BothMarvel Studios and Warner Bros. are escalating the stakes in the same way this year: by having their most popular heroes face off against one another in an ideological (and physical) battle. Captain America: Civil War will split the Avengers down the middle into two factions, led by Captain America and Iron Man. Meanwhile, Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s title represents not only the monumental prospect of seeing the Son of Krypton and the Bat of Gotham battling it out on the big screen, but also the groundwork being laid for Justice League.
The pressure on Batman v Superman to be successful is enormous. Warner Bros. already has a plan in place for the DC Extended Universe that stretches all the way to 2020, with multiple movie release s every year. Batman v Superman doesn’t necessarily need to be huge at the box office, but it does need to win audiences over to the idea of a shared DC movie universe in a similar vein to the world that Marvel Studios has built.
As a core piece of Warner Bros.’ larger storytelling, Batman V Superman has to deal with a lot of narrative admin. It needs to address the fallout from Man of Steel, establish Ben Affleck’s version of Batman, introduce the rest of the Justice League members, and lay the groundwork for them eventually working together as a superhero team. All of this needs to be accomplished somewhere in between “the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world,” and another showdown between Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and Lex Luthor/Doomsday. Meanwhile, the only thing that Suicide Squad needs to do is throw a bunch of wacky villains together and send them on an adventure.
Comparatively, the weight on the shoulders of Warner Bros.’ second DC release of 2016, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, is pretty small. The movie’s premise – a group of supervillains being recruited into a task force because no one will care if they get killed – is a pretty accurate reflection of Suicide Squad‘s role in the DCEU. Characters like Harley Quinn, Killer Croc and Enchantress are expendable in a way that Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman just aren’t. It’s even feasible that Jared Leto’s Joker could never appear in the DCEU again; it’s not as though Batman has any shortage of enemies.
It’s not fair to say that Suicide Squad is objectively more colorful than Batman V Superman; a lot of the footage we’ve seen so far takes place at night, or inside the walls of Belle Reve prison. But the raucous, in-your-face energy of Suicide Squad‘s latest trailer gives the impression of a more colorful movie – of something fresh and exciting and anarchic, if not necessarily important or with high stakes. Beyond earlier backlash to the new character design for the Joker, the buzz surrounding Suicide Squad has been overwhelmingly positive, whereas the response to Batman V Superman has been very mixed.
All of this does not, of course, mean that Batman V Superman should have simply tried to be more likeSuicide Squad. It’s a different movie with a different director who – for better or worse – has a different vision. But Suicide Squad‘s trailer plays to the movie’s strengths – chaos, humor, crazy characters, irreverence, amorality – and that’s something that the second trailer for Batman v Superman just doesn’t manage. The biggest selling point of this movie is an epic fight between DC’s most famous superheroes, and that should have been the core message that Warner Bros. drummed into the moviegoing public. For the trailer to show those two superheroes overcoming their differences in order to fight a common enemy is a serious misstep.
This muddled marketing can be traced all the way back to the title of the movie. By itself, Batman V Superman would have been a fine title for a comic book movie. Dawn of Justice would also have been a fine title. But instead these two concepts, which don’t gel together particularly well, have been forced together into one jumbled message that dilutes the appeal of the movie rather than strengthening it.
The promise of Batman and Superman coming together with other superheroes to form the Justice League takes the bite out of the promise of Batman and Superman fighting one another. The reveal of Doomsday triggered a wave of complaints about spoilers, but really those spoiler complaints should have been directed at the movie’s title.
Perhaps Warner Bros. should have taken the advice of Billy Flynn, the charming lawyer from the musicalChicago, who tells his client Roxie Hart, “We can only sell them one idea at a time.“ Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is trying to sell two very different ideas at the same time, whereas Suicide Squad has one idea (“Worst. Heroes. Ever.“) that it’s pouring all of its enthusiasm into.
There’s still time for Batman V Superman to turn things around with a final trailer that really zeroes in on an angle that it can sell to general audiences. It’s not too late for Warner Bros. to see what’s working with the Suicide Squad marketing, and apply that to the other big DC release of 2016 (and, indeed, to the rest of the DCEU as it unfolds).
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