Here's why Marvel Studios' storytelling format will never work in the DCEU according to Zack Snyder. Credited for kickstarting Warner Bros. and DC's own big screen franchise, the filmmaker helmed a few of the series' first entries, laying the foundation to the thriving universe that it is now.
Snyder's history with the DCEU is complicated, however. While Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice were deemed box office hits, they earned divisive reviews from both critics and fans. This resulted in a significant pivot from his original plan for the franchise, starting with Justice League which is a can full of worms on its own. But, being the primary creative force of the universe during its infancy, Snyder knows a thing or two about setting up a high-profile franchise, and after everything that's been said and done, he's happy that the DCEU seems to finally settled on an approach that's best suitable for them.
During a recent appearance on the YouTube channel TheFilmJunkee, the director shares his candid thoughts about Warner Bros.' strategy moving forward for the franchise he helped establish. Snyder zeroed in on the creation of the multiverse and says that it's their best path for the future considering the many other separate pockets of DC. This is also the reason why he believes that Marvel Studios' single continuity format will never work on the DCEU as it will be difficult to write off other segments of the universe that are also well-established.
"Well frankly, I just love that they decided to kind of embrace their personality... I think that there was always this sort of criticism and or the middle step. What's the middle step? Ya know, trying to be like Marvel? Trying to do your own thing? Like, what are you going to do? But I think now, it's kind of locked in to this very specific trajectory where, I think and I hope, the idea is that it's filmmaker first... Which is basically what the multiverse allows for, filmmaker first and then, here's the characters, bringing the characters together."
"Even when I was doing Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Justice League, there were DC animated films that had nothing to do with what we were doing, and there were DC TV shows that had nothing to do with what we were doing, and there was no way to seam those up without alienating a giant fandom by saying 'Your Flash doesn't count' or 'Your animated show doesn't mean anything.'"
"I think that Marvel, they've built [their universe] over a long period of time, so by the time they got to their later movies, everything had kinda locked in, and it was all sort of moving in the same direction. But that was just never going to happen [with DC] because the DC TV shows were so popular and because their animated shows were so popular. I mean that was a success that they had. And [Christopher Nolan's] movies sort of had another tone and other universe. So there was no way that those things were going to ever like 'OK, we're going to say those things don't exist now, and it's this.' And I think there was that thinking for a while, but I'm glad that it kind of settled into a much more diverse [approach]."
By the time DCEU launched in 2013, the MCU was already an established brand with The Avengers which capped off its Phase 1, solidifying Kevin Feige's interconnected universe. Between this and the age-old rivalry between Marvel and DC that goes back to comics, comparisons between the big screen franchises were inevitable. Since Marvel Studios was able to build an evolving film series that's both a massive and critical success, other filmmaking companies naturally wanted to copy their business and creative model in the hopes that it'll also work for them. Over the years, a couple of other interconnected franchises were attempted and ultimately failed, making it clear that Marvel Studios' approach isn't a one-size-fits-all format. Fortunately, while other budding franchises failed beyond repair, the DCEU persevered and eventually found its footing.
Now, however, Marvel Studios is also realizing the limits of having rigid rules with continuity. Like the DCEU, it's also embracing the idea of a multiverse as it expands into small screen offerings — something that DC has already been thriving in for years via The CW's Arrowverse as Snyder mentioned. There are obvious risks to this approach as it could be too complex to bring in new fans along the way, but it also allows for more creative freedom for the filmmakers as they're able to try a lot of out-of-the-box things.
Source: TheFilmJunkee
