DC Universe

I need my Marvel fix!  Okay, so Far From Home came out 7/2/19.  Black Widow doesn’t come out until 5/1/2020.  That’s just ten months, but it feels like ages.  Realistically, this is not the longest break they’ve had.  Iron Man 2 came out nearly two years after The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 3  came out almost a year after The Avengers… still, arguably the MCU wasn’t in full swing yet at the time.  This break just feels longer because I’m used to a new Marvel movie every five or six months now.

Still, this was a good time for a break, and the future does look pretty saturated.  To be honest, I’m more interested in some of the upcoming TV shows than the next three movies.  Specifically, WandaVision, Loki, and What If.  But those are pretty far off.

In the meantime, I’m catching up on some DC.  I’ve always preferred DC’s characters over Marvel’s, mostly because I got into them at an early age.  Those characters just mean more to me.  It really bugs me that DC has been in such a slump lately.  Yes, I loved the Wonder Woman and Aquaman movies, but they still made me say, “Wow, that’s almost as good as a Marvel movie.”  I mean, imagine if Pepsi’s new slogan was, “Pepsi: Almost as Good as Coke.”  It’s not a flattering look.

The big difference IMO: Marvel optimizes, DC reinvents.  The MCU takes the most iconic versions of their heroes, makes little changes like modernizing their costumes so they look less like cosplay, and cleans up the details that were too convoluted or made them less cinematic.  The current DC trend is to reimagine their characters – which is great for standalone movies like Joker (which I still need to see), but is terrible for building a shared universe. 

The DCEU feels like a set of Elseworlds graphic novels.  What if Superman wasn’t a boy scout?  What if Batman was shortsighted and reactionary?  What if Ares was a foppish gentleman?  What if Aquaman was a hunky dreamboat?  What if the Flash dressed like a robot?  Look, I love Elseworlds.  They’re some of my favorite comics to read.  But for movies, these reimaginings only work as unconnected, one-off films.

We cancelled our cable last year, and we’ve been experimenting with different streaming services.  We currently have Amazon Prime, Netflix, CBS All Access, Disney+, and DC Universe.  If you’re on the fence about DC Universe, it’s… well, it depends on how much you love DC.  It’s like this… Netflix has thousands and thousands of movies and TV shows, but I’m only interested in about fifteen of them.  DC Universe has, like, twenty movies and TV shows, but I’m still interested in about fifteen of them.  I exaggerate, but the channel really is light on content. 

But that wouldn’t bother me if, at the very least, they’d make sure they had everything DC.  They’re still missing a ton of DC movies.  I understand not having the newest releases – gotta give people time to buy those DVDs before you let them stream ‘em – but even a lot of the older DC films are conspicuously absent.  Everything just looks so sparse – you go into the movie section, and you see about fifteen movies.  You go into the TV section, you see about fifteen shows.  The only thing really big is the Animated Shorts section.  Maybe DC just isn’t big enough to warrant a channel.  Maybe Warner Bros should have started a streaming channel instead, and let DC be a subset of the programming, like Disney+ does with Marvel. 

But the content that’s there is pretty cool.  Right now we’re watching Doom Patrol, which is really good.  The DC Animated Universe from the 90s-2000s is also a welcome addition to our household, even though we already own the Justice League series on DVD.  We just watched the first episode of Harley Quinn, and it was very funny, but too adult for my wife’s tastes.  I’ll have to find time to watch it without her. 

We haven’t tried Titans yet, but it’s on our list.   And we’ll want to rewatch the first two seasons of Young Justice to prep us for season three.  So yeah, there’s a ton of content for us.  But still… it just doesn’t feel like a good value.  It’s about the same price as Disney+, but only has about a quarter of the content.  And I keep finding myself doing the math – if I were to just go ahead and buy all the DC content I want on Blu-Ray, how much would that cost versus a year of DC Universe?  But the truth is, it is a pretty good value if you’re a DC fan… just not nearly as good a deal as the Marvel fans are getting with Disney+.  YMMV.