For one that kicked off the DC Extended Universe, Man of Steel has undoubtedly gained so much momentum over the years that even after more than a decade, fans can’t stop talking about it.
However, at the same time, the film directed by Zack Snyder with Christopher Nolan acting as the producer also somewhat led to the downfall of the DCEU, considering how Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was the movie that marked the universe’s end.
As per a Snyder interview that recently resurfaced and went viral from 2013, Nolan just may have contributed the the death of the DC Extended Universe by vetoing against the director’s wild ideas for the superhero.
Nonetheless, the ultimate blame for it all still rests on the shoulders of Warner Bros. for reasons more than one.
Christopher Nolan may have contributed to DCEU’s death
Although Christopher Nolan resurrected Batman back in the flesh with the thoroughly successful The Dark Knight trilogy after the disaster that was Batman & Robin, he might have missed out on some elements while acting as the producer for 2013’s Man of Steel.
This was derived from a recently resurfaced 2013 interview of Zack Snyder with Empire, where the director admitted that Nolan was never truly too invested in the source material in the comics as he and screenwriter David S. Goyer. He said:
“As a fan of the character [Superman], I don’t think [Christopher Nolan] is a big comic book dork. So I think that you know, Chris was like, ‘Nah, it doesn’t make sense.’ Even though we’d be like, ‘Noo! That’s in the mythology! It’s awesome! You gotta do it!’ He’d be like, ‘Ehh, really?'”
As it turned out, the Oppenheimer director wanted to have a more grounded and mature tone in the film just like he did with his Batman trilogy. As Snyder continued to say:
“I mean, I think his role was just challenging some of the, like, accepted, you know, gimmes that Superman has, which I think is good. He was a great spoiler for that kind of, you know, automatic acceptance stuff that we all were just like, ‘What do you mean? ‘Course he’s gonna have red underwear’ or whatever it is.”
Because of that, a lot of material from the comics failed to enter into the movie. But the parts like Superman’s icy breath and the not showing of the Kryptonite were not included in it by none other than Snyder himself.
Yet, even while doing that, the filmmaker had a pretty good reason why. As Zack Snyder continued to explain his actions:
“No, I did that a little bit. But, like I said, I go, ‘Look, you know, I don’t know that he doesn’t have ice breath, he just didn’t use it, for instance, in this. Just like, you know, how people are like, ‘Oh, there’s no Kryptonite!’ I’m like, ‘That doesn’t mean that Kryptonite doesn’t exist! It just didn’t show up here.’ (…) I will say that kind of vibe [is what] I like. You know, you just felt like the DC Universe is kinda like on the fringes of the movie.”
While Christopher Nolan’s approach to sticking to the somber tone including some of the goofy aspects of the character was a good idea and more or less appreciated by the audiences, it would have been better if the DCEU had continued in one tone.
Just because the higher-ups at DC got confused at the mixed reactions that came with the next darker-themed movies, like BvS, for instance, they decided to switch to a lighter tone for the films that came after, like Justice League.
Moreover, if DC indeed wanted to switch tones with its content, then it should have just let Man of Steel be an independent film and let a sequel for the same continue the story for it, starting with a clean slate for the next projects to maintain a consistent theme.
Thus, to put it in a nutshell, it was actually Warner Bros. and DC’s higher-ups who ultimately led to the downfall of the DC Extended Universe.
The ultimate criminal for DCEU’s death is none other than Warner Bros.
Further verifying this claim that it was ultimately Warner Bros. who ended up putting an end to the DC Extended Universe is the screenwriter of Man of Steel, i.e. David S. Goyer’s revelation on what went wrong with the DCEU. As he revealed during an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast:
“I know the pressure we were getting from Warner Bros., which was, ‘We need our MCU! We need our MCU!’ And I was like let’s not run before we walk. The other thing that was difficult at the time was there was this revolving door of executives at Warner Bros. and DC. Every 18 months someone new would come in. We were just getting whiplash. Every new person was like, ‘We’re going to go bigger!’”
This only proves that Warner Bros. simply wanted to extend the DC Universe into a cinematic universe just like the MCU instead of caring about what could actually do them more good than that.
All in all, while Christopher Nolan just may have contributed to some extent to the end of the DCEU by promoting a more grounded approach when the DC executives couldn’t follow it, it was ultimately the fault of Warner Bros. and the higher-ups that the recently ended universe suffered so badly.
