He’ll need it.
I finally got around to streaming Black Adam. Yes, I know it’s been on HBO Max for about a month. But, let’s be honest, I was in no rush to see it. Reviews for the film were decidedly mixed, and now I see why. Black Adam the film, and indeed Black Adam the character, fails to fully commit to anything and instead settles for some fairly pat statements about first-world vs. third-world politics. I didn’t see a lot new here, and the film ignores a lot of the Black Adam story that I remember from the old Shazam! comics, giving us a character that resembles the comics in name only.
Not that it matters, to be honest. The news for the past several months is that James Gunn and Peter Safran are taking over and cleaning up DC’s past messes. Gunn is known as the creative force behind Guardians of the Galaxy and Peacemaker. Safran has collaborated with him and also produced several DC movies. Together they inherit a real problem and hope to fix it by more or less flushing all of the past down the toilet.
A bad time for “cinematic universes”
When we first started hearing about “cinematic universes,” it was way back in the late ’00s and it all seemed like an impossible achievement. Combine a dozen superhero stories into one? Align all their mythologies? Make people wait years for a “payoff” movie? It seemed impossible. And then, Marvel’s The Avengers did it.
The problem is that since then, the various “cinematic universes” that exist have been allowed to grow wild, and most of them now look like untrimmed rose bushes. They’re messy, ugly, overgrown, and while you can see their former beauty, now they’re too thorny to touch.
It was nearly a year ago that I took Marvel to task for the mess they’ve made of their cinematic universe. But let’s be honest… that’s nothing compared to the state of DC movies since the mid-2000s. Three different Batmen? Or am I missing one? One actor playing Wonder Woman, but with wildly varying interpretations. And while I think we all appreciate the mastery of Zack Snyder’s Justice League compared to the theatrical version, it just creates even more confusion.
Now it’s all multiverse this, multiverse that
Both Marvel and DC have embraced the idea that all their characters are part of a series of parallel universes so that what happens in one movie may or may not tie into another. It’s a cheat, really, but a necessary one so that you can tell interesting stories. Without that idea, we wouldn’t have excellent movies like the Joaquin Phoenix Joker.
Still, it gives the frequent movie watcher a lot to keep up with. Did the Mr. Fantastic who appeared in the latest Dr. Strange movie correspond to either of the two portrayals in films in the last 20 years? Are the X-Men shown in the last Deadpool movie even the same X-Men as the other movie X-Men? It will give you fits.
Which brings us back to James Gunn
James Gunn has a lot of work ahead of them. Faced with a stable of actors who age while their characters don’t, there’s going to be a need to recast some of them. There have been some high profile issues with some of the DC Universe’s actors, too. A clean slate sounds like a great idea, but you risk alienating people who have invested in the last universe.
It’s also a really valid question as to whether you bring the focus back to the “main” heroes like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. That’s what people probably want to see, but is it better to bench them for a while and develop characters like Hawkman (who is definitely not Hawkeye), Atom Smasher (who is not the Atom, that’s another guy), and such?
The real problem is that for the last about 20 years, we’ve been drawing inspiration for our movies from comics. They’re a rich source of material, but they can vary widely in tone and quality. I think Gunn knows that, and the real challenge here is crafting something that people will want to watch from all of it. Then you have to make it better than Marvel, Star Wars, and other universes, because people are only going to pay for about 5 movies a year at the theaters.
The one thing that is sure
Gunn and Safran won’t please everyone. Gunn’s jokes-played-straight style isn’t for everyone, and it’s going to be impossible to keep everything that’s good while adding new good stuff. Yet, I would agree that it’s too soon for another reboot of most of DC’s franchises. I’m glad I don’t have to be the one making those tough decisions.
Just because no one asked…
If I were in charge of this stuff, I’d do two things. First of all I’d announce that I was rebooting everything. I know that’s painful, but mistakes were made and they have to be in the past. Then, I’d make it clear that audiences should not expect another DC movie until 2026 at the earliest. That’s going to be painful and I get it. Discovery’s David Zaslav will like it since it means not spending more money. The rest of, pretty much everyone, won’t. But you need some distance from what came before.
Then I’d start from the beginning, not by rehashing what came before, but by telling new stories in innovative ways. Rather than being guided by 1978’s Superman: The Movie, I’d be guided by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. These properties assumed that a smart audience already knows the basic tropes and did something interesting and innovative. Not for everyone, but a lot better than showing baby Kal-El crashing on Earth for the 97th time.
