I don’t think they do know what makes a good superhero movie… I do think they are just trying to catch up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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And I think that marvel is at an advantage in the movie space because of how marvel writes superhero stories in their comics.
Marvels biggest properties were pretty much built on soap opera situations happening to people in funny clothes.
To me DC has a problem of making archetypes who are beyond human. Superman is difficult to write compelling new stories for because he is an avatar of the Boy Scout. Batman is the avatar of… Uh… Batmens?
I love DCs superheroes, but I’ve always related to marvels stories more.
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As the repeated nerd-splosions above indicate. DC for quite a while has pegged its creative direction to a “darker” more “mature” approach drawn from certain works and trends about 25-30 years ago. The scare quotes indicate that this approach is what thirteen year olds think is dark and/or mature. I’m reasonably sure that DC really, truly believes that that approach. No jokes, teh sex, swearing, extra violence, grim and grit backstories. Does make for good movies. Automatically. They’ve achieved intermittent sales success from this approach (comics wise). And when business on the comic end gets bad, they usually retreat to that position to shore up funds from the sort of fans who’ve stuck around as long as they’ve been doing it.
Viewed that way Jared Leto is the perfect casting choice for a DC movie. His “I’m so dark”, pseudo-intellectual, posturing. And eye make-up heavy, early aughts mope band. Are the apotheosis of that approach to “darkness” and “maturity”.
I’m not saying they actually like this shit. Or think its artistically deep (the way your average middle schooler with a hot topic gift card does). But they think its a good approach, they think people want it, and they think it sells. Or will sell.
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I think part of the problem is how each treats dual identities. Peter Parker is a perpetually broke student, a science genius, a photographer for a paper whose editor hates his other identity, and the butt of life’s jokes. So, he channels all of that into his wisecracking when he is Spider-Man. By comparison, Clark Kent is, quite deliberately, mind-numbingly dull. He’s not a person so much as he is a mask. And while that can work on the page of a comic, it’s very hard to personify “dull” and make it interesting on screen. Christopher Reeve is one of the few people I’ve seen who can make it work.
Similarly, Iron Man and Batman. Tony Stark is a fully-fledged, flawed person who sometimes wears armour. Bruce Wayne is a way for Batman to acquire funds.
Yes, I’m aware that I’m over-generalizing, and that there have been good stories that have played up both Kent and Wayne as opposed to Supes and Batty. It would do DC some good, though, to build real people and then build the hero on top of them, though, instead of creating the action scenes first and then filling in the story as they go along.
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Part of what I was getting at was this, exactly. The current creative approach to Batman is that “Bruce Wayne is the real mask!”. So rather than earlier approaches. Where Bruce Wayne had a life, a personality, a sense of humor, friends etc. And by extension so did Batman. You’ve got an approach where Bruce Wayne functionally doesn’t exist. He has no people (outside of Alfred) no goals, no personality. So by extension nether does Batman. He often has no team, friends, or associations. His war (and its always predicated as a war these days) is the only thing. Batman’s SCARY SYMBOLISM, and the consequent anger, violence, and paranoia are sort of the only thing.
I’ve never really bought into the whole “marvel writes people, DC writes symbols”, or however you’d like to phrase it, criticism. In part because many of my favorite DC characters and stories/runs haven’t been written that way. Mostly differentiated from Marvel in having less convoluted continuity and less melodrama. But frankly the longer I look at it the more I see them, repeatedly, pulling back to a situation that’s exactly that. Bruce Wayne is a non-entity that only exists to foster Batman. Its even clearer with Superman as you point out. Most of the time Clark is just bumbling comic releif that’s quickly gotten out of the way. But perhaps the only recentish, non-elseworlds, Superman Story I’ve ever enjoyed was the All Star Superman run from about a decade back.
That was an un-repentant throw back to Silver age Superman which helped. But Clark was a goofy, bumbling but oddly charming and quick witted actual presence in the book. And you know what, so was Superman. I remember getting the impression that Superman there was just Clark having a blast, often while noone was looking. The Super-heroic Icon followed from the character. And the approaches to Batman I’ve enjoyed the most, same thing. Even the ones where Bruce Wayne was a judgmental, emotionally cut off dick; because in those cases so was Batman.
Too often it goes the other way around.
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Yeah that I think is what made Justice League for me when I was reading it… though it was more of an absurdist dada soap opera…
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