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.

Justice League

Just got back from the Justice League movie.

It's still not as fun as the Marvel films, but it's an improvement over Batman v Superman.  Simply put, it's less depressing.  In some ways it felt like watching several mini-films focusing on different characters, until the end when they all fight together.  With that in mind, I'm going to break my thoughts down by character. 

Batman: I'm still not a fan of Batfleck, but I enjoyed his performance here more than I did in BvS. His personality seemed inconsistent to me - there were times when it felt like the writers were trying to make him into Tony Stark, and other times when he was still as dull as he was in BvS.  Technically I think this was the result of multiple script writers, but in-universe I'm going to chalk it up to this being late in his career.  This Batman has been fighting crime for 20 years, so he's learned to lighten up sometimes.

The Flash: He was the tipping point that makes the movie watchable.  Without his humor, the movie would have been another snoozefest.  He's not my favorite version of the Flash, and his costume hurts my eyes, but overall I like him.  I can't wait to see him in future films.

Wonder Woman:  As usual, Gal Gadot is the best thing in the movie.  She doesn't do much here that we didn't already see in the last two films, but she feels like the most solid character to me. 

Cyborg: He was pretty good.  I like what he brings to the team.  However, there isn't much to him yet.

Aquaman: While I generally like his character design, I didn't like the surfer dude aspect of his personality - he's supposed to be Atlantean royalty, and yet he sounds like a caveman.

Martian Manhunter: Made you look.

Steppenwolf: Ugh, this villain was terrible.  I don't know if they should have gone ahead and used Darkseid, but Steppenwolf was so dull.  He was two dimensional and badly rendered.  I did like the his outfit (he looked more like Ares than Ares did in Wonder Woman), but I wish they'd picked someone with more name recognition.  I guess with all the hero backstories going on, they didn't want to use up a villain who would need a lengthy origin story.

Bottom line:
It's not as good as Wonder Woman, but it's fun and gives me hope for the future.  Maybe DC will learn their lesson.  If the next Justice League movie uses a tone more like the animated series, this cast should work just fine.

Wonder Woman, GotG2, and Spider-Man Homecoming

So, in the past month I’ve seen three super hero movies - Spider-Man Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Wonder Woman.  All three were incredible, and you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Possible minor spoilers ahead.

Wonder Woman

This was my least favorite of the three, but don’t take that as a negative when the competition’s so fierce.  It’s like saying pizza is your least favorite out of pizza, sex, and video games.  It’s just that a lot of my love for the Wonder Woman movie is actually relief.  Relief that the current DC movie continuity isn’t completely cursed, and relief that a female-led superhero movie can actually do well.  The movie’s biggest strength is that it fills me with hope for future movies.  Wonder Woman gets so much right, and was so necessary to the movie industry, that it feels like sacrilege to point out the flaws. 

But to be completely honest, I think the movie is sort of generic.  90% of what I loved about the movie only worked because it was Wonder Woman.  If they’d swapped her out for a male character (let’s say Hercules if we want to keep the general theme), it would have been just another forgettable action flick.  I love the movie, but it’s not going to be as rewatchable as the Marvel films.

Most movies try to save the best stuff for the end, but I found WW more entertaining at the beginning.  The first half of the movie is outstanding, but the it gets a little dull towards the end, and the final battle is just your standard boss fight.  The villains didn’t exactly sweep me off my feet, and the casting of the Big Bad seemed like an odd choice.  More than anything I see the movie as a foot in the door, proof that female superheroes can succeed in Hollywood after all.  In a future where female-led superhero films are more common, I’m not sure Wonder Woman will really stand out much.  But the success of Wonder Woman means that future might actually happen, and that’s very important.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2

This is my favorite of the three.  If you liked the first one, it’s more of the same, though there’s more character development this time.  While I love the first GotG, the characters were one-dimensional quip-generators, kind of like Suicide Squad in space.  The sequel gives them more depth, which slows down the movie but not enough to make it boring.

The opening battle is one of my favorite movie sequences of all time.  From the trailers, that particular fight looked underwhelming to me.  But in the film itself, they actually made the scene better by taking the focus off the fighting itself.  For spoilers sake I won’t to go into detail, but it had me dancing and singing in my seat.

People find me strange because I’m not very much into music.  (Well, that’s not the only reason they find me strange.)  In my life I’ve owned maybe 3 tapes and 6 CDs, and the ones I’ve owned haven’t seen a lot of use.   I don’t have to listen to music while I’m driving, I don’t go to concerts, and I never just sit and listen to music while doing nothing else.  I generally consider music as something to keep it from being too quiet, but I've never been into it.  And yet, roughly 50% of my love for the GotG movies has to do with the soundtrack.  The music ties into the action so well, that I simply can’t imagine the same films with a standard issue orchestral score.  I’m happy to report GotG2’s soundtrack is just as good as the first, if not better.

GotG2 is definitely the most rewatchable of the three movies I’m reviewing here, and I can’t wait to wear out the blu-ray when it’s released.  I will say that of the three, this movie is the least child-friendly (which is a weird thing to say about a movie with a talking raccoon).  I don’t know if I would bring a small child to this one, as some of the language is a little strong for young ears (including a scene where they talk about Ego's penis), and some of the death scenes are a bit graphic.  Not actually bloody, just… explicit.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

A lot of people complain about reboots, and the Spider-Man franchise is their go-to example.  Personally, I’m okay rebooting a series if you have a good reason for doing so.  But I do hold a reboot to higher standards – did you really have an idea worth throwing out the old continuity?   In this case, definitely yes.  Bringing Spidey into the MCU was the best thing that could have happened to the character.  It changes the character so much.  In the previous films he’s pretty much the only superhero in the world (as far as we know), but in the MCU he has people to look up to.  Instead of just “I can outdo myself and help more people,” now there’s the additional element of “I want to impress the Avengers.”

I think the smartest thing they did was skip his origin story almost entirely.  At this point everyone in the audience knows how Peter got his powers, and there was no reason to waste screen time on it.  There’s one short conversation about getting bitten by a radioactive spider, but there’s almost no mention of Uncle Ben or how power relates to responsibility.  Instead Peter’s moral code is just based around “it’s the right thing to do,” which is deep enough for a 15-year old boy, as far as I’m concerned.  I think the Civil War movie summed it up best when Peter said, “When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.”  Which is basically a different way of saying “with great power…” but sounds a lot more like how people actually talk.

Michael Keaton did a great job, and I found him a lot more believable than the ax-crazy moustache-twirling villains Spider-Man usually fights.  In some ways I found his motivations a little too understandable, and I have to wonder how many of my friends would turn to supervillainy if presented with the same circumstances.  Occasionally he'd lapse into his Beetlejuice voice for a second, which was distracting, but I didn't mind.

I loved the overall tone of the film.  When the Ant-Man movie came out I kept saying how glad I was to see them using different genres.  Instead of everything being just a “Superhero Action” film, some of them focus on comedy, sci-fi, drama, and so on.  Well, Homecoming is a high school comedy that also happens to be a super hero film.  I’ve seen several reviewers compare Homecoming to a modern John Hughes film, which might be giving Homecoming too much credit, but it’s easy to see what they mean.

So if you only get to see one of the above movies, which should you see?

Well, GotG2 is my favorite, but for other people I’m going to have to recommend Spider-Man.  I think it has more universal appeal.  But let’s face it, if you’re fanatic enough to be reading this, you’re probably going to see all three eventually.