Ranking the DCEU

1. Wonder Woman (2017)
2. Aquaman (2018)
3. Shazam! (2019)
4. The Suicide Squad (2021)
5. Suicide Squad (2016)
6. Birds of Prey (2020)
7. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
8. Justice League (2017)
9. Man of Steel (2013)
10. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
11. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

This one is kind of hard, because honestly, none of these movies are as good as the MCU.  That really pains me, because I grew up liking DC more than Marvel.  I'm hoping the upcoming Flashpoint movie reboots things in a way that allows future DC movies to be, well, fun.  That's not asking for too much, is it?  Superhero movies that actually make me smile?

I've already blogged about most of these movies, but here's some specific notes.  In release date order, with links to my original blogs (if I blogged them):

Man of Steel (2013) - Not terrible, but it was overly long and dull.  Superman is supposed to be full of optimism, but this movie shoots for more gritty realism.  But the bigger sin is that it set the tone for this entire series of movies.  Want to know why the DCEU never reached the heights of the MCU?  Bad foundation.  

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) - AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGH!  'nuff said.

Suicide Squad (2016) - Fun, quirky, but suffered a lot from bad editing and the lackluster ending.

Wonder Woman (2017) - The closest the DCEU comes to a perfect movie, but it kind of runs out of steam halfway through.  I wish the villain had been cooler.

Justice League (2017) - Kind of fun, but full of flaws.

Aquaman (2018) - I debated on whether this should be number one.  Both this and WW are strong movies, maybe the only two A-list movies in the series, but Aquaman felt sort of silly in ways Wonder Woman did not.  It was a tough call.

Shazam! (2019) - Again, DC just can't make a perfect movie.  Who is this for?  On the one hand, it's light-hearted and feels like a kid's movie.  On the other hand, it has some of the scariest scenes in the entire DCEU.  But it is fun, like a Shazam movie should be, and a lot more entertaining than most of the movies on this list.

Birds of Prey (2020) - A beautiful mess.  This has the distinction of being the last movie I saw in a theater, and isn't that sad?  Overall, I liked it, but they really didn't know what they were doing here.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - I really wanted this one to be better, but there's just too many flaws.  Gal Gadot is as amazing as ever, but the story just isn't very good.

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) - Of the two Justice League cuts, this one is the better movie.  But it's less fun than the theatrical cut, and that's why it's farther down the list.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - I'm not even sure if this counts as a DCEU movie, as it's sort of considered a soft reboot.  But there's no reason it can't exist in the same universe as the films that came before it.  Anyway, it's worth seeing.

The Suicide Squad

I don't know, I kind of liked the first Suicide Squad movie.  It had a dull "final boss" and it wasn't edited very well, but it was fun and had a quirky charm.  But most people didn't like it.  Go figure.  

2021's "The Suicide Squad" seems to have a lot more fans.  I can see why.  If nothing else, the final battle is a lot cooler.  But the two movies are similar enough that it's hard to review one without comparing it to the other.  So, a quick comparison:  

I like the characters better in the second one.  King Shark beats Killer Croc, hands down.  

I like the dialogue better in the second one.  Some of the comedic exchanges are pure gold.  However, it reminded me a little of Joss Whedon, in that it was obvious that all the dialogue was written by the same person. 

I like the soundtrack better in the first one.  Which is funny, because James Gunn usually nails soundtracks.  Though the first Suicide Squad kind of used up most of its soundtrack in the first half hour.

One of the problems I have with most people's opinions, is that they tend to only remember the last half hour of a movie.  When I saw "Attack of the Clones" with one of my relatives, she went on and on about how the movie was just jam-packed with non-stop action.  But that's not true, AotC is actually a pretty talky movie until about halfway through.  But the last 45 minutes is very exciting, and that's what you tend to remember most.

And that's kind of how I felt watching The Suicide Squad.  I'd already heard positive buzz about it, so I went in expecting a non-stop thrill ride.  But about halfway through I found myself thinking, "So, when does it get good?"  I mean, it wasn't necessarily bad up to that point, it just wasn't the laugh-a-minute actionfest I was promised.  But when the movie finally paid off, it really paid off.

And that's another way it contrasted with the first Suicide Squad movie.  I thought the first movie had a really strong opening, and gradually got duller and duller toward the end.  

Anyway, I like both movies, but the new one is definitely better.  Neither one is perfect, but they're both pretty fun.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations (Netflix)

I just binged the first five episodes of "Masters of the Universe: Revelations" on Netflix.  It's not bad.  

Background: I loved the He-Man cartoons when I was a kid in the 80s.  They weren't quite up there with the Holy Trinity (Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers), but I still watched the cartoons and owned a lot of the toys.  I haven't paid much attention to the franchise since the 80s, though.  I know there have been a few attempts at bringing it back, but nothing ever caught my eye.

The new series is a sequel to the 80s cartoon, and it even makes direct references to some of the specific classic episodes.  But it takes itself a lot more seriously.  That's a point of contention with me, honestly.  I mean, MotU has always been sort of silly.  With goofy characters like Clawful and Stinkor, I'm not sure it deserved a darker, more serious tone.  But it works, in its own way.

He-Man himself doesn't get much screen time, and the story is more focused on Teela.  So of course, it got review bombed by tons of misogynistic trolls.  Keep that in mind if you see it has a low rating somewhere - some of the ratings don't actually reflect the quality of the show, but rather the politics of the reviewers.

If you're reading this blog, then you probably know that I prefer female antagonists.  But it goes beyond that.  Even when I was a kid, I thought He-Man was the least interesting MotU character.  He was basically Conan with Superman's personality, and there just wasn't much to him.  I was a big Stratos fan myself, but I also had a thing for Trap-Jaw.  In fact, the show's focus on He-Man might be one of the reasons it never reached the aforementioned "Holy Trinity" status for me.

So downplaying the He-Man character was probably the most interesting thing the new MotU could have done.  It gave some of the other characters a chance to shine for a change.  To be fair, some of the review bombers complained that He-Man was prominent in the trailers, and accused it of false advertising.  It's a legitimate complaint, but they had to do it that way to make some of the twists more surprising in the show itself.

The voice cast is pretty good.  Mark Hamill's Skeletor kind of gives me an uncanny valley feeling, since it's sort of like the Joker but without the humorous edge.  I'm not crazy about Sarah Michelle Gellar as Teela, because it sounds like a weak character's voice coming out of a much stronger character.  It made sense for Gellar to play Buffy, because that show's concept was about a powerful fighter in the body of a waif.  But Teela's appearance and voice just don't really match up, IMO.

The art is pretty good.  Cartoons have come a long way since the 80s, and the animation is a lot smoother.  Some characters look better than others.  I love that Prince Adam actually looks different from He-Man this time; it's more believable that his disguise fools anyone.  Orko kind of creeps me out, with his mystical eyes and scrawny blue arms.  The only part I really don't like is the obvious CGI in places.  I thought cartoons had gotten better about that.

It throws in a lot of Easter eggs for long-time fans, including an entire episode set in "Preternia" - a prehistoric setting from a cancelled toy line, but now repurposed as the Eternian afterlife.  The series features several characters and vehicles that were relatively obscure in the original run.  In fact, in some ways it feels more like a toy commercial than the original series did, even if it's no longer easy to buy these toys.

The fifth episode ends on a very big cliffhanger, with a twist far gutsier than anything seen in the original cartoon.  I do hope they aren't too slow about posting the rest of the series.  I'm ready for more.

Invincible (Amazon Prime)

I just finished season one of Invincible.  Wow, that's some powerful stuff.  I went into this show without having read any of the comics, but some of the twists had already been spoiled for me.  There seems to be a certain genre of comics that exists only to subvert our expectations.  The problem is, edgy subversions are becoming so common, that "wholesome" is becoming the new edgy.

I think the real problem is that there's only so many plots (at least, only so many that readers find entertaining), but a seemingly unlimited number of writers.  Now that the internet can make anyone a writer (just sign over most of your profits to the Kindle store), we're seeing more copycat works than ever.  Amazon is bursting with books about vampire romance or wizarding schools.  It takes an amazing mind to come up with something truly original.

Unfortunately, Invincible isn't it.  The show is full of clever observations on the realities of super hero crime fighting, but they're not so clever that I hadn't seen these tropes before.  But at least it combines these tropes in an entertaining way.

When I first saw the trailer for Invincible, I thought, "great, another modern take on superheroes that uses graphic violence to be edgy."  But the actual show is pretty good about only using gore to make a point.  

Saving Private Ryan used violence to show the horrors of war.  The Passion of the Christ used violence to make Christ's pain seem more real, instead of the "fairy tale" quality most Biblical films have.  They weren't pandering to teenage slasher fans, they were serious movies that used violence to make serious points.

Invincible seems similar in its intentions, though it's going to appeal to the teenage edgelords as well.  When the title character enters his first mass battle against some alien invaders, he sees citizens getting blasted into pieces.  He ends up covered in blood and gore from those slain, and it rightly freaks him out.  He tries to save an elderly woman, but he ends up injuring her more in the process.  

The whole scene is there to show that being a superhero isn't as neat and clean as he thought.  Invincible (the character) had grown up reading comics and watching other heroes (including his father) fight bad guys on TV.  But that didn't prepare him for how real things would get when he became a hero himself.

When it's not making a point, the violence isn't any worse than an episode of Justice League.  The first episode's opening scene has a team of Justice League expys defending the White House from a pair of criminals.  Barely any blood is spilled, innocent lives are saved at the last minute, and on the whole it could have been a kid's cartoon.  The plot of the first episode rips a lot from Sky High, and it looks like the episode will end on a high note.  

And then, the subversion comes.  I'm not going to spoil it here, but when the tone changes, it really changes.  That said, I really wasn't surprised much.  The season had a few twists, none of which were really twisty.  Some of the so-called surprises were spoiled by memes, but they're also pretty well telegraphed in the show itself.  I mean, even my wife knows that a certain character is secretly evil, and she hasn't even watched a full trailer.

But that might be on purpose.  Maybe they want you to know certain twists going in, so you'll be even more surprised by later subversions of subversions in season two, I don't know yet.  All I can tell you is that while none of the show's tropes scream "original" to me, this combination of tropes is still pretty fresh.

I'm a little afraid to keep going, though.  It was written by Robert Kirkman, the same guy who wrote The Walking Dead.  I read the first 100 or so issues of TWD, and while it was pretty good, I don't like "anyone can die" style writers.  Kirkman's the kind of guy who will develop a character for 75 issues, then unceremoniously kill them off because he thinks it makes his penis look big.  

If I keep watching Invincible, sooner or later a character I like will die.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not so fragile that I can't handle the death of fictional characters.  But I still don't find it entertaining when a character I like is killed.

Do I recommend the show?  That's hard to say.  I'm not even sure why I like it.  But if you like superheroes, and graphic violence doesn't churn your stomach, then you could do a lot worse.