They Brought In the Damn Dog

When James Gunn signed on to be co-head of DC Studios (alongside Peter Safran), fans were understandably interested in what the writer / director was going to bring to the table. To say that Gunn has had an interesting career would be an understatement. Starting off working in Troma Films, Gunn has always had a different kind of sensibility to other directors, especially those working in the superhero scene. He’s made horror films, comedies, darkly gross weirdo films, and has carved himself something of a niche that other creators simply can’t touch.

Like, how many other directors can you think of that have created a film like Slither and then went on to make a successful trilogy of superhero films like Guardians of the Galaxy? Hell, Gunn even produced a dark horror deconstruction of Superman, Brightburn, written by his brother, Brian, and cousin, Mark. The man clearly has his own ideas about superheroes, genre works, and filmmaking in general. Making him the co-head of the studio seemed like a brilliant, if strange, idea.

Of course, the higher-ups at Warner Bros., which owns DC, had worked with Gunn already, hiring him on to create The Suicide Squad after Marvel fired him (for a brief stint before quickly hiring him back). They’d see his vision and they knew that he would bring something strange and different to the table, something new that could help DC finally compete against the ever-powerful Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.. Marvel had been beating DC at the cinema game for over a decade, and DC’s works, under the DC Extended UniverseStarted as DC Comics' answer to the MCU, the early films in the franchise stumbled out of the gates, often mired in grim-dark storytelling and the rushed need to get this franchise started. Eventually, though, the films began to even out, becoming better as they went along. Still, this franchise has a long way to go before it's true completion for Marvel's universe. brand, weren’t clicking with fans. Something new and different was needed. Gunn could bring that with his weird sensibilities on display.

We’ve already spotted the start of the Gunn era, with Creature Commandos airing on MaxThe oldest and longer-running cable subscription service, HBO provides entertainment in the force of licensed movies along with a huge slate of original programming, giving it the luster of the premiere cable service. Now known primarily for its streaming service, Max. (and a review of that is soon to come, once the first season finishes airing), an animated, superhero team-up show featuring the kinds of misfit heroes Gunn has been working with in Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad. That’s his bread and butter. Now we have the first glimpse of what Gunn will bring in the live action space with Superman: Legacy, written and directed by Gunn, with the teaser trailer for the movie dropping today.

As the first live-action film for the newly rebranded DCU, Superman: Legacy provides a different look than we’re used to from DC, something that might actually be able to compete with Marvel. It’s bright, it’s shiny, it doesn’t (so far) look like the same kind of superhero power-slop we’ve been fed for the last few years (no thanks to Marvel on that front). In fact, it seems to blend the two factors fans might just want to watch and pay attention to: a proper Superman film, and the weirdo sensibilities of Gunn.

Obviously it’s a teaser trailer so we can’t really get a feel for everything about the film. We don’t see the story, we don’t even see a hint about direction for the plot, but we do get glimpses of a few key things that matter when creating a Superman film (details that Man of Steel failed to understand). And the first is that the film let’s Clark be Clark. We get solid glimpses of our hero’s human persona, looking dorky and nebbish, perfectly showing the aspect of his life that keeps his superhero persona hidden. But as many productions recently have shown, the nerdy side of the character isn’t just a mask (despite what Quentin Tarantino described in Kill Bill: Volume II), this is his true personality. He’s gentle, he’s sweet, he’s a boy scout. Clark is his truest distillation, the man he gets to be when he doesn’t have to be a hero, and just what we see of him in this teaser already showcases that.

We get a little less of the two other main characters, Lois Lane and Lex Luthor. We mostly see Lois walking around the Daily Planet office, or kissing Superman a couple of times, but the sassy energy we expect from the character isn’t on display just yet. I don’t doubt it’s there, and that this teaser simply couldn’t showcase her well enough. Lex fares better, being a glowering, menacing force in a few brief glimpses, and here’s hoping this film actually treats the character right (unlike his other, repeated, failed cinematic performances). The look of both these characters is right, though, so it seems like Gunn understands the movie he was making.

There are other important details shown that give us a sense of the broader cinematic scope. Hawkgirl makes a brief appearance here, flying through the air with her mace in hand. It’s notable that it’s Hawkgirl and not a Hawkman, creating a clear dividing line between the old DCEU (which had Hawkman in Black Adam) and the new. And we also see Mister Terrific, a character that most cinema goers likely aren’t familiar with. He’s a deeper cut but Gunn clearly felt it important to bring him in and show new ideas are afoot for this cinematic universe.

I mean, hell, they even brought in Superman’s dog. Krypto makes an appearance early on, and if there was any character I would have sworn would never show up in a live-action Superman movie, it would have been Superman’s dog. He’s right up there with Bat-mite and Starro for weirdo characters that cinema goers probably wouldn’t care about or need to see and- oh, right, Starro was in The Suicide Squad. Gunn really does like he’s weird, out there characters that he gets to unabashedly play with.

What this teaser really says for the greater universe is hard to say. There’s no dialogue in the movie (a bold choice I appreciated), conveying its ideas with sound, sight, and mood. It does look like a proper clean break from the DCEU of old, and maybe that will be enough to get fans interested. Audiences were turned off by DC’s films after a while, and everything the studio put out was bombing by the end of it. It’s hard to say if Gunn can turn things around for DC but if anyone can it’s likely him.

Of course, there’s also the question of if Gunn can fight the current trend dragging down all superhero cinema, with most works in the genre tanking. Audiences aren’t interested in any old superhero film anymore, and only a few of the big names can still rake in Billion dollar Box Office receipts: SpidermanSure, DC Comics has Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but among the most popular superheroes stands a guy from Marvel Comics, a younger hero dressed in red and blue who shoots webs and sticks to walls. Introduced in the 1960s, Spider-Man has been a constant presence in comics and more, featured in movies regularly since his big screen debut in 2002., Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool, WolverineAlthough not one of the original X-Men, Wolverine is certainly the most popular, even before he was played, to much acclaim, by Hugh Jackman in the Fox film series.. There was a time when Superman would have automatically been on that list, but DC (under the care of Zack SnyderOften reviled for the bombastic and idiotic content of his films, there is no question that what Snyder's movies lack in substance they (at least try to) balance out with flash and style, making him one of Hollywood's top directors... sadly. first, and a rotating collection of studio figures that didn’t have a clue) managed to fail their fans so hard, over and over. Will fans care about Superman now like they used to?

The combination of Gunn and Superman does give some hope. If anyone can pull this off, fighting not just audience fatigue with superheroes in general, and DC films in particular, it’s Gunn. With Superman: Legacy, so far, it seems like he’s on the right track. We will just have to see now if the later trailers, and the film itself, can bring audiences back to cinemas to see if a man really can fly…