Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a piece called 9 Ways DC Entertainment Can Catch Up To Marvel Studios as a lead-in to the release of The Dark Knight Rises and the impending Comic-Con. Now, since we’ve seen how successful the final chapter of that movie has been as well as the success of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, it seems like a good time for a follow-up piece, especially with another Comic-Con just two weeks away.
Back in 2010, then Warner Bros. President Alan Horn knew what their partnership with DC Entertainment offered in terms of great characters and stories and that they could potentially help them fill in the gap once the “Harry Potter” movies came to a close, but they’ve yet to do much with any of the characters beyond Batman and now Superman, and that’s been the case for a decades-long partnership.
As one of the few ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype writers who never got around to writing any sort of review or sharing my opinion on Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, I wanted to look at what the movie meant for the long-term of what I’m going to call the DC Movie Universe i.e. the chance of seeing more movies featuring DC Comics characters, something Snyder is already addressing in interviews without really saying much.
I want to preface this piece by saying it’s written less out of concern or criticism for those at Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, but as a real desire to see WB/DCE capitalize on the success of Man of Steel‘s record-setting opening and achieve the type of success with their characters that Marvel Studios has been having with theirs.
Here at SuperHeroHype we love to get conversations going because we know our readers have strong opinions about this stuff, so read on and let us know what you think in the comments. Who knows who might be reading them?
And if you have NOT seen Man of Steel yet, you might want to pass on reading this because I do talk about a few major SPOILERS from the movie.
1. Man of Steel Was WAY TOO BIG – Where Do You Go From Here?
This was almost literally my first thought after walking out of Man of Steel, because Zack Snyder and the other filmmakers have made a huge movie with massive amounts of destruction on par with the biggest of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies. It was actually shocking to me that there was this much destruction (and even a bit of world-building) in the very first Superman movie since normally this level of action might be saved for a sequel. This is a serious issue that Warner Bros. (and especially David Goyer) has right now because they made such a big movie that to create a sequel, they’d would have to go just as big or bigger. One obvious answer would be to bring in Brainiac, but Zod’s crafts look so much like what Braniac would be showing up on Earth with, many moviegoers would just assume they’re repeating themselves. Having Superman fight Luthor in a sequel would probably seem almost like a let-down since what could Luthor do that would seem like as big a danger to Earth compared to Zod literally destroying Earth and rebuilding it as Krypton. Like I said, Man of Steel is a big BIG movie and it would be hard to make a bigger follow-up other than doing a Justice League movie where they take on Darkseid and his minions of Apokolips.
One Solution: Don’t try to make a bigger sequel. You’ve introduced a new Superman in the biggest way possible, so use the sequel to get into him trying to fit into Metropolis more as adult Clark Kent, while taking on global disasters and real world issues. Introduce Cadmus and STAR Labs and Lex Luthor and have them involved with more science-based issues for Superman and then save the bigger stuff for a Justice League movie. It’s pretty clear that after killing a villain and neglecting to save people in Man of Steel, this Superman needs more humanity and what better way to rectify that than to introduce more human elements in a sequel?
