What If DC Had Made A Cinematic Universe Before Marvel?

By Alex Leadbeater / July 13, 2016

It's hard to fully gauge to what extent because it's still going on, but there's no denying that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed cinema. Aside from halting superhero fatigue seemingly indefinitely, it's ushered in a brighter, fun tone for blockbusters, finalised geek culture's rise to became the dominant force in Hollywood and popularised the shared universe concept to the point where it's the go-to franchise idea well outside of superheroes; there's list-worthy amounts of imitators trying to capture some of that magic, from Universal Monsters to Transformers. And it all started with Marvel.

But what if things had gone a bit differently? What if the Distinguished Competition had beaten Marvel to the punch? It sounds like a crazy suggestion, but not only was it something that could have happened, it almost did.

OK, let's set the scene. The year is 1997. DC are the de facto king of superhero movies - they got a whopping four Superman films (and one spin-off) out of Christopher Reeve before that series tank tanked and Batman is back on populist form (Forever was much better received financially than Returns). To top it off, Tim Burton, the man who kicked off the Dark Knight's new run, is currently working on a new film from the Man Of Steel. In an age where only those two heroes were deemed to work on screen, that's the best you could hope for.

What really happened was Batman And Robin bombed more spectacularly than a converted nuclear reactor and Superman Lives, which had already hit a series of roadblocks during its protracted pre-production, was cancelled in the aftermath (many assume it was due to quality, but that's not quite true), with a proposed Batman 5 axed soon after. There were various attempts to get both series going again, but things didn't come together until 2005 and '06 with Batman Begins and Superman Returns respectively (by which point Marvel had begun early work on what would become the MCU).

But there was groundwork in those two movies that could, with sustained audience approval, have led to a DC Cinematic Universe, with roots dating back almost two decades before when Marvel finally got into the act. It's of course all hypothetical and hinges on universally accepted bad movies (and bad prospective movies) being successful, but let's take a trip through the multiverse and look at what could have been...