DC TV & Cinematic Universes

[Morpheus 02]

Yes, Arrow is dark..but Felicity lightens things up - a lot.

Just because a story has comic relief, that doesn't mean it doesn't qualify as dark. Look at Daredevil on Netflix. Foggy and Karen are hilarious. But it's by far the darkest corner of the MCU. Any good dark story is leavened by humor, just as any good upbeat story is leavened by moments of poignancy. Contrast helps make things interesting.

The whole point is that it doesn't make sense to reduce entire franchises to a single word. That's just oversimplifying.

Dark isn't the best word...but perhaps "fun" or "comic-fan-respectful" might be better for how we think of DC-TV?

The problem is, the Flash TV show already does a great job balancing fun and action. The movie could be in big trouble if it gets too goofy.

The movie could be in trouble anyway. It feels like a misstep to go forward with a Flash movie while the series is such a hit. But the WB feature division seems dead-set on its strategy.

I don't buy the idea that it's just too hard to interlace TV & movies. Now, it's easy to screw it up. But with planning, and the right creative minds...it's certainly possible.

Not too hard, no; Marvel has done it, and Paramount kind of managed to do it with the Star Trek movies and shows to a limited degree. But the fact that Marvel's doing it may be the best reason for DC not to do it.

And as I've said before, I have a lot more faith in Berlanti & co. and the universes they're building on TV than I have in the people building the DC movie universe. The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC CW universe both started with one success (Iron Man and Arrow, respectively) and built outward from it organically. Man of Steel was a more ambiguous success, and DC seems to be trying to force it to spawn a cinematic universe all in one go. There's no guarantee that effort will succeed, and I don't want to see the already-successful shows shackled to something that could drag them down.

You know, what's frustrating is that Greg Berlanti wrote an early draft of the Green Lantern movie and was originally going to direct it, and it was the first attempt to set up an interlinked DC movie universe. If things had played out differently, we could now have Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim overseeing an interlinked DC universe in feature films rather than on television. I don't think I would've necessarily preferred that -- I think television is simply a better, richer storytelling medium than movies these days, with more control granted to writers and more opportunity for in-depth storytelling. But if it had gone that way, we'd probably have ended up with a better DC movie universe than we're likely to get now.

Hmm...that've been interesting...obviously, they'd have less time for TV...but would movie success precluded them from working on TV (in some way)?

And the other thing... i've got so much going on in my life..i really don't want to balance multiverses of shows happening at the same time.

Sorry, I don't understand what this means. It's the same number of shows and films regardless of whether they're interconnected or not, so how would it make a difference in your available time or attention? If anything, interconnection would put greater demands on one's attention, since there'd be more incentive to keep up with everything rather than being free to pick and choose among the shows and/or films.

Well, just as examples... There's the Flash TV show, which i watch with mydaughter...and explain to her the comic myth behind it...along with my memories of the Flash TV show...add in the movie, and it'd certainly confuse her...and i would have a hard time balancing all that.....and then MULTIPLY it with the recent incarnations of Batman & Superman... back in the day, i could've weaved in and out with ease...now, not so much.

 

[Christopher]

^You need to fix your quote tags there...

Hmm...that've been interesting...obviously, they'd have less time for TV...but would movie success precluded them from working on TV (in some way)?

Nobody would have time to directly supervise both a TV series and a feature film franchise. Joss Whedon is nominally in charge of Agents of SHIELD, but he had to leave its running to his brother Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen while he was busy with the Avengers movies. Berlanti might be able to oversee both at once the way Kevin Feige does with Marvel, but he'd have to farm out day-to-day responsibility over specific shows to different people.