Gunn & Safran’s DCU: We Hardly Knew Ye

Back in October 2022, James Gunn & Peter Safran were hired to oversee DC Studios, creating a new shared universe of movies & TV shows. Almost exactly four years later, Gunn & Snyder are out, shown to the curb by Skydance owner David Ellison.

Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran’s original hiring, four years ago, marked the end of the previous continuity of DC movies, nicknamed the “Snyderverse” by fans, because it was kicked off by Zack Snyder’s 2013 film Man of Steel. While there were moments I enjoyed (I like much of Man of Steel until the ending, and the first Wonder Woman movie was terrific), I never felt those Snyderverse films quite captured the correct feel of these DC characters. They also were never the box office behemoths that DC & Warner Brothers wanted (being envious of the success of the MCU).

So Mr. Gunn & Mr. Safran were hired to reboot the DC film universe, and several months later, in January 2023, they announced a robust slate of planned movies & TV shows. Only some of those projects came to be.

So how do I feel about Mr. Gunn & Mr. Safran’s version of the DCU? Am I happy or sad that they’ve been replaced? Let’s take a look at the DC projects we got under their tenure:

Creature Commandos

The new DCU launched in a strange and sort of quiet way with this seven-episode animated TV show on HBO Max. It was… OK. It seemed strange to me to launch the new DCU with this show, which was a direct sequel to two projects from the old DCEU continuity (James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie and Peacemaker season one). I liked the concept: a funny, violent animated adventure show spotlighting a misfit team of DC universe monsters and weirdos. That seemed like a very “James Gunn” approach. I enjoyed watching every one of these episodes, and the quality of the voice cast was terrific. However, I never felt this show quite “clicked” for me. It felt a little flat; I wasn’t interested enough in the flashbacks to the characters’ backstories, and the main storyline felt somewhat stretched out in spanning all seven episodes, and then super-rushed at the end. (Click here for my full review.)

Superman

I loved this movie. This was the clear highlight of Mr. Gunn’s tenure, in my opinion. Mr. Gunn nailed exactly the tone I’ve always been looking for in a Superman movie. It was an absolute pleasure to get a brightly-colored, happy Superman movie that also had sophisticated and well-written characters. James Gunn’s Superman was the faithful-to-the-comic-books adaptation of Superman that I never knew I wanted and needed! Watching this movie felt to me delightfully like reading several issues of a Superman comic book. It had all the joy and complexity and weirdness of DC comic books. This made me so happy.

The casting was magnificent. David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult were perfect as Clark/Superman, Lois, & Lex. This might be the best casting of this trio in any live-action Superman movie or TV show ever. Then we also got Krypto, and Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner (a wonderful character from the comics who I NEVER expected to ever see on screen), Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olson, Barry’s Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, The Wire’s Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Firefly’s Alan Tudyk as a Superman robot, Milly Alcock as Supergirl… and so much more!

This movie was fun and funny and exciting and sweet. I loved it and I want ten more sequels with this cast. (I doubt we’ll get that now…) (Click here for my full review.)

Peacemaker Season Two

While not the masterpiece that season one was, I still loved the gleefully violent and profane second season of this show. I loved how Mr. Gunn danced between the raindrops to bring this show from the old DC continuity into the new DC continuity. I love James Cena in this lead role, and I have fallen deeply in love with this show’s wonderful cast of misfits and losers. I loved getting to spend more time with them. I enjoyed every minute of this show except the ending. I did not understand the choice to end on a huge cliffhanger when it didn’t look like a third season of the show was in the cards. When would this cliffhanger ever be resolved? Now, with Mr. Gunn out, I am afraid it will never be resolved, and that stinks. (Click here for my full review.)

Supergirl

They had all the right elements for this one. They picked a phenomenal story to adapt (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King & Bilquis Evely). They had a great star in the lead role: House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock, who I thought was perfectly cast. The film starts strong. I liked this rough-and-tumble version of Kara Zor-El/Supergirl. I loved seeing Krypto again. I liked the sci-fi tone and all the great alien creatures, many/most of which looked like they were brought to life through practical effects.

But while there’s a lot I liked about this movie, it just doesn’t work. Large swaths of the film look brown and boring, and much of the action is poorly edited and hard to follow what’s going on. Lobo is shoehorned in. The villain is lame. The ending is terrible. This was a huge bomb at the box office. It’s a better movie than that awful box office figure indicates, but it’s still heavily flawed. (Click here for my full review.)

Lanterns

This was the other big success of Mr. Gunn & Mr. Safran’s tenure. I loved this show. It’s a superhero version of True Detective, and it works like gangbusters, anchored by the magnificent lead performances of Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart. I immediately fell in love with these two deeply flawed characters, each trying to be a hero in their own way. The show is beautifully written, with rich characters, fantastic dialogue, and a terrifically dense and well-thought-out structure in which the various pieces fit together beautifully. The show’s one failing is that it’s too grounded. If they’d actually spent a few more dollars to show us some actual aliens, and give us a little more action, this would have been a masterpiece. As-is, it’s one of the best superhero TV shows ever made, a delightfully adult and sophisticated piece of genre storytelling. (Click here for my full review.)

Clayface

Clayface is out in theaters now. I haven’t seen it yet. I do plan to see it eventually, but I’m not in a rush. I’m not so interested in a supervillain movie without the superhero, and this type of body-horror movie is not my cup of tea. That being said, I like the idea of mining the vast DC archive of characters and making low-budget movies in different genres, to balance the big-budget four-tentpole epics. I’m just not sure how well they executed on this premise.

Man of Tomorrow and The People v. Gorilla Grodd

There are two more of what now look like “lame duck” projects in the works. James Gunn has written and directed a Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow. I am hugely excited for that! There’s also a TV show in the works, spinning off Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen into The People v. Gorilla Grodd, which is being described as a half-hour comedy show using a mockumentary format, following Jimmy & other Daily Planet reporters as they investigate the villain Gorilla Grodd. That sounds like it has potential — Skyler Gisondo was great as Jimmy in Superman, and I am all for villainous super-gorillas in my superhero properties!

What’s Next & What Might Have Been

It’s unclear if new DC Studios head Jeremy Latcham will be continuing this continuity or starting over. James Gunn had talked about Man of Tomorrow being the middle film in a trilogy of Superman movies, which sounded cool to me, and I loved Mr. Gunn’s efforts in getting those Superman movies made so quickly (as opposed to making us wait years and years as happens so much these days with big-budget franchises). Now the odds of that third movie getting made seem slim to none. I’ve been hoping to see a second season of Lanterns, but it seems like the odds of that happening have similarly dropped significantly.

So how did James Gunn and Peter Safran Do?

Overall, I’ve been happy with this new DC continuity! They made three projects that I really enjoyed: Superman, Peacemaker Season Two, and Lanterns. Creature Commandos and Supergirl were just OK, but they weren’t terrible. They were both watchable. We’ve gotten far, far worse superhero projects before.

It felt to me like Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran had the right approach to their DC universe. I liked the tone of their movies & shows so far, and they seemed to understand these characters well. I trusted James Gunn’s interpretation of these characters.

It feels like they were just getting started. They’d described this first wave of films and shows as Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters. We hadn’t even gotten all of Chapter 1 made, let alone future chapters. I had a sense, which I liked, that these movies and shows were building to something, and now it seems like the rug has been pulled out from under us, and a second attempt at a DC film & TV universe has been cut off at the knees. This seems like a shame, and a huge wasted opportunity.

Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran weren’t perfect. Supergirl really should have been a much stronger movie, which leads me to question their oversight skills. It does seem like, after four years, this new DCU was still just revving up. Should they have been able to have gotten more projects made, faster? Was it a mistake not to bring in more big-name DC characters like Batman and Wonder Woman sooner? Maybe, though I understand why they wanted to allow some time between the Snyderverse versions and any new versions. Plus, Matt Reeves was making his own Batman movies, unconnected to this new continuity, so I can see how Mr. Gunn felt his hands were tied and he couldn’t bring in a second Batman.

It’s a bummer that so many of the exciting-sounding projects that Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran announced back in 2023 never got made: The Waller TV show, the Authority movie, the Paradise Lost movie set among the Amazons on Paradise Island (Wonder Woman’s people), The Brave and the Bold (a Batman movie adapting Grant Morrison’s Batman and Son storyline from the comics, which would have been awesome to see), a Booster Gold TV show, and a Swamp Thing movie. Those all sounded like cool projects, and it didn’t make Mr. Gunn & Mr. Safran look great that they weren’t able to get these off the ground.

So perhaps they made some missteps, but it still seems like a huge mistake by Skydance to push them out. I think, in a few more years, they might have developed a really exciting new DC universe of movies and TV shows that might have given Marvel a run for its money. For the first time in decades, the MCU has been looking vulnerable in recent years. I thought there was a lot of opportunity for DC movies & shows to start capturing people’s attention for a change. Personally, I want both Marvel and DC to be making lots of great movies and TV shows. I really wanted to see where Mr. Gunn & Mr. Safran were planning on taking their DC universe. I think we could have gotten some great stuff in the coming years.

Instead, we’re back to square one. What a bummer.

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