If "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" struggles to win 500 million box office performance in China, it will be regarded as the final glory of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe". Then the embarrassment of DC's new work "The Flash" being unable to break 100 million in the first weekend can be said to have completely announced the dismal end of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) that Warner and Zack Schneider have created for ten years.
It's not just that the domestic audience, who was originally cold to DC superheroes, did not buy it, in the North American market, the box office performance of "The Flash" is very likely to become an annual tragedy. On June 16, "The Flash" was released in 4,234 theaters in North America, and finally only got $55.1 million at the box office in the first three days, which was not as good as the $118 million that similar works "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" recently opened, and "Spider-Man: Across the Universe" opened $120 million.
The world's first weekend also only recorded $130 million, which is even less than the $140 million box office performance of the annual box office tragedy "Black Adam" contributed by DC last year, which was not yet released in China at the same time. In the case of North American summer blockbusters and domestic domestic film schedules, it is unknown whether "The Flash" can exceed 300 million US dollars at the global box office.
For a super-British film with a production cost of nearly $300 million, a huge loss is a foregone conclusion. As far as Warner and DC are concerned, there have been very few works that the entire DCEU has been able to achieve acclaim and acclaim in the past ten years, and the only work with a global box office exceeding one billion is the "Aquaman" single movie led by Wen Ziren, and since then, almost the entire DCEU has been spent in losing money and making money.
Compared with the MCU's orderly planning and step-by-step operation, Warner is more like a step-by-step look at the DCEU, and probably the only person who has considered and realized the plan - "Superman: Man of Steel" director Zack Schneider (hereinafter referred to as Za Director), but has never been able to have enough say to fully control everything, and after he left "Justice League" and completely faded out of the DCEU in 2017, the entire series began to show a free-fall decline.
Until today's "The Flash", the film almost completely echoes "Man of Steel" ten years ago from the story level to the release time, and the biggest crisis event that the Flash faced back in the past was still General Zod's attempt to conquer the earth. At the same time, whether it is the visual effects of the Flash's superpower use or the sense of blow of Supergirl's battle scene, it still inherits and follows the original design of Ziza, even if he comes to this movie, he no longer has any role, but still maintains his influence on every DC movie.
In fact, this is also the problem that the DCEU has been trying to get rid of for a decade but has never solved - how to deal with the "legacy" of the image guide, from the physical level to the spiritual core.
The continuous changes and interventions of Warner's top management have repeatedly caused many DC movies to deviate from their original tracks. Under this circumstance, the image style set by Director Za from the two works of "Man of Steel" and "Batman v Superman" and the successful casting of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and others still have a strong enough influence. The problem is that going back to each specific movie, you can't just set it all up.
In the end, Director Za himself achieved the industry miracle of "Justice League: Zack Schneider Director's Cut" with the help of fans, which can be regarded as his personal farewell to the DCEU. But if Warner wants to make the complete transition from Zhao's style to the new DCU era led by James Gunn, it may also need such an iconic movie.
In this sense, "The Flash" seems to form a certain propositional isomorphism on and off the screen, and both the Flash and the DCEU ultimately "cannot change the past, cannot see no future, but have to face a cruel present".
The Flash may be good, but it's not good enough
Since the beginning of the year, Warner officials have been constantly raising the expectations of the outside world for "The Flash". In January, James Gunn, who had just become head of DC Pictures, said the film was "one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen." And Warner Exploration CEO David Zaslav, who has experienced the chaos of the merger, said at the CinemaCon promotion conference in April that "The Flash" is "the best superhero movie".
The problem is that no matter how much the film side brags or manages the expectations of the media evaluation, the audience will still give their own opinion in the end, and the polarization is especially evident in this film. CinemaScore's final rating was only B, not even as good as the B+ of "Black Adam" and "Shazam 2", but its freshness on Rotten Tomatoes was significantly better than that of these two movies.
In the Douban score, the current score of 8 points of "The Flash" is already the highest reputation among DCEU's domestic released works, even so, it has not helped its box office performance much. The box office performance of the domestic market in 4 days to break through 100 million is enough to show that the negative impression brought by DC series to domestic audiences can no longer be reversed by word of mouth.
In terms of the finished film, the super-British movie with a bumpy fate both inside and outside the play has indeed reached its limit, whether it is an adaptation of the DC Comics classic "flashpoint" event, or a collection of three generations of Batman's appearance, and the emotional tension brought by Ezra Miller's performance, aside from the fan filter, it can also be called a comic book superhero movie far above the passing line.
The problem is that the film will be released in 2023 instead of 2018, and the external environment has long changed.
Five years later, the aesthetic fatigue caused by superhero movies has become a reality, and this change in the external environment is unexpected even by Marvel. At the same time, the "multiverse" and "parallel space-time" are flooded, the fifth stage of the MCU is the main "multiverse", similar concept works also won this year's Oscar, today's audience will not have any novelty on this concept, the anime movie "Spider-Man: Across the Universe" released at the same time is also the same title composition.
From the perspective of "The Flash", whether it is Keaton's version of Batman or the appearance of George Clooney, it may be worth asking whether it can really have an emotional impact on today's young moviegoers as the main force of superhero movies, especially the version of Batman played by the latter is itself a joke in film history.
Just telling a qualified story and putting out a high-level performance, changing the overly heavy, dark tone of the past DCEU, is not enough to make this film receive additional awards, after all, this is what an A-grade Hollywood blockbuster should do. In addition, "The Flash" actually does not give much real surprise, perhaps the movie did not completely overturn for many DC fans is already an unexpected surprise.
After all, Ezra Miller's various personal controversies outside the play made people think that the entire movie of "The Flash" would be directly abandoned. Warner's repeated bad business decisions in the past two years, as well as the change of management, have also directly led to the capriciousness of its arrangements for movies and IP, and these off-screen elements of instability run through almost all DCEU productions in the past decade, as well as earlier DC works.
In the end, "The Flash" had to pay for all the previous mistakes, and the characters in the movie almost never had a future. Ben Affleck has long announced that he will not return, "Wonder Woman 3" has also been cut, based on Miller's negative factors it is difficult to imagine that he will continue to play The Flash, and the only role that may return to the big screen is probably this version of Supergirl.
Next this year there is "Blue Beetle" and Easter Egg's second solo movie Aquaman, even if "The Flash" so-called reboots the entire timeline, it is difficult to guarantee that these characters will appear in a new DCU later.
Because James Gunn and Pete Safran, who are at the helm of DC Pictures, already have their new plans, before discussing whether the two can lead DC to a renaissance, everyone should actually ask whether Warner Exploration, which has been saddled with huge debts due to restructuring, is really willing to let DC really have a Kevin Feige-like character?
Can't get rid of Warner's intervention, DC movies are still difficult to restart
In the past decade, some DC fans and most ordinary viewers will blame the failure of the DCEU on the director, in addition to the too heavy image style, allowing the visual to be above the story has made key works like "Batman v Superman" fail to show the height it deserves.
But if you really look back at the development of the DCEU in the past decade, it is not difficult to see that Director Zhao does not have much say in fact, and the original "Man of Steel" he created was not for the so-called "cinematic universe" to unfold. However, after Warner saw that the previous year's "Avengers" collected $1.5 billion, he immediately decided to start creating a work similar to the hero assembly, and the problem is that other DC Premier Heroes did not have any upfront foreshadowing at all.
This is also why after "Man of Steel", Warner took the lead in preparing neither a sequel nor a rebooted Batman or Wonder Woman origin story, but directly let Director Za direct "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice", through this movie introduced Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and other new characters in one breath.
In the end, the theatrical version of "Batman v Superman" was cut to the preface and the afterword under the direct intervention of Warner executives, although it did not lead to a huge loss, but it is difficult to say that the film really let the audience at that time understand the next direction of the DCEU. What is even more bizarre is that the next single movie released is still not the core role of DC, a 2016 "Suicide Squad" that inexplicably brought out the clown and clown woman, also because of the later plot change, its story line is completely unrelated to the DCEU, and the evaluation and box office continue to decline.
As for the story of Warner finding the first two directors of "Avengers" Joss Whedon to replace Director Za to make "Justice League", it has become the most "legendary" event in Hollywood in the past decade, and finally in the context of the all-consuming public opinion offensive of Za Dao fans and Warner's promotion of streaming HBO Max in the past two years, a four-hour version of "Justice League: Zack Schneider Director's Cut" that spent an additional $70 million in post-production finally came out in 2021.
How to evaluate this work is a matter of opinion, it is undeniable that to a large extent, the DCEU needs to be completely restarted after ten years of development, and the biggest problem is that Warner itself does not have a clear plan for its IP. If you are not satisfied with the creation of Zhao, you can change people early, instead of being reluctant to lay the creation and fan base on the one hand, and constantly interfering with the creation and destroying the layout on the other hand.
In fact, after Director Za left, the situation of Warner executives habitually meddling in creation remained.
In the eight years since the establishment of "The Flash", the writer and director have been changed almost every year, and they have to be reinvented while preparing. Even if the final filming is completed, the ending of "The Flash" that the audience sees today is completely different from when it was finished in 2021. The original version of Supergirl and Keaton's version of Batman still exists in this universe, and last year Warner Pictures changed its top management, and the ending added Henry Cavill's version of Superman and Gal Gadot's version of Wonder Woman, because the former announced its return and will appear in the Easter eggs of "Black Adam", and "Wonder Woman 3" is also in preparation.
Today's finale is James Gunn and Pete Safran's decision after entering DC Pictures, because the two have decided to completely restart the entire DC Cinematic Universe. Safran recently came to China to promote "The Flash" in an interview with a high profile, saying that in the future, DC Pictures will report directly to Warner Exploration CEO David Zaslav and will no longer be affected by Warner Pictures.
However, when David Zaslav can directly hide the $100 million "Batgirl" movie in the name of "maintaining the DC brand", and at the same time release "Black Adam", "Shazam 2", "The Flash" and many other movies that have both word of mouth and box office collapse, it is hard to believe that such a traditional entertainment company executive really understands what is valuable to the brand.
There are also two DC movies released this year, and then the entire DC movies and series will be completely restarted, not counting the "Joker 2" released next year outside the system, the next time I watch a DC Super British movie is probably the new version of "Superman" written and directed by Gunn in 2025, when we can see whether the DC Super British series still has a chance to regain the confidence of the audience.
Coincidentally, on the same weekend that "The Flash" was released, Director Za, who switched to Netflix, also revealed the behind-the-scenes footage of his new work "Moon Rebel" at the Tudum fan conference, and said that it would be a series with a huge worldview.
Whether it is for DC or Zhao, ten years have passed, and now they each need to face a new future.