Please, Hollywood, don’t push another shared universe on us

DC’s dud of a shared universe

Among the most anticipated, however, was the DC Extended Universe, a franchise promising to give DC superhero fans the same gift that Marvel fans had been enjoying for years. Sadly, this promise proved empty once the films actually came out, as the desperation of Warner Bros. surfaced as early as the second film.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is peppered with clunky sequences and subplots that have nothing to do with the main story. During the climax, for instance, Wonder Woman (who’s done zilch thus far) finds a flash drive with secret videos of the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. Yes, the movie stops in its tracks to promote future spin-offs.

The franchise continued these antics with cameos and abridged backstories in Suicide Squad and eventually delivered its big crossover: Justice League. While some chalked up its critical and commercial failure to a troubled production, many others blamed the series’ clumsy worldbuilding and haphazard effort to copy Marvel’s success as fast as possible. Execs had been so fixated on setting up their own Avengers that they hadn’t bothered to let the shared universe or its characters breathe.

Unsurprisingly, DC was more successful when they moved away from the shared universe mentality. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam!, and Joker were all received much better than their previous efforts, and they had little to no connection to the larger DC Extended Universe. You could also attribute that to escaping Zack Snyder’s terrible vision, but that’s another conversation.