10 Ways Warner Bros. Should've Made The DCEU

10. Make A Different Kind Of Superman Film

Henry Cavill Man Of Steel 2 Superman Solo
Warner Bros.

As far as Superman films go, Man of Steel isn't actually all that bad. Sure, it might be littered with Snyder-isms right across the board, from obtuse Christ-like imagery to bloated, overinflated and computer generated fight scenes, but it's not as soulless as one would think.

The problem with the film, fundamentally, is that it's suffocated by the very obvious intention to mark a severe course correction in Superman's filmography. Each and every last cinematic outing to have featured the Last Son of Krypton had made a point of placing the character's symbology front and centre to their proceedings. Action wasn't so much a priority as it was an addition to the bread and butter of the films' stylistic attempts to echo the Fleischer Studio's shorts of the forties and fifties, and so WB - anxious to avoid criticism that their next Supes film could be considered 'boring' - went all in with a director who could (in theory) make a Superman story with plenty of thrills, spills, and Kryptonian space drills.

The resulting product conjured a bleak and emotionally distant incarnation of the Superman mythos, with Henry Cavill in particular missing the mark as Clark Kent. Further to that was the film's controversial climax, which contradicted any kind of optimism conveyed by Hans Zimmer's wonderful (and overlooked) composition.

WB made the right move in electing to use the Man of Steel as a means of kickstarting their shared superhero ensemble, but it lacked balance. Of course fans want to see Superman duking it out with crazy powerful enemies, but he needs a heart too. Laying the foundations of your universe on the bodies of thousands in Metropolis just wasn't the way to go.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.