DC Comics Movies: Why so Dark?

This blog post appeared originally on the AMAZING STORIES MAGAZINE website.

You all know DC Comics, right?

Superman. Batman. Wonder Woman. The Flash. Green Lantern. Aquaman. You know those guys, right? They’re superheros. They’ve been having adventures in the pages of comic books for decades. They wear brightly colored costumes and they fight for truth, justice and the (insert name of your favorite awesome country here) way.

These heroes’ brightly colored adventures inspired kids to want to be heroic and do good. They were fun, light and breezy. At least that’s the way I remember them. But it’s been a long time since all my pocket money went into buying comics. Maybe I’m out of touch.

I’ve blogged before about the colorful nature of the early superheroes, but that whole aspect seems to be getting lost in its translation from page to screen. The movies that are being made from these flashy comic book characters are, it seems, being made universally grim and dark.

It wasn’t always this way. Early films were a lot brighter (indeed, some of the earliest adaptations of these heroes were as serials which were filmed in black and white and yet still seem more colorful than some of the latest offerings). True many of these adaptations chose to play up the “camp” aspect of the comic books and are today pretty universally reviled. Even 1979’s Superman starring the late Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel cannot be watched by modern audiences with any degree of seriousness. Despite the impact it had on the moviegoing public at the time of its release, today’s audiences can’t help but be overwhelmed by the fact that it all seems to be played for laughs.

That’s not what today’s audiences want out of their superhero movies.

A recent special on the CW aired a day ahead of the premiere of one of their new superhero TV series, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. DC Films: Dawn of the Justice League, besides having Kevin Smith fangirling all over Geoff Johns, the Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics, offered a glimpse at the projects that DC Films is working on and some of the ones that are just in the development stage. It also talked about the upcoming Superman v. Batman movie and framed its subtitle in no uncertain terms. Dawn of Justice will be the dawn of the Justice League movie (which will be DC’s answer, belated as it is, to Marvel’s Avengers).

The special also featured clips from the upcoming Wonder Woman film, which looked intriguing (Gal Godot is seeming more and more like the right choice for the role) and managed to generate some actual excitement for the project, but the one thing that struck me about these clips more than anything else was how dark they all seemed. I don’t just mean in tone, but the very images themselves all look like they were filmed Day for Night, even the daytime scenes.

What’s up with that? These are the Four Color Heroes. They are meant to be bright primary colors, not skulking in the shadows.

It used to be that DC Comics weren’t so grim and so dark. Then in the early 1960’s Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced a new type of hero with Marvel Comics – a type of hero that was a little darker, a little more grounded in reality. Yet the film adaptations of Marvel’s characters seem much more brightly colored than the film adaptations of the DC comics.

Take Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The whole thing was filmed with such a muted color scheme. That seems appropriate for the darker, Dionysian Batman movies, but Superman is Apollonian… he even gets his power from the sun! Man of Steel and the Upcoming Dawn of Justice seem so dark I would expect Superman to be constantly running at half power.

Oddly enough, the one upcoming film that should be dark and grim is the adaptation of the recent DC title Suicide Squad. It was tailor made for this dark approach, yet, if the recent trailers are anything to go by, this adaptation seems to have far more color than Man of Steel or any of the recent Batman movies, which is a wee bit ironic. Nevertheless, buzz is growing for this film which some have called DC’s “Guardians of the Galaxy“, ie: a sleeper hit that could put them ahead of their competition.

So, what do you think? Are you wondering where the colorful heroes of the past have gone, or are you just fine with DC’s new grimdark persona?

DC Films Presents: Dawn of the Justice League

I’ve been taking a break from Netflix movie reviews for a couple of days partly because of other writing commitments and party just out of sheer exhaustion. The exhaustion is down to Winter, pure and simple. Winter is kickin’ my ass, man.

But then this happened. A couple of nights ahead of the premiere of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the CW aired a special about the upcoming films in the DC Comics universe

I missed this special when it aired the other night but I caught it all on Youtube just now. and it was kind of exciting, which was a surprise. Honestly I have been expecting little to nothing from the DC Comics movies. DC in the films has been handed their asses by the Marvel Movie juggernaut, so much so that I, like a lot of people, had counted them out.

But it seems they’ve got some fight left and this special was their way of sounding the trumpet, blasting in front of the place where DC characters have had the strongest showing so far, on TV.

So, other than Kevin Smith fangirling all over Geoff Johns, the Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics, the special offers a glimpse at the projects that DC Films is working on and some of the ones that are just in the development stage. It also talks about the upcoming Superman v. Batman movie and frames it’s subtitle in no uncertain terms. Dawn of Justice will be the dawn of the Justice League movie (which will be DC’s answer, belated as it is, to Marvel’s Avengers)

The footage from Wonder Woman was intriguing. It’s clear that her first solo effort is a period piece set during WWII. Obviously Wonder Woman is ageless because she appears in Batman v. Superman looking exactly the same. Presumably Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is dead by then (or, perhaps, very, very old?)

Still, the footage looks interesting and Gal Godot seems to have been the right pick for the role. She even manages to pull off a resemblance to Lynda Carter, the 1970’s TV Wonder Woman in a couple of scenes. Her fight scenes are a lot more intense, though. She’s a real badass.

My only question, and this is the same question that I had about Man of Steel, is why is it all so dark? It all looks like it was filmed Day for Night, even the daytime scenes? What’s up with that? I can understand that Batman has to have that vibe, but these iconic heroes are the very embodiment of the Four Color Heroes. They are meant to be bright primary colors, not skulking in the shadows.

It’s ironic that Marvel heroes, originally darker and more graduated, are coming across in their movies as much more colorful than their DC counterparts. What’s with that?

The one film where that would work is the upcoming Suicide Squad film. The special ended with the second trailer for that film and it was very exciting. This film could very well be DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a surprise sleeper hit.

We have to wait for August for that film, though, but Dawn of Justice and our first real look at Wonder Woman, releases sooner, on March 25th.

I am actually getting kind of excited about this. Go figure!

Wonder Woman: Relevant or Ridiculous?

In the world of comic book superheroes, there is the trinity: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

Batman and Superman are iconic characters and have changed and morphed over the decades since their first appearances. They have changed to stay relevant to comic book fans in a changing world.

But how successful has that transformation been? The male heroes have become darker, grittier and grimmer, but what about Wonder Woman? How has she been able to stay relevant?

Has she been able to stay relevant?

Wonder Woman has had an interesting history that few comic book readers are familiar with.

In the early 1940’s the DC comics line was dominated by super powered male characters. Psychologist William Moulton Marston, the inventor of the polygraph, or lie-detector test, struck upon the idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. After introducing the idea to comic publisher Max Gaines, Marston, along with his wife Elizabeth, began to develop the hero who would eventually become Wonder Woman

Marston was an unconventional figure in the 1940’s as was his wife, Elizabeth, whom he considered a model of the unconventional liberated woman. He was also inspired by a former student of his, Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in a polygamous/poly-amorous relationship.

“Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.” Marston wrote in 1943. “Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”

Marston used a pen name that combined his middle name with that of Gaines to create Charles Moulton. Marston intended his character, which he called “Suprema”, to be “tender, submissive, peace loving as good women are,” combining “all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.” His character was a native of an all-female utopia who became a crime-fighting U.S. government agent, using her superhuman strength and agility, and her ability to force villains to tell the truth by binding them with her magic lasso. Her appearance, including her heavy silver bracelets (which she used to deflect bullets), was based somewhat on Olive Byrne.

In 2002, Heritage Auctions listed an original Illustration by Harry G. Peter, the first sketches of Wonder Woman, with notes from Marston on the look.

Editor Sheldon Mayer replaced the name “Suprema” with “Wonder Woman”, and the character made her debut in All-Star Comics #8 (December 1941).

It was never smooth sailing with Marston who wrote the comics under the pseudonym Charles Moulton. Complaints began coming in almost immediately with one prominent bishop complaining that Wonder Woman was “not fully dressed”. Marston also had, it seemed, an obsession with bondage. He was extremely specific as to what kind of chains Wonder Woman should be bound with. A lot of Marston’s storylines involve Wonder Woman being tied up. “The secret of woman’s allure,” he once told Gaines, is that “Women enjoy submission—being bound.”

Wonder Woman was never allowed to be just a comic book like the other heroes. Gaines was in constant consultation with psychologists regarding Wonder Woman’s storylines. Great scrutiny was brought to her every action and to her wardrobe.

That was, sadly, not to change over the seventy year history of the character. Her origins have been revised many times throughout the decades, as has her outfit. With the television series from the 1970’s starring Lynda Carter, a good deal of campiness was introduced to the character. Carter was a voluptuous woman. In the Wonder Woman outfit, her assets were on prominent display, often overshadowing the character’s other virtues.

And that, I think, is part of the problem for Wonder Woman. She is a strong and potent ideal for feminism, but in a bathing suit. The cognitive dissonance of Wonder Woman almost rivals that of the Miss America Pageant where spin doctors try to portray it as a “scholarship program” but one where the contestants are required to participate in swimwear.

Women scholars are not to be judged based on how they look in a bathing suit. Neither should a superhero, but there’s the rub. Wonder Woman represents the pinnacle of heroic behavior but also of athleticism and beauty. In that respect she is representative of modern women in the pursuit of that balance. Still, not even her steel bracelets can protect her from society’s judgment and, often, scorn.

Changing her costume to something a little less sexist is fraught with controversy. Old school fans rail against the change and still others accuse the comic creators of pandering to feminists. Some readers want Wonder Woman to live up to feminist ideals. Others just want her looking hot in her costume.

So what’s a Wonder Woman to do? Her latest incarnation (and, it seems, her upcoming appearance in the Superman vs. Batman film) has her more closely resembling Xena the Warrior Princess.

Greek Goddess… Miss America… Xena… which role does she play in order to make others happy. Isn’t that the dilemma of a woman today? She finds herself having to behave and dress in certain ways to make others (mostly men) happy. That’s the irony of Wonder Woman. For a character who is portrayed as being true to herself and to her heroic ideals, she has to, it seems, do an awful lot of pandering to her audience.

Along the way I have to wonder (pardon the pun) is she the representative of a feminine ideal or just a boob show? Is she a positive role model for women and girls or is she just a bit of cheesecake for male comic book readers?

I’d like to think it was the former, but after all this time I still don’t think the answer is entirely clear.

What do you think?