Last week, Empire Magazine did a huge feature on the upcoming film event of the century, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Like a good news website, we reported on the feature with a few quotes from the Godfather of the DC Cinematic Universe, Zack Snyder. As expected, the print edition of the magazine provided far more details.
CBM managed a copy of the tome and shared some additional details regarding the DC Cinematic Universe (or Extended Universe, which is what CBM says that WB intends to call their movie universe). One of the many criticisms that WB/DC received regarding their movie universe was how they did not have a plan, especially when comparing them unfavorably to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. However, Snyder explains that there was a grand plan all along, it’s just moving in a different direction than that of Marvel.
He says:
“What we are doing is ground up all the way. It is one giant story. The first thing we had was the Justice League concept. The other movies, in a way, have to support that. That is our Wonder Woman, our Aquaman. They have their own creative concepts that supports them, but they do serve Justice League in the coming together of those heroes.”
It seems almost the reverse route of Marvel, establishing their universe via the team-up film and then expanding upon it via the solo films. It’s an interesting route, but not completely unheard of. It’s just not what we’re used to considering how successful Marvel’s method was, but I’m sure it will work. Start with a bang to get everybody interested and then follow that up with intimate character studies of the cast that made that bang as memorable as it was.
WB even had on-hand a chart that laid out the plans for the DCEU, allowing Empire to take a glimpse of it. Producer Deborah Snyder, also wife of Zack, elaborated upon the chart and how they connect, “[It’s] kind of a timeline of what every movie is, where it is going, and where the films fit in relation to each other.” Earlier, we reported that Snyder discussed the creative freedom the directors will have when helming their own addition to the DCEU, saying, “I want all the other directors of the other films to be able to stretch their legs and do what they want, but at the same time there is a big interconnected universe.” Charles Roven, the other producer on Batman v. Superman, expressed the same sentiment, providing a metaphor for better understanding, “We call it the sandbox. It has borders around it, but everybody gets to play in the sandbox. On Suicide Squad, David Ayer has a lot of specific control over his area of the sandbox. Even if he crosses the line a little bit, we see if we can push our boundaries back a little bit.”
It looks like their approach is slightly more lax than Marvel’s. From what I’ve gathered from Marvel’s method, there was a very a strict blueprint in place for all the Marvel movies and if you strayed too far away from it, the script was rewritten. At least, that seemed to be the case with Edgar Wright’s vision for Ant-Man.
And lastly, Empire seemed to have mentioned an “elusive” Aquaman cameo in BvS. When pressed for information regarding the cameo, Snyder remained quiet, simply stating, “You will understand he exists.”
Well, that’s interesting. With as many characters as this movie already has, it’s a good idea that it’s simply a cameo and nothing more.
What do you think? Do you like the plan for the DC Extended Universe? Or do you find that it doesn’t make sense? Let me know.
