The DCEU — Warner Bros’ shared cinematic universe for their superhero properties — has never exactly been what you would call smooth sailing. Since their first misfire in not connecting the franchise to the incredibly popular Dark Knight trilogy, the series has been beset by difficulties at seemingly every turn.
Man of Steel was criticized for fundamentally misunderstanding its lead character. Batman v Superman was lambasted for its non-sensical slugfest that couldn’t meet even the most basic threshold of logical storytelling. Suicide Squad was a deceptively marketed mess. Even Justice League, the movie that’s supposed to fix everything that’s gone wrong with the franchise to date, can’t seem to catch a break in the press.
Warner Bros’ recent announcement has renewed the seemingly unending turmoil surrounding their superhero properties. Rather than stay the course of a single, interwoven film series sharing a common continuity among all their released movies, they are pursuing a more scattershot, confusing approach.
From now on, only some of the live-action movies they will release will be a part of the DCEU. Others won’t be constrained by established canon or shared vision: free to pursue whatever individual vision and narrative they deem appropriate.
Some films will be set in the past, others in the future. Some will feature characters deemed inappropriate for the more serious-minded DCEU. Some will recast iconic roles, allowing rapidfire changes to entire character concepts while different versions are developed in their other movies.
It’s an utterly baffling approach that begs more questions than it cares to answer and further shows the inherent faithlessness Warner Bros holds in their floundering franchise. It’s them trying to have their cake and eat it to: paying nominal face-time to the industry accepted standard of shared superhero continuity while allowing them to make whatever movies would be the most individually profitable for them.
And one of the their most troubled upcoming films might be the next one announced for this new non-canon DC branding. Pretty much since the word go, The Batman — Ben Affleck’s long-anticipated solo Batman movie — has been a hive of troubling rumors.
It was originally supposed to be directed and written by Affleck himself, in addition to starring in the title role, but after Dawn of Justice‘s scathing response by both critics and audiences, he began to publicly distance himself from the project. He dropped out of the director’s chair, citing the intensity of playing the protagonist, although he promised to still pen the script for the movie. Later, Matt Reeves, the new director of the film, threw out Affleck’s script and commissioned a new one from a fresh team of writers. Recently, Ben’s brother, actor Casey Affleck, stated in an interview that Ben wasn’t even planning to finish the Batman movies he had already signed on for, namely The Batman.
This bizarre new branding, in many ways, seems like a direct response to this highly troubled high-profile production. The flexibility that its non-canonicity would offer would allow them to recast Batman and claim it was their plan the whole time. It would allow them to easily ditch the planned script — which featured master assassin Deathstroke as the main antagonist — for something more popular: maybe even a new version of The Joker.
We’ll have to wait and see what Warner Bros decides to do with this new, disconnected side-series they have planned for the DCEU. Maybe they’re charge ahead at full speed with whatever mess they have planned for The Batman. Maybe they’ll just transform it into A Batman movie, divorced from the DCEU proper.
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