Almost exactly one year ago today, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theaters. Fans liked it, kinda; critics didn’t. But one refrain was consistent across audiences: God, that was bleak. Some of that felt like the imprimatur of the director, Zack Snyder, a man who embraced the darkness in movies like *Watchmen *and 300 and who has never met a rain-soaked alley he didn’t like. Still, in response to the BvS reactions, Snyder promised that his follow-up, Justice League, wouldn’t be quite so dark.
Well, Justice League's first trailer landed over the weekend—and while there are laugh lines scattered throughout its two and a half minutes, it seems as though Snyder missed the point. Honestly, Zack: Would it kill you to turn on a light sometimes?
As it did in *Man of Steel *and BvS, Snyder’s vision of the DC cinematic universe continues to feel like a literal-minded homage to Fifty Shades of Grey. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa) may trade some zingers, but they do it in monochromatic outfits ... at night ... on rock formations roughly the color of slate. And nearly every other scene hews to the same palette. Is the Justice League’s secret superpower actually heliophobia? Visual consistency is important in movies, but there’s a chance if you watch the Justice League trailer wearing sunglasses you might not actually see anything.
To be clear, this is a DC/Warner Bros. problem that predates Snyder. After the success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, the studio seems to have assumed that moviegoers wanted all characters to go dark—when what they wanted was a Christopher Nolan movie. Seriousness is nice, but the direction the DC Extended Universe films have gone since Nolan stepped away from the director's chair have bordered on self-serious, somehow becoming cartoonish with barely a primary color in sight.
The strategy makes sense, in a way. Marvel already has the market cornered on bright, happy-go-lucky heroes: The Avengers and their ilk were wearing red and cracking wise from the beginning. In order not to look like cinematic copycats, DC’s only option was to focus on the fact that its movies had the brooding, “real” heroes, the ones with dysfunctional home lives and drinking problems who only come out at night. (Shout out to Suicide Squad!) One need only to look at two big comic-book movie teases of last week—the Justice League trailer and the new Spider-Man: Homecoming poster—to notice how different the optics are between the two. The aesthetics couldn't be more different, but while the DCEU has managed to get some daylight between it and the MCU, the actual daylight is scarce.
But a glimmer of hope remains. If The Lego Batman Movie taught us anything, it’s that things don’t have to be this way. Turns out you can have conflicted heroes being conflicted in scenes that don’t look like they were run through Instagram's X-Pro II filter. Logan managed to pull this off, featuring broken protagonists with both levity and depth, while also letting them get some Vitamin D. Deadpool made it look downright easy.
Snyder has a distinct visual style, and his adherence to it is admirable. In the DC movies he’s directed, though, he’s often conflated emotional darkness with stylistic doom. And when you insist on turning comic book characters that traditionally looked like this into this, you paint yourself into a tonal corner—one that makes jokes feel stilted. (If Batman smiles and it’s too dark to see it, did he even laugh?)
When the first trailer for Wonder Woman debuted during last summer's Comic-Con International, people got excited because it looked like Patty Jenkins’ film might actually be a good time. Some of that was the good-natured banter between Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) and Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), but more importantly, the movie had—what's that word?—sunshine. (There was a beach! A beach!) Audiences won’t find out for sure until the movie hits theaters in June, but if Wonder Woman does indeed find some tonal balance, it might prove to be a better template going forward. If not, though, then DC’s darkest days might still be ahead.
