Everything Leads Up To A Big Team-Up Movie
Granted, the MCU led up to The Avengers organically from the start, while the DCEU fast-forwarded most of its way to Justice League. Even so, doesn’t it sometimes feel like everything that’s happening in between another Avengers team-up film is only a water break? And you can stop chuckling, too, DC fans, because the DCEU is just as guilty with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice being a two-and-a-half-hour commercial for Justice League.
The need for a big movie that brings everything together is both the blessing and the curse of a cinematic universe. If everything’s connected, it has to have some pay off at the end; otherwise, what would be the point of it all? However, it still drives you mad to know that every film is only a smaller piece of a bigger picture. Sometimes, you just want the full experience in one sitting, rather than a delayed set-up over the years. Honestly, how long have we been waiting for Thanos to take on the Avengers? He was first teased back in 2012’s The Avengers, so it’ll be six years in 2018. Six years!
Perhaps the success of Wonder Woman will serve as a welcome reminder that individual films – with little to no tie-in to the cinematic universe – can still work. The reason it succeeded was because it could be viewed in isolation, without any understanding of all the stuff taking place on the rest of the Warner movie lot. There’s still value in creating films like that. Hopefully, this will be one lesson that both the MCU and DCEU take to heart and apply to future superhero blockbusters.
