Ben Affleck has reignited an old debate about DC movies: should its stories be darker and aimed at adults, or should they remain broad enough for families?
His comments are especially interesting because Affleck has experienced several different eras of DC firsthand, from playing Batman in Zack Snyder’s films to seeing the franchise repeatedly struggle to establish a consistent identity.
DC Has Always Struggled With Tone
Speaking about the divide, Ben Affleck pointed to the influence of Frank Miller and the darker interpretation of DC characters. “It seems to be an ongoing question, and I don’t know the answer: Do you go all the way to a hard-R rating like ‘Joker’? Or do it like Marvel, which does something broad, unless you’re talking about ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’?” he told Variety.
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“The interesting thing with the DC characters comes down to the legacy of Frank Miller. There seems to be more tension between ‘Are we doing the grown-up version or the one that’s open to kids?,” he continued. That tension has arguably defined DC for generations.
Richard Donner’s ‘Superman’ found a balance between sincerity, spectacle and accessibility, while later attempts to make the characters lighter sometimes produced wildly different reactions. Joel Schumacher’s ‘Batman & Robin’, for example, pushed the franchise toward an exaggerated, campier style before Batman disappeared from cinemas for years.
The Box Office Case For Darker DC
There is certainly an argument that audiences have repeatedly responded to darker interpretations of DC’s biggest characters. Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ became a cultural phenomenon in 1989. Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy turned Batman into a global box-office powerhouse.
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‘Joker’ crossed the billion-dollar mark despite being an R-rated character study. Zack Snyder’s ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ also earned more than $850 million worldwide. Then Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’ became one of DC’s strongest recent performers. But that doesn’t necessarily prove audiences want every DC movie to be dark.
Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman can work in different tones when the filmmaking understands what makes each character compelling. That’s probably the real lesson. Affleck’s “feathered fish” comment gets to the heart of DC’s problem.
The studio doesn’t necessarily need every movie to be grim. It needs to stop making its characters feel like they’re caught between two completely different identities. Because audiences can accept light or dark. What they don’t accept is a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be.
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