10 Biggest Mistakes The DCEU Has Ever Made
8. The Lack Of Tonal Consistency
One of the biggest reasons for the MCU's continued success is that, as the "Godfather" of the franchise, Kevin Feige has ensured that the movies have maintained a consistent tone, and that audiences know what sort of movie they're getting basically every single time.
The DCEU, however, has been a tonal trainwreck from the outset.
Man of Steel attempted to reinvent Superman in the gritty vein of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Saga - a bold decision which many nevertheless felt was inappropriate for such a traditionally hopeful, colourful character.
This was compounded by Batman v Superman, which presented a thoroughly mopey Superman and pitted him against a Batman (Ben Affleck) who straight-up murdered criminals.
Suicide Squad meanwhile couldn't decide whether it wanted to be Guardians of the Galaxy or not, before Wonder Woman adopted a lighter tone akin to an MCU movie.
At this point the DCEU took a sharp left turn tonally, with Justice League, Aquaman, and Shazam! seemingly cementing that the gritty, "grimdark" early days of the franchise were over.
Yet in 2020 we got the R-rated Birds of Prey, and the next year Snyder was allowed to release his darker original take on Justice League, before James Gunn released his insanely irreverent, adult-skewing The Suicide Squad.
There's nothing holistic about the tones and styles of these films, ensuring that audiences didn't have any idea what to expect from movie to movie. As such, you can't really blame them for not showing up or feeling bewildered when they actually did.
For a supposedly interconnected universe of films, so many of them feel like they take place in entirely different worlds.