The Marvel Cinematic Universe began life with the release of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man in 2008, kicking off a phase of superhero standalone pics – namely Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger – that culminated with the launch of The Avengers four years later.
Warner Bros. and DC’s method of approach has proven to be slightly more sporadic in the sense that Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad and the upcoming Justice League will spawn solo movies of their own – think of The Batman and Gotham City Sirens – as opposed to the other way around. That’s not to say that one model is necessarily more successful than the other, only that DC and Marvel’s films tend to invoke different permutations as their respective cinematic universes continue to diversify and evolve.
Thanks to the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy and the aforementioned Suicide Squad, Marvel and Warner Bros. have each rolled a motley crew of eccentric characters and anti-heroes. But sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing. According to Chris Pratt, David Ayer’s take on Task Force X came up short for one reason: Suicide Squad tried “introducing too many characters.”
Per io9:
I really like all the Warner Bros. movies. I think they’re really cool and I’m not a real tough critic on those movies. But one of the flaws might have been they were introducing too many characters in Suicide Squad. They spent 10 minutes telling us why should we care about these characters, rather than creating trilogies for each character and convincing us to care about the characters.
Chris Pratt was quick to note that he’s generally a big fan of “all the Warner Bros. movies,” before pinpointing that hamfisted exposition and thinly-drawn characters proved to be the undoing of David Ayer’s villainous spinoff. It’s one of the more common complaints levelled against Suicide Squad, but after a global haul of $745 million, WB is pushing full steam ahead with a sequel.
Next up for the DC Extended Universe is the long-in-development Wonder Woman solo movie. It’ll march headlong into theaters on June 2nd, before Justice League unites DC’s finest – Superman included! – on November 17th.
