Overall Analysis #1: The DC Comics Extended Universe is Terrible - and here's why
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Welcome to the place where we look at elements of a Director or Film's entire meaning in a way more meaningful than the tradition reviews. I'm Logan Tyler Smith, and this is Overall Analysis.
To be clear, I do generally LOVE superhero movies, but that doesn't mean I like the god-awful DCEU mentioned in this TOTALLY persuasive title. It is crazy how profitable these films are given they're CLEARLY horrendous to both critics and general audiences alike. They have had maybe two solid hits and that's pretty much it. There are many reasons the DCEU SUCKS, and I will describe them below. If you stay until the end, I might give you an award. Just read this whole post (;
The DCEU represents the big budget trash many of cinephiles have warned about. Francois Truffaut, a known French critic in the 1950s, was known for being SCATHING (much like I'm being now), and for good reason! In his (and assumedly his audience's) general opinion, there were LOTS of B-movies and awful films that simply COULD NOT compete with television (I know, pretty hard to imagine TV just being a new thing, right? RIGHT?!). Truffaut knew it. And we know it now! It is generally true that the greater the movie's budget, the more creatively constrained it's going to be. And the DCEU is DEFINITELY constrained; they have huge budgets that are only reimbursed and held together thanks to "solid" marketing and a few good apples (but there are MANY more bad apples, and even a small amount of bad apples spoil the barrel). The point is, the DCEU have too big a budget and too much studio oversight, much like the films during preceding the French New Wave.
However, the French New Wave gave a glimmer of hope the DCEU seems to have only scraps of. Truffaut made his PHENOMENAL film "The 400 Blows" to prove not only that he could make a better film than what was being made today, but to prove that his media (cinema) had LOTS of potential and could be used to make genuine art!! The DCEU has seemingly no interest in proving their competence as filmmakers-instead hiring big-time directors and buying the sell-outs with HUGE amounts of money. Maybe the films should be a bit low-budget, but that brings me to my next point.
Obviously the Marvel Cinematic Universe has this next problem too. Besides the apparent overuse of visual effects (to be clear I'm all for innovation), the DCEU main problem appears to be it's actual source material. The source material (while for the most part well-adapted) is tailor-made for comic books rather than the mainstream (or even art house!!) cinema. Like I said, Marvel has this problem too, but at least their characters (most of them created by AMAZING writer Stan Lee [RIP]) had a bit of reliability. While the DC Comics characters can be exciting, they were never meant to be relatable (the ONE exception being Batman). The lack of reliability make the source material flawed, and therefore not 100% able to be adapted.
In conclusion, I hope I convinced you (if you are not already convinced, [I hope you already are]) that the DCEU is fundamentally flawed. At the beginning of this blog, I promised a reward. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I tried to think of an award to show you and couldn't think of one. All I could think of was the material I was writing, material I SINCERELY hope that you indulged me. This article may be negative, but sometimes negativity is important if you REALLY want film to be better than it is at the moment. Big budget spectacle can't rule Hollywood forever, and one of these days Warner Bros will ABSOLUTELY have to innovate.
Anyway, that's my take. My name is Logan Tyler Smith and this has been Overall Analysis.
To be clear, I do generally LOVE superhero movies, but that doesn't mean I like the god-awful DCEU mentioned in this TOTALLY persuasive title. It is crazy how profitable these films are given they're CLEARLY horrendous to both critics and general audiences alike. They have had maybe two solid hits and that's pretty much it. There are many reasons the DCEU SUCKS, and I will describe them below. If you stay until the end, I might give you an award. Just read this whole post (;
The DCEU represents the big budget trash many of cinephiles have warned about. Francois Truffaut, a known French critic in the 1950s, was known for being SCATHING (much like I'm being now), and for good reason! In his (and assumedly his audience's) general opinion, there were LOTS of B-movies and awful films that simply COULD NOT compete with television (I know, pretty hard to imagine TV just being a new thing, right? RIGHT?!). Truffaut knew it. And we know it now! It is generally true that the greater the movie's budget, the more creatively constrained it's going to be. And the DCEU is DEFINITELY constrained; they have huge budgets that are only reimbursed and held together thanks to "solid" marketing and a few good apples (but there are MANY more bad apples, and even a small amount of bad apples spoil the barrel). The point is, the DCEU have too big a budget and too much studio oversight, much like the films during preceding the French New Wave.
However, the French New Wave gave a glimmer of hope the DCEU seems to have only scraps of. Truffaut made his PHENOMENAL film "The 400 Blows" to prove not only that he could make a better film than what was being made today, but to prove that his media (cinema) had LOTS of potential and could be used to make genuine art!! The DCEU has seemingly no interest in proving their competence as filmmakers-instead hiring big-time directors and buying the sell-outs with HUGE amounts of money. Maybe the films should be a bit low-budget, but that brings me to my next point.
Obviously the Marvel Cinematic Universe has this next problem too. Besides the apparent overuse of visual effects (to be clear I'm all for innovation), the DCEU main problem appears to be it's actual source material. The source material (while for the most part well-adapted) is tailor-made for comic books rather than the mainstream (or even art house!!) cinema. Like I said, Marvel has this problem too, but at least their characters (most of them created by AMAZING writer Stan Lee [RIP]) had a bit of reliability. While the DC Comics characters can be exciting, they were never meant to be relatable (the ONE exception being Batman). The lack of reliability make the source material flawed, and therefore not 100% able to be adapted.
In conclusion, I hope I convinced you (if you are not already convinced, [I hope you already are]) that the DCEU is fundamentally flawed. At the beginning of this blog, I promised a reward. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I tried to think of an award to show you and couldn't think of one. All I could think of was the material I was writing, material I SINCERELY hope that you indulged me. This article may be negative, but sometimes negativity is important if you REALLY want film to be better than it is at the moment. Big budget spectacle can't rule Hollywood forever, and one of these days Warner Bros will ABSOLUTELY have to innovate.
Anyway, that's my take. My name is Logan Tyler Smith and this has been Overall Analysis.
- Get link
- Other Apps
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