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[COLUMN] In Its Final Moments, the DCEU Caught Up to Marvel's Starting Point | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2024-01-05 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
James Wan’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ends the DC Extended Universe (the DCEU) not with a bang, but with a dated Iron Man reference.
After defeating the villainous Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and reconciling with his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) announces the existence of Atlantis to the world. With representatives from the various underwater kingdoms, Arthur addresses the United Nations in his superhero costume. He gives a stirring speech encapsulating the themes of the movie. He closes with a declaration, “I am Aquaman.” He drops the mic. The movie cuts to credits.
There is a charming mid-credits sequence in which Orm, now living incognito among humanity, decides to garnish a burger with a squished bug that he caught scurrying across the table. He bites into the burger, taking a moment to truly appreciate the flavor. In its own way, this postscript is a fitting closing image for the disjointed and uneven shared universe experiment that was Warner Bros.’ big superhero franchise. However, Arthur’s closing speech speaks to something more interesting about this whole fiasco.
That finale pre-credits scene is very odd, even within the logic of a superhero movie that features a drum-playing octopus that is also a deadly tactical operative and no fewer than three separate jokes about pee ending up in Arthur’s mouth. Within the context of the film, presumably everybody already knows that Arthur is Aquaman. He is a member of the Justice League. He hangs out with other superheroes. Arthur’s introduction in The Lost Kingdom has him fighting pirates on the high seas. It would be weirder for him to say, “I am Arthur Curry.”
Arthur’s mic drop moment at the end of The Lost Kingdom only makes sense as an homage to the similar closing scene of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, in which Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) goes off-script during a press conference and declares, “I am Iron Man.” That line was improvised by Downey on set, but it has become truly iconic. It gets a powerful callback during Tony Stark’s death scene in Avengers: Endgame. “I am inevitable,” Thanos (Josh Brolin) boasts. “And I am Iron Man,” Tony replies.
Arthur’s reference is particularly odd, given that it seems like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU) exists within the world of The Lost Kingdom. At one point, Arthur compares his relationship with Orm to that between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston). He could be referencing Norse mythology or even comics. However, given his go-to references tend to be more modern and popular, this would seem to imply that Arthur made the conscious decision to end his big bridge-building speech with an homage to a movie he likes.
Last year marked fifteen years since the release of Iron Man. However, the celebrations were muted. The superhero genre found itself in an existential crisis, with Marvel Studios no longer the cultural juggernaut that it had been. The company’s output that year included a few nods to Iron Man, such as the ending of The Marvels that saw Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) charmingly and self-consciously reproducing Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) post-credits cameo. However, this was the most overt shoutout from Marvel Studios.
To be fair, there were also parallels to Iron Man in the basic premise of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Just as Tony was trapped by a warlord in Afghanistan and forced to build weapons, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) accidentally empowers the dictator Kang (Jonathan Majors) while stranded in the Quantum Realm. In broad terms, Quantumania, Secret Invasion and The Marvels are still informed by the “War on Terror” milieu defined by Iron Man. However, these similarities are abstract.
In contrast, the DC movies of the year seemed uncomfortably preoccupied with references to Iron Man. The closing scene of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the most obvious example, but there was also the entire structure of Ángel Manuel Soto’s Blue Beetle. Largely inoffensive, and therefore the best received of the DC movies last year, Blue Beetle was a fairly straightforward superhero origin story for Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña).
Of course, Blue Beetle is a pre-existing comic book character. Ironically, he actually predates the comic book version of Iron Man. Blue Beetle was created in 1939, and bounced around publishers like Fox and Holyoke before being folded into the DC universe through the company’s acquisition of Charlton Comics in 1983. Jaime Reyes is a legacy character, a teenager granted superpowers after he bonds with a mystical scarab.
The film leans very heavily into the template established by Iron Man. Just like Tony controls his suit by talking to the onboard computer J.A.R.V.I.S. (Paul Bettany), Jaime converses with the scarab’s consciousness, Khaji-Da (Becky G). Just as Tony’s suit allows him the powers of flight and blasting, Jaime’s scarab encases him inside a suit of armor that can fly and produce energy blasts. Both films climax with the hero fighting a bigger dude in a gnarlier suit of armor designed from their template.
Even the casting of Blue Beetle echoes that of Iron Man. Iron Man brought some prestige to its superhero throwdown by casting ’70s icon Jeff Bridges as Obidiah Stane. Blue Beetle does something similar by hiring Susan Sarandon as the villainous Victoria Cord. In both cases, the villains are sleazy corporate types planning to usurp gigantic corporations from their rightful owners in the hopes of using them to manufacture gigantic suits of armor that they can sell on.
Perhaps reflecting the sense that the curtain was drawing down on this shared universe, DC’s other cinematic offerings were nostalgic in their own way. Shazam! Fury of the Gods imagined an ancient mythology asserting itself upon reality, some lost old universe terraforming Philadelphia. The Flash found Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) travelling back to the start of this franchise experiment, confronting the villainous General Zod (Michael Shannon) in a restaged version of the climax of Man of Steel.
Still, it’s fascinating that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Blue Beetle should both hark back so strongly to Iron Man, a movie made by a rival studio that launched a competing shared universe. It’s particularly odd given that, at the time, Iron Man was outperformed (both in terms of box office and awards prestige) by The Dark Knight, a DC movie. It demonstrates that, even with its dying breath, Warner Bros. was desperately chasing what Marvel Studios had accomplished.
In an ideal world, Warner Bros. would have understood that they operated according to a different business logic than Disney, and that the DC properties were fundamentally different from the Marvel properties. Warners had historically been a creative-led studio, whereas Disney was much more of a corporate machine. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others had built Marvel Comics as a single cohesive universe, whereas DC continuity had always been cobbled together on the fly.
Warners should have realized that these were different engines, and that trying to mimic Disney’s approach would not work for them. Still, it's easy to understand the impulse. The MCU is the most successful franchise in the history of cinema. Warner Bros. were far from the only major studio to trip themselves up in the franchise arms race. It’s very hard and risky to come up with new ideas and strategies when dealing with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, so Hollywood inevitably becomes a game of “follow the leader.”
However, nobody could successfully emulate what Marvel Studios accomplished. Disney themselves learned this the hard way with Star Wars. Arguably, Marvel Studios itself has spent the past few years struggling to reproduce the success that it enjoyed between Iron Man and Endgame. In this context, it is perhaps notable that Hollywood’s second most successful shared universe is actually the Conjuring franchise, overseen by James Wan and owned by Warners Bros., which operates by its own logic.
Fifteen years is a long time in Hollywood. Tastes change. The landscape shifts. This is only natural. There is no shame in acknowledging that the model established by Iron Man has served its purpose and reflects a bygone era. So it’s strange that both Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom are so reverent of Iron Man, treating Jon Favreau’s film as either a template or as a grace note in movies ostensibly aimed at audiences too young to remember Iron Man’s theatrical release.
Of course, it’s important for movies and genres to acknowledge their antecedents. It’s possible for media to converse across decades. It’s only natural for filmmakers and storytellers to draw on the media that inspired them as children. It makes sense that, fifteen years after Iron Man arrived in cinemas, the superhero genre should be engaged with its legacy and its history. However, there’s something very staid about how Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom approach Iron Man.
John Ford’s The Searchers, released in 1956, was a defining western. It remains a classic of the genre. It was a touchstone for many filmmakers who would follow. However, by the 1970s, its influence was felt in unconventional ways. It has been cited as a touchstone for the iconic closing scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and as key to the ending of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. However, The Godfather and Taxi Driver are not just emulating The Searchers, they are in conversation with it.
Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom don’t have anything interesting to say about Iron Man. They don’t have any clever twists on the material that they are referencing. Watching both movies, it seems like Warner Bros. are simply copying their competitor’s fifteen-year-old homework. This is depressing in itself, but it suggests something even more unsettling. Has the mainstream superhero genre become so stagnant that Iron Man is still a viable model for these films?
There is something poetic in the fact that the DCEU ends with the studio just blatantly ripping off the film that fired the starting pistol on the MCU. In its final moments, Warner Bros. has caught up to Marvel Studios’ starting line. However, it also reveals something about the “superhero fatigue” that has thrown Hollywood into chaos this year. It’s no wonder that audiences have grown tired of these films, if all they can serve are decade-and-a-half-old leftovers.
Comments
NeonTech
Personally i feel these connected universes or massive franchises just do not work as well for me as they did it feels like the MCU was lightning in a bottle no one else will be able to capture. you will not get another string of movies that kept up that level of consistent fun and mostly quality
Jack Philipson
@Darren Mooney: There are also runs on in-continuity stuff like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Grant Morrison's Animal Man, the aforementioned Batman Year One, and early Hellblazer stuff that bear going back to - Animal Man's a bit compromised by an event happening in the middle of it but it's mostly it's own thing. There's also just a lot of interesting limited series of ambiguous continuity that just sort of are - Gaiman and McKean's Black Orchid, Superman for All Seasons, The Long Halloween, A Serious House on Serious Earth, and so on. It's not that Marvel is devoid of comics where they just try stuff out and/or do a tight run that focuses on one story but it never seems to take in the same way. Like you've got Old Man Logan, the Milligan/Allred X-Force run, The End, Spiderman Reign, Loeb and Sale's colour series, and 1602, but none of them *quite* have that name recognition.
Darren Mooney
@Ryallen: It still stands up as one of the best ever, but - yeah - as you said, it seems an aberation rather than a sign of things to come. (As per the Fox/Disney acquisition.)
Darren Mooney
Ha! Hey, I'm optimistic about "Superman Legacy." Gunn is the most consistent of the modern generation of comic book movie directors.
W. Fry
When you are told the car is dead before you've turned the key, perhaps all there is to do is riff on the first model. Alternate take: Maybe it was just a way for Wan to appease Mamoa's ego. Either way, I can't wait for the era of the comic book "No Country for Old Men", and "Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Happy new year.
Rev Zsaz
It absolutely is. I haven't even been watching movies lately because I got bored. I've wanted to see Barbie and Oppenheimer and several others for a while now, just not badly enough to put any effort into the venture. Maybe I give it a shot soon since most of what's on my list seems like it got good reception 🤷🏻♂️ Not so hungry anymore, more like craving a snack I suppose.
Darren Mooney
Cheers. Part of me wonders if Momoa did improvise or adlib that. But it's still telling that - if he did - the grand summing-it-all-up statement for his take on this character (who starred in his own billion-dollar solo movie) is to riff on "Iron Man."
Kai
Sounds like a few more years of barely having a grasp of what's going on in the DCEU for me then! :D
Darren Mooney
Happy New Year to you too! I also think that fifteen years is enough time to try and cook something new.
Darren Mooney
The thing about Gunn, as exciting as he is, is that: (a.) he's late to the party and (b.) he's working at a company that (top-down) has struggled to set clear objectives for itself over the past five years. It's great that he's clearing the slate and taking a break. However, I wonder how long his vision will last when there's gossip of Warners and Paramount merging or whatever, and the internal restructuring that comes with that.
Darren Mooney
@Earl Elmore: It's frustrating because the campany has had success with projects that don't adhere to that template. "The Dark Knight", "The Batman" and "Joker" are all projects that could never exist inside the framework of an MCU shared universe, and point to a model that the company could have been pursuing. (I suspect "Joker 2" will outperform any of last year's DC movies.)
Darren Mooney
@erakfishfishfish: Ha. I find I can revist runs from both publishers handily enough, but they are generally the ones furthest from the spine of continuity: Morrison's "X-Men", for example.
Darren Mooney
@Wally: Ha! Yeah, that was why "Earth X" didn't jump to mind for me.
W. Fry
It feels a bit harsh to say, "[I]t seems like Warner Bros. are simply copying their competitor’s fifteen-year-old homework" about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. **Apologies to Blue Beetle, I have not seen you. ** I could certainly be way off mark, and perhaps Warner insisted Wan put "I am Aquaman" at the end of his film. Who knows how much script doctoring was imposed on Wan by both Mamoa and corporate? But, to me, Mamoa mouthing those words at the end of ALK felt like an artist's statement. Let us not forget the preceding 100 minutes featured massive Flash Gordon-style sets, a wackadoodle desert crab-alien chase, fish mechs, and an octopus doing covert ops. I mean, the film features Martin Short as a fish mobster. What I am trying to say is, outside of the environmental side plot obviously demanded by Mamoa, I didn't watch the film feeling like the film was dictated by committee. Aquaman and the Lost Kindgdom didn't feel like anything but a James Wan film, with all of his style, swagger, and strange authorial quirks front and center. To quote "the quote" that started it all seemed to me to be Wan trying to say something with his parting words about this entire multi-billion dollar comic book craziness. I think he was trying to say that comic book movies should be fun, and weird, and messy, and not so damned self-serious. After all, wasn't the full quote, "I am Aquaman! EEEYAAAH!" Either way, great stuff as always Darren.
Rev Zsaz
I agree man - leftovers can be tasty, but they get boring when you eat the same thing for extended stretches. I'm excited for newer, riskier works. I want some scuff and maybe a little lens dirt. Cheers Darren and thanks for these awesome pieces 🙏🍻 Happy New Year! 🥳
erakfishfishfish
It’s funny, because I always liked Marvel characters better, but DC comics are easier to revisit. (I don’t read either these days—I much prefer standalone titles with no shared universes that don’t require any homework like Chew or the works of Brian K Vaughn.)
Wally Hackenslacker
From Marvel the only titles I can think of that would be standalone in the same way as say "Watchment" or "Sandman" aside from "Marvels" would be "Earth X" and Genndy Tartakovsky's "Cage!". Really, outside of those 3 I'm drawing blanks. And imho, it's kinda funny how "Earth X" and "Marvels" are in a sense a celebration of how spectacularly inaccessible and bloated the continuity of the regular Marvel universe is.
Kai
I've got a fairly outside perspective on the DCEU - I've watched, I think, a whole 3 films that are definitely part of it and a couple of Batman-adjacent movies that I have no idea if were a part of the DCEU but don't seem to have been served in any way by being part of it even if they were. Every time I catch DCEU news on the wind it seems to be rebooting or stopping or otherwise contradicting the last thing I thought I knew about it. "They just released Suicide Squad and its terrible" is followed by "they just released Suicide Squad and its great" (I did watch the Gunn one), Justice League just kept happening, every time the DCEU seemed to be finding its footing it seemed to promptly put that foot straight back in it with another stinker or another reboot. And peppered throughout a bunch of other DC movies that weren't (afaik) part of the wider DCEU that but seemed similarly trapped in weird reboot cycles like a dodgy xbox. How many people have played Batman in big blockbuster DC films over the last 15 years? At least 3, I think? This article to me brings the news that the DCEU is ending (again?). The last info I had was that James Gunn was helming it now and therefore stood a chance of being good. Another DCEU logical contradiction. They say the MCU's becoming a bit of a tangled mess (I'd largely agree) but it's at least all in service to a single story, all the ducks walking in the same general direction. With the DCEU, I don't even know where to begin, and there's the constant feeling that the answer to that changes every time I hear about it. A bizzarre franchise. Happy new year, Darren
Ryallen
I remember people thought that Logan was the super hero genre entering its Neo-Western phase but we still have yet to get anything similar to that consistently
Earl Elmore
DC's strength in tv/movie media has ALWAYS been their animation division. It's a pity that side of the business has taken a beating to fuel the chasing of the MCU dragon.
Darren Mooney
Yep. I think the western comparison is good, but I think the superhero genre still has to enter its revisionist phase, like the western did about fifteen years after “The Searchers.” I think corporate control is still too tight to allow for that. I do agree with you on “The Suicide Squad.” That thing is just phenomenal.
Darren Mooney
Thank you! There are two more coming over the weekend, so hopefully you’ll enjoy those too.
Darren Mooney
Yep, that’s a point that I think I’ve heard comic book retailers make. “Watchmen”, “Sandman”, “Batman: Year One”, “All-Star Superman” and “Dark Knight Returns” (and to a lesser extent even “New Frontier”) are evergreen titles, and Marvel doesn’t really have any equivalents. “Marvels”, maybe? Miller’s “Daredevil”, perhaps? Nothing that is a truly self-contained continuity-free, easy-to-pick-up title. And I think you’re right it is reflected in their films.
Ryallen
It's interesting to think about superhero movies as the new Western, a lot of people consider Westerns to be classics without realizing that the reason we don't get them anymore was due to oversaturation. Who's to say in 20-30 years they won't be considered classics too? I do wonder what superhero movies will be considered the best of the best when that happens. James Gunn's Suicide Squad is an obvious choice, it's a phenomenal film while also not needing any prior knowledge to derive enjoyment from it. The Spider-verse movies are also both amazing. But ask me about any Disney-produced Marvel movie that might make the list and I wouldn't be able to tell you. Of course that might just be the feeling of commodification that Marvel suffers from as a result of being such a massive financial success, that the MCU is less well made cinematic experiences and more content to be consumed. But hey, maybe Westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly suffered from that too in the beginning then that feeling was eventually lost. It's a shame Warner is struggling so much with matching the MCU on a cinematic level. Their television and animation output far surpass most of Marvel's catalogue by a good distance, even disregarding their late 90s-00s run of animated shows like Justice League, Static Shock, and BTAS. Harley Quinn, My Adventures with Superman, even their Suicide Squad animated movies are all incredibly solid. But I suppose there's not really much of a market for PG-13 or even R rated animated movies in the mainstream. I'd even go so far as to say they've been doing a lot better in their comic runs, I see more people talking about stuff like White Knight and Red Son more than anything Marvel's been doing recently. But maybe that's more due to my not reading comics generally and Marvel's been doing fantastically lately otherwise.
Earl Elmore
I don't really like movies that much and don't watch many, but these columns are always a pretty interesting read nonetheless.
Jack Philipson
I own some DC comics but no Marvel comics because it's much easier to find distinctive essentially standalone works that came out of DC and I hope Warner Brothers look at the success of The Batman and Joker doing that kind of thing for the screen and lean into it more.
