I’m going to go a little off-topic today and talk about movies. But they’re comic book movies, so it’s okay! Unless you’ve been living under a pretty large pop-culture/internet-blocking rock, you’ve probably noticed that DC has made some serious moves into the entertainment world. They’ve announced a whopping 10 movies currently in development, with a release timetable stretching as far as 2020. One we already knew about – the horribly titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – but the others had just been rumours until now. In an interesting move, DC has chosen to release Justice League Part One in 2017, a few years before they’ve even put out solo movies for half of the Justice League’s core members – The Flash and Aquaman don’t get movies until 2018, and smaller players won’t get movies until even later. Green Lantern, whose reputation is still tarnished by that monstrosity featuring Ryan Reynolds, won’t be getting a reboot until 2020.
With that in mind, I’m somewhat concerned about the upcoming Batman/Superman mash-up. Zack Snyder has proven that he can make good adaptations of comic books in the past – Watchmen and 300 spring to mind – but DC seem intent on rushing things. I can understand not wanting to do another standalone Batman movie after the powerhouse that was the Nolan series, but Dawn of Justice seems to be shoving too many characters and too much story development into one movie. On top of the two big guns – played by Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck, in case you missed it – we’ll also be seeing appearances from Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and, if the rumour proves to be true, Aquaman (Jason Momoa). I hope that DC restricts them to cameos because otherwise they might run into the same kind of problems as The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro – too many characters fighting for prominence and detracting from the story.
Like their rivals at Marvel, DC has clearly got a long-term strategy, but I have to question whether or not they’ve done the right thing. DC is doing really well in their ventures into television – Arrow has finally found its feet and is consistently great, The Flash has had an excellent debut, Gotham has been an engaging (if slightly controversial) new take on Batman’s home turf and Constantine looks promising, especially with the excellent Matt Ryan playing the titular con man. Even though they’ve made significant progress on the small screen, DC seems intent on taking on Marvel at the box office, despite their already well-established – and consistently popular – film franchises.
Perhaps I’m being too sceptical, but DC seem to have sat on their hands for too long. In the time it’s taken for DC to just release their plans for movies, Marvel have pumped out movie after movie, have expanded into one TV series, and have more on the way. I don’t think it’s a terribly good marketing move – it looks like they’re just trying to copy Marvel’s success – but they might surprise me yet.
By Alastair McGibbon