10 Things The DCEU Wishes It Could've Done Differently
2. Injected More Levity Into Those Earlier Films
Partly thanks to the success of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, DC is now viewed as the "dark and gritty" to Marvel's light-hearted fun.
Annoyingly, this perception even seems to exist when the characters themselves might not fit with that tone. We got two films featuring Superman that had the character just moping around for the majority of the runtime, and even Batman had been made darker than he normally was, with Batfleck murdering practically anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in his path.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with grounded and gritty storytelling in superhero movies, but the DCEU's mistake was injecting this tone into the very characters themselves, and not providing enough levity to balance things out. Cavill's Superman in particular has been heavily criticized for his general pessimism and sadness, which Warner Bros responded to by rebooting him into a much more colourful figure in Justice League's third act, garnering a more positive response in the process.
They've also rebooted the tone of their entire operation, with Shazam bordering on a full-on comedy, and Aquaman one of the lighter, brighter superhero movies in recent years. And overall, this reboot has been a huge success.
Both those movies (and Wonder Woman) have a fine blend of action, drama, and laughs, without leaning too heavily in one direction or the other. If the DCEU had done this from the very beginning - instead of turning up the grittiness dial to eleven - maybe the response to those earlier movies would've been much more favourable.