When the best part of a new blockbuster movie is the comic relief provided by a dog that appears for only 5 minutes in 2 hours, you know things aren’t looking good for DC.
I went to see the new Superman film at a cinema in California during a work trip one evening. This isn’t meant to sound like a humble brag. When I’m on a work trip, I’m working. But when I’m stuck in a hotel room staring blankly out the window at air conditioning units, I think being out in a dark room somewhere else—where the floors are slightly less sticky—is a reasonable thing to do. I chose to see it in the US because I didn’t want to contribute to the global box office numbers the UK might be tracking.
Walking out of the movie, it was clear. Between this film and his other DC film, Suicide Squad—which I nearly walked out of after 40 minutes and later regretted not leaving—I was subjected to a heavy-handed monster in a failed attempt at studio self-awareness that was simply poorly executed. The only successful character was Peacemaker. The rest of the productions were essentially rejected ideas from Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films crammed into every available moment, and when things couldn’t be explained, a pocket universe was invented to fill the gaps.
The world-splitting finale in Superman was, I hope, a direct result of Gunn realising that subsequent films couldn’t handle this kind of treatment, and that things would improve now that he’d purged all this absurdity from his system. Unfortunately for us, by the time Peacemaker made the TV debut, Gunn had decided season 2 was going to be the same experience as every other idea; parallel, half-baked, two-dimensional universes that show what Marvel have escaped.
Since James Gunn took over DCEU leadership, these productions have moved in the opposite direction from James Bond. Where Bond featured lighthearted moments and matching villain names, evolving into Daniel Craig’s 3-hour epics that seemingly ended 007, we’re left with Reeves’ Superman as the remaining standard—one that only Cavill could have salvaged given the ongoing battle with audience expectations. Those films were undermined by Zack Snyder’s inability to conclude a story without making world destruction the only thing he thought audiences wanted to see stopped.
But if Superman wasn’t enough evidence of Gunn’s tone-deaf direction, his handling of Batman proves it’s not a one-off failure. Robert Pattinson did a decent job reintroducing the character after Ben Affleck’s ego trip. He’d earned at least another outing. Yet Gunn, having put his name front and centre by insisting on writing all the scripts, apparently lacked the humility to let The Batman continue. Instead, reporting suggests Pattinson won’t get a second chance—Gunn found some old post-its containing rejected ideas from his Marvel days gathering dust and decided Pattinson had the wrong haircut anyway.
The pattern is unmistakable. Where Reeves (not Christopher or Rachel, Matt) understood that Batman needed continuity and restraint, Gunn sees only an opportunity to impose his own vision, consequences be damned. It’s the same heavy-handed approach that sank Suicide Squad and Superman, just applied to a character who’d finally found solid ground.
Between Snyder’s predictable escalation and Gunn’s relentless refusal to edit himself, I don’t think we’ll get a good Superman reboot until Dean Cain repents.
