BW Vs FandomWire: Diverting Blame For The DCEU

You know, I will happily defend things I like from people that hate it, but I will not force you to change your viewpoint and suddenly “admit” it’s the greatest thing every and make you sorry you hated on Scrappy-Doo or whatever. For me it’s more about getting my point of view out there and finding others who agree with me. When it comes to the “Snyderverse”, defenders are rather easy to find. Continuing to talk about something you like is fine, but isn’t it time to stop defending it? Those of us who want to see a proper DC hero adaptation…will have to go to the past, because nobody attached to Warner Brothers today seems to want to do that at all, but we’re still going to complain about it, and the so-called “DC Extended Universe” is not going to go on our lists.

Still, the Snyder fans (often referred to with the derogatory “Snyder Bros”, despite this article and other defenders being women) continue to not just celebrate “their DC”, they insist we have to love it as much as they do, admit we’re wrong, and just kiss Zack Snyder’s backside. Sorry, that’s not happening. The latest Snyder Shield is FandomWire contributor Mahin Sultan, who in an article with the long-winded title “‘I don’t think he’s a big comic book dork’: Christopher Nolan Vetoed Against Zack Snyder’s Wild Man of Steel Plans That Killed the DCEU” (geez, I can find smaller titles from Japanese media), tries to make the case that it was Nolan, who produced Man Of Steel, and Warner Brothers that actually killed the DCEU. This is also an article with really short paragraphs. I like to break up my text walls as well, but a paragraph can be more than three sentences.

At any rate, Sultan tries to blame everything except Snyder’s style of movie making for why the DCEU fell apart. Should Warner Bros. get some of the blame? Yes. Nolan? Maybe, depending on how much producing he did after Man Of Steel and how hands on he was. That doesn’t mean, like him or hate him, that Snyder was a good choice for Superman in the same way he was for Watchmen. Not every creator is a fit for every project. So let’s see what Sultan’s attempts to steer the blame away from Snyder amount to.

For one that kicked off the DC Extended Universe, Man of Steel has undoubtedly gained so much momentum over the years that even after more than a decade, fans can’t stop talking about it.

I’d like to. I’d like to not mention it again. However, Snyder and his fanbase (I don’t know for certain Sultan is on that list like Grace Randolph so I’ll try to give her the benefit of the doubt for however long that works out) keep trying to defend it while for the rest of us it’s something brought up in passing because it’s an attempt at Superman that as a Superman fan I wasn’t happy with. I said it in my post-movie v-log and I stand by it: it’s a good superhero movie but a terrible Superman adaptation.

However, at the same time, the film directed by Zack Snyder with Christopher Nolan acting as the producer also somewhat led to the downfall of the DCEU, considering how Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was the movie that marked the universe’s end.

As per a Snyder interview that recently resurfaced and went viral from 2013, Nolan just may have contributed the the death of the DC Extended Universe by vetoing against the director’s wild ideas for the superhero.

Nonetheless, the ultimate blame for it all still rests on the shoulders of Warner Bros. for reasons more than one.

It should be noted that whatever these “wild ideas” were, they won’t be listed here in any major detail. Given what Snyder was allowed to do with Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and his cut of Justice League as well as the movies like Wonder Woman and the first Aquaman movies trying to imitate his style, let’s not pretend Nolan was some represser of his genius. We know what Snyder’s style is like given his filmography. If you like those works, fine. I’m not stopping you. That doesn’t mean his roadmap was worth celebrating, either.

Although Christopher Nolan resurrected Batman back in the flesh with the thoroughly successful The Dark Knight trilogy after the disaster that was Batman & Robin, he might have missed out on some elements while acting as the producer for 2013’s Man of Steel.

This was derived from a recently resurfaced 2013 interview of Zack Snyder with Empire, where the director admitted that Nolan was never truly too invested in the source material in the comics as he and screenwriter David S. Goyer. He said:

“As a fan of the character [Superman], I don’t think [Christopher Nolan] is a big comic book dork. So I think that you know, Chris was like, ‘Nah, it doesn’t make sense.’ Even though we’d be like, ‘Noo! That’s in the mythology! It’s awesome! You gotta do it!’ He’d be like, ‘Ehh, really?’”

I can at least confirm Nolan wasn’t much into the comics. That’s why the Joker was some schmuck in a bad make-up job and Bane was a pale imitation of the man who broke Batman’s back. I have issues with his take on the Dark Knight, with only Batman Begins entertaining enough to remain in my movie library, though it also has issues like YES YOU DO HAVE TO SAVE RA’S BECAUSE BATMAN RESPECTS LIFE AND WOULD WANT TO SEE HIM PUNISHED BY THE COURTS, NOT LETTING HIM BLOW UP WITH THE TRAIN! He’s also the reason people seem to think Batarangs are throwing stars instead of bat-themed boomerangs.

As it turned out, the Oppenheimer director wanted to have a more grounded and mature tone in the film just like he did with his Batman trilogy. As Snyder continued to say:

“I mean, I think his role was just challenging some of the, like, accepted, you know, gimmes that Superman has, which I think is good. He was a great spoiler for that kind of, you know, automatic acceptance stuff that we all were just like, ‘What do you mean? ‘Course he’s gonna have red underwear’ or whatever it is.”

I wasn’t there so I don’t know if Snyder was telling the truth or full of it…but it’s not like his other two Superman appearances had the trunks. While Nolan was one of a bunch of producers for both cuts of Justice League along with Geoff Johns, who has actually worked on Superman in the comics and was one of the people who brought the New 52 to life…where the trunks were first removed…he wasn’t for Dawn Of Justice so you could have added them if you wanted to, Zach.

Because of that, a lot of material from the comics failed to enter into the movie. But the parts like Superman’s icy breath and the not showing of the Kryptonite were not included in it by none other than Snyder himself.

“(T)he not showing of the Kryptonite were not included”. What? Why not just say “However, the parts like not using Superman’s icy breath and Kryptonite were Snyder’s idea”? Or, if I got the context wrong, write something I can understand. That wasn’t a Snyder quote, that’s the writer. I don’t even have an editor and I wrote a better sentence. She must have had less time to proofread than I do, but I’m not being paid to write this. I don’t even get the ad revenue, my host does.

Yet, even while doing that, the filmmaker had a pretty good reason why. As Zack Snyder continued to explain his actions:

“No, I did that a little bit. But, like I said, I go, ‘Look, you know, I don’t know that he doesn’t have ice breath, he just didn’t use it, for instance, in this. Just like, you know, how people are like, ‘Oh, there’s no Kryptonite!’ I’m like, ‘That doesn’t mean that Kryptonite doesn’t exist! It just didn’t show up here.’ (…) I will say that kind of vibe [is what] I like. You know, you just felt like the DC Universe is kinda like on the fringes of the movie.”

Who do we blame for NOT having bright colors or most of the movie rejecting the sun? You know, the actual source of Superman’s powers, not the air.

I don’t think the Kryptonite would have worked in that story, anyway. Although…maybe it could have been a replacement for snapping Zod’s neck, forcing Superman to kill because they thought it was the only way for him to develop a no-kill policy. I never killed anyone. Why? My family and the fictional heroes I gravitated to–INCLUDING SUPERMAN–didn’t kill out of respect for innocent life, even when the Comics Code and Bureau Of Standards And Practices weren’t factors. As stated with Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, it was the writers who created a scenario where killing was the only option. They didn’t write themselves into a corner and had no choice for the sake of the story, it was the goal the whole time! 

Was that on Nolan? Did Nolan make it so Jonathan Kent would rather a bus load of kids die than expose his son’s powers, and then die from a tornado that it looked like he could run from it without superspeed? Did Nolan have Clark destroy some jerk’s truck in a manner that would raise more questions than answers? Did Nolan have Jor-El die so that Lara dies alone and uncertain rather than with her husband, secure in the knowledge that her son would live and hopefully grow up strong and happy? What parts were Nolan’s fault?

While Christopher Nolan’s approach to sticking to the somber tone including some of the goofy aspects of the character was a good idea and more or less appreciated by the audiences, it would have been better if the DCEU had continued in one tone.

If that tone was a good one. It wasn’t. Even the New 52 had a lighter tone, and that was DiDio’s Darker DC being realized. Yes, the failings of the “Weadon” cut of Justice League suffered from the tone changing reshoots and I said so in my review, but it was the tone that continued through both of Snyder’s films and the ones that did try to stick to his tone that chased fans off. That’s why WB tried to pivot, but sucked at it by not just starting over…at the script level before filming ever started.

Just because the higher-ups at DC got confused at the mixed reactions that came with the next darker-themed movies, like BvS, for instance, they decided to switch to a lighter tone for the films that came after, like Justice League.

Moreover, if DC indeed wanted to switch tones with its content, then it should have just let Man of Steel be an independent film and let a sequel for the same continue the story for it, starting with a clean slate for the next projects to maintain a consistent theme.

Thus, to put it in a nutshell, it was actually Warner Bros. and DC’s higher-ups who ultimately led to the downfall of the DC Extended Universe.

What “mixed reactions”? Snyder fans love it, fans of the characters hated it. Even when the tone was announced people were complaining about a grimdark take on Superman, and that was from people who loved that take on Batman. They should never have gone that direction in the first place, but looking at Snyder’s other films it’s not like he didn’t go dark. I’m not sure the surreal would have worked, either.

Further verifying this claim that it was ultimately Warner Bros. who ended up putting an end to the DC Extended Universe is the screenwriter of Man of Steel, i.e. David S. Goyer’s revelation on what went wrong with the DCEU. As he revealed during an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast:

“I know the pressure we were getting from Warner Bros., which was, ‘We need our MCU! We need our MCU!’ And I was like let’s not run before we walk. The other thing that was difficult at the time was there was this revolving door of executives at Warner Bros. and DC. Every 18 months someone new would come in. We were just getting whiplash. Every new person was like, ‘We’re going to go bigger!’”

This only proves that Warner Bros. simply wanted to extend the DC Universe into a cinematic universe just like the MCU instead of caring about what could actually do them more good than that.

This I will completely agree with you. They’re also the reason the larger “preview” of the DCEU versions of characters were shoved into Batman V Superman. I’m not absolving Warner Brothers for handling it poorly, and I’m not convinced the Gunniverse is going to fare any better than the Snyderverse. Even Marvel Studios itself doesn’t know how to do the shared universe thing anymore, thanks to the changes made after Disney bought Marvel Entertainment, and some of their writers and directors don’t even want to do it. Loki is an outright rejection of the concept. Then again, Goyer isn’t exactly the best go-to guy with Superman, either.

That was him.

All in all, while Christopher Nolan just may have contributed to some extent to the end of the DCEU by promoting a more grounded approach when the DC executives couldn’t follow it, it was ultimately the fault of Warner Bros. and the higher-ups that the recently ended universe suffered so badly.

With so few specifics as to what Nolan pushed and didn’t push (he wasn’t even executive producer in a list of 10 producers on Man Of Steel) I can’t say what is or isn’t his fault beyond the trunks, ice breath, and Kryptonite, so all of the many other nitpicks are still looking like Snyder’s fault. He allegedly had full reign when it came to the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League and a lot of the same issues remain, tone being only one of them. Whatever can be blamed on Nolan or Warner Brothers, let’s not pretend that Snyder has a lot to answer for and both he and his fanbase continue to not just defend the movie, but insist those of us who don’t like it are wrong because we want a proper adaptation of who these characters are and what they stand for in superhero mythology. Whatever the other mistakes were, Snyder was not the right fit for this project any more than I would to remake Sucker Punch. It’s not like Rebel Moon part 1 has been a raving success after all.