As we all know that the box office streak of 3 flop movies subsequently in a row has been achieved by the DCEU franchise. The Flash (2023) which is the final movie of this franchise has also secured it's rank is the greatest Hollywood flop movie in the entire Hollywood movies history, not even Micheal Keaton and Ben Affleck's return as Batman couldn't save the movie from becoming a disaster. DCEU is now going to be rebooted by James Gunn and Peter Safran is now renamed as the DCU. DCU's first movie is going to be Blue Beetle which is releasing on 18 August 2023. Speaking of the overall DCEU projects, which is 14 movies and 1 HBO Max series.... Out of this, 7 movies are flops/box office disasters. You might be wondering that how is Zack Snyder a reason for all this? Well we answer you in this article. Even though Zack Snyder did his best for the DCEU, but there are certain mistakes he made that left the DCEU doomed and moreover, rising toxicity among his fans.
Frank Miller's TDK returns is Snyder's love
Batman: the dark knight returns is a 4 issue mini series published in 1986 which was written by Frank Miller was Zack Snyder's inspiration for his version of Batman which he introduced in his movie Batman V Superman : dawn of justice (2016) where actor Ben Affleck portrayed the role of the caped crusader- Batman. Now, it's a question that how does Frank Miller's Batman differ from the batman of the main timeline.... In Frank Miller's version of Batman, a futuristic take on Batman is shown who is not merciful anymore towards his enemies. He killed the joker by twisting his head and what not? Unlike the main timeline's batman, this Batman uses guns. It is presented in a way that the batman is nothing but night time anti hero, while in the main timeline Batman chose never to kill anyone nor use a gun till his last day as the batman. He later retired from downing the costume of the caped crusader, but here in Miller's futuristic take, Batman died with a heart attack just after he defeated superman. Zack Snyder took a lot of inspiration of this version of Batman, therefore resulting in his Batman being physically similar to Frank Miller's version of Batman. Even the regular suit and Prep time armour that Batman wears is similar to Frank Miller's version of Batman in Batman V Superman : dawn of justice (2016) which marks the first appearance of Ben Affleck's Batman.
Even though the casting choice was great, Snyder failed to portray the Batman that we are most connected to... His batman tortures his subject while the main timeline's Batman scares it's target with a death stare but never tortures, in this film Batman was even portrayed using guns to kill henchmen during the warehouse scene..... The previous actor who played Batman was Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan's the dark knight trilogy, Christian Bale's version of Batman quoted in The dark knight rises (2012) "no guns no killing".... This is the exact code of the Batman from comics, but Snyder didn't choose to follow this to portray his Batman. In Batman V Superman : dawn of justice (2016), during the ending scene we can see Batman quoting "we kill".... This angered many core Batman fans, which is the result that today Batman V Superman: dawn of Justice (2016) is counted as one of the worst movies of DC characters. Many comic lovers turned their faces towards the MCU as it had much better portrayal of the Marvel comic book heroes in those times. Like Captain America : civil war (2016) which was the story adopted from the comics 'Civil War'.
Logic dies in the DCEU movies by Snyder
You might think that logic always disappears during Bollywood films, but no! Snyder's DCEU movies multiple times lost track of logic. For an instance, in Batman V Superman: dawn of justice (2016) we see that superman is defeated and Batman has the kryptonite spear ready to kill superman. But Superman took the name of his mother, he said 'Martha'... Which slowed down batman and he choose not to kill superman. Moreover, in Zack Snyder's justice league (2021) and Justice league (2017) we can find Batman struggling to fight one single parademon in a hand to hand fight.... So how was he able to defeat superman in Batman V Superman: dawn of justice (2016) as Superman is more powerful than a parademon? These is also some of the imperfect acts of Snyder that led fans to watch MCU instead of DCEU.
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The toxic fanbase
Despite the negative points, Zack Snyder has a fan following... But most of them are too toxic for any DC comic book community. Snyder fans regularly give hate to DC movies that is not made by Zack Snyder. Even if you check any post regarding batman, you would find Snyder fans commenting that Ben Affleck is the best Batman, although they are well known to the fact that Zack Snyder's batman is inspired by Frank Miller's futuristic Batman. Even when a DC film is released, they immediately dig up all the fault, even faults that are not relevant just to prove their point that "Zack Snyder can only save DC!". You can also find Snyder fans commenting on Christopher Nolan's batman movies as 'overrated' and comparing it to Snyder's work, calling TDK trilogy 'trash'. While we all know that there has been no better DC franchise than Christopher Nolan's dark knight trilogy. DC movies are also failing due to this reason that Snyder fans don't want DC movies going hit so that they can spam to restore the Snyder verse. The darkest thing is that majority of the DCEU fans are Snyder fans.
Certain issues with the Cinematography
All the DCEU movies by Snyder are dark toned movies. It is for sure that DC comics also have a dark tone, but Snyder's work was much dark toned. Snyder's work is also criticised for making superman a dark toned hero, despite DC comics always portray him in light tone in comparison to the other heroes DC comics got. Superman in the DCEU has always portrayed to be dark hero, who might become an unstoppable tyrant in the future. More over, the death and the resurrection of Superman was too quick... He died in the Batman V Superman: dawn of justice (2016) and was later revived just after a movie in Justice League (2017) by Joss Whedon (most parts were made by Snyder himself before he left the project in the mid).
(Written by Talha Amin)