10 Ways The DCEU Will Change Without Zack Snyder
2. Conventional Superhero Story-Telling
Back when he was making Watchmen, Snyder spoke in an interview with Entertainment Weekly about not being a mainstream comic book fan, discussing Heavy Metal magazine:
"You could call it high-brow comics, but to me, that comic book was just pretty sexy! I had a buddy who tried getting me into normal comic books, but I was all like, No one is having sex or killing each other. This isnt really doing it for me. I was a little broken, that way. So when Watchmen came along, I was, This is more my scene.
Sure, Warner Bros hired him to do something different, but it should have been obvious that the thing that made Snyder work for Watchmen was the same thing that should have ruled him out from guiding the entire DCEU: he's a destructive film-maker.
Unenthusiastic about mainstream comic books, Snyder took a desire to deconstruct into his film-making, and expecting him to be able to build a shared universe around them that didn't fundamentally seek to destroy and even parody them was silly. It wasn't his fault, per se, it's just that Warner Bros hired the wrong person with longevity in mind.
Now, there's a chance to focus on actual universe building, rather than convention deconstruction, and hopefully that will serve the DCEU well.