar (1943-44):

Image: Harvard College Library via NPR

Happily, among the many folks calling for freedom to read, there was a real wonder woman at the school board meeting, 100-year-old Grace Linn, who knows far too well why fascism has to be nipped in the bud whenever it arises. Her husband was killed in action fighting them in WW II, and by god she’s not going to allow any book burners in her America, thank you very much.

Linn brought along a quilt she had made to honor books and ideas that the current round of fascists are trying to snuff out; in January, as America’s censorship crusade was well under way, she had shared a photo of her quilt with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi for his show’s “Banned Book Club” feature.

The quilt includes censored titles like Beloved,Maus, Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gender Queer, Two Boys Kissing, and more. Linn told Palm Beach TV station WPTV — one of the non-lazy ones! — “When I showed this to adult women, they’ll say, ‘Oh, no they didn’t do that to The Color Purple.‘”

Now, let’s get out of her way and listen:

A few highlights (full transcript of Linn’s remarks at AlterNet):

Good afternoon folks. I am Grace Lynn. I am a hundred years young. I’m here to protest our school district’s book-banning policy. My husband Robert Nichol was killed in action in World War II, at a very young age, he was only 26, defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms.

One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books they banned. They stopped the free press, banned and burned books. The freedom to read, which is protected by the First Amendment, is our essential right and duty of our democracy. Even so, it is continually under attack by both the public and private groups who think they hold the truth.

Linn noted she’d made the quilt last year in reply to the Right’s mania for book banning, and urged her fellow citizens not to knuckle under to today’s fascists, who seek power by trying to make us afraid of other Americans:

Banned books, and burning books, are the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge. Fear is not freedom. Fear is not liberty. Fear is control. My husband died as a father of freedom. I am a mother of liberty. Banned books need to be proudly displayed and protected from school boards like this. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And that’s what we all need to be saying at every school and library board meeting in America, the end.

UPDATE: Well silly me, I didn’t include anything about the school board’s reactions to the two hours of public comment. According to the local paper, the board didn’t take any action on the banned books at Tuesday’s meeting, and no board members responded to the comments.

[PEN America / Daily Beast / WaPo / JTA / NPR / AlterNet / TC Palm]

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