This week marks the end of the old DCEU that we know and love(or hate) that started with Man Of Steel with the release of Aquaman 2. Man Of Steel kicked the universe off on a somewhat divisive note with criticisms levied against ranging from its questionable depiction of Jonathan Kent to its disturbing portrayal of collateral damage in its third act. Nevertheless MOS was a success, albeit not exactly the success they were looking for, but instead of green-lighting a sequel to MOS, they decided to use the movie to kickstart a new cinematic universe and instead opted to have the first ever Superman and Batman face-off film Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice which faced even more backlash for its tone and its portrayal of the titular characters.
BvS was a turning point that had major ripple effects on the Suicide Squad and JL, which both suffered from studio meddling. SS was critically panned but was a financial success, meanwhile JL was a unmitigated disaster, losing millions of dollars. Ten years before it would’ve been unthinkable that a major superhero film that had Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman would not only bomb, but make less than a movie about a talking raccoon. You’d think it’d be a easy slam-dunk billion dollar movie, but we live in a crazy world.
Conventional wisdom would’ve had WB reboot the whole universe after a massive JL movie event movie you’re betting flopped, but oddly enough they elected to do a soft reboot of sorts. Likely because of WW’s massive success showed their was still some gas left in the tank, as well as Aquaman being in production.
And for awhile it seemed the soft reboot approach worked with Aquaman being an unequivocal success story and Shazam being a modest hit but DC still wasn’t a successful as they could’ve been. With Marvel able to make billion dollar movies out of lesser known characters like Black Panther and Captain Marvel, while DC couldn’t with Superman.
Fast-forward to 2023 where James Gunn early in the year announced the new slate of movies of the DCU reboot, and where DC-on-film arguably had its worst year ever with failures of Shazam 2 and The Flash, and underperformance of Blue Beetle, the inevitable failure of Aquaman 2 it seems the steam has finally run out so I just have to ask will you miss the DCEU?