Why DC Films is NOT rushing the Justice League movie

One of the chief complaints related to all of the criticism of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the notion that DC Films is impatiently rushing to get a Justice League movie out, without the proper character and world building that a comic book movie franchise should do through solo character movies first. 

Like Marvel did. 

Yes, it always comes back to "what Marvel did." It's a common theme among the lemmings and other sheep that suckle at the Disney teat on a daily basis. 

Ok, maybe I'm being a little mean with that one, but if the haters would just step back for a second and look at what DC Films is actually doing in relation to Marvel Studios, they might see that there's really no rush to Justice League at all. In fact, the DCEU is following an extremely similar pattern to the MCU with just a few big tweaks here and there. Let's take a closer look: 

The first DCEU movie introduced the most powerful hero of them all in Superman. At that point, the sky's the limit. 

1 - STARTING OFF BIG

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has admitted that the MCU was under a lot more pressure when it launched because of the character it started off with in the first place: Tony Stark/Iron Man. Now, to the average MCU fan today that's an incredible thing to even suggest because Robert Downey Jr. has been phenomenal in the role for eight years now, but at the time Iron Man was one of Marvel's least popular heroes. Out of the Avengers group alone, Hulk, Captain America and Thor were all way ahead of him in terms of fan appreciation, yet they made the ballsy move to kick things off with him first, which allowed Marvel to ease the audience in slowly to the fantastical nature of the MCU by starting with a non-powered human hero first. It worked very well for them and allowed them to slowly up the ante over the next four movies by introducing Hulk next, then Thor and finally Cap before kicking off Avengers. The first time we left the planet Earth at all was the Thor movie and that gave us our Avengers villain and alien army. 

DC Films has taken the opposite approach by starting the DCEU off with literally its most super-powered non-human hero of all-time, Superman, and it made perfect sense to do that too. Superman, as many BvS detractors have admitted, is the most well-known superhero in history. Because of that notoriety, you can't wait three or four movies to introduce him. At the most you could have waited one movie and that's ONLY if you introduced Batman in the first DCEU movie, which you couldn't do because you had just finished a Batman Trilogy with Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan the previous year in 2012. The last time DC had done a Superman movie was 2006's Superman Returns, which didn't go over so well, so the time was ripe to start anew with Henry Cavill as the next Man of Steel. 

Now, since you've started your franchise by introducing the most powerful being there is, you can go in whatever direction you want. You're not grounded by anything on Earth or anything innately human-centered. Hell, you didn't even start the movie Man of Steel on Earth, you started it on Krypton. We didn't meet or see a single human until 20 minutes into the movie, which means at this point, aliens are WELL established as being both heroes and villains, so your setup for the team-up movie is completely different now and it should be. 

These three Justice League members will be well established by the time the Justice League movie comes out in 2017. 

2 - JUSTICE LEAGUE WILL BE THE FIFTH DCEU MOVIE

When The Avengers came out in May 2012, it was the sixth MCU movie after Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America in that order. Black Widow was introduced in Iron Man 2 and Hawkeye was introduced briefly in Thor, but neither have had solo movies to this point. This is regarded by many as proper setup for the MCU and subsequently any comic book movie franchise. 

When Justice League is released in November 2017, it will be the fifth DCEU movie after Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman in that order. When it comes out, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg will not have had setup movies, but Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman WILL have had setup movies by then. Those three members of the Justice League are also known as "The Trinity" and are the three most well-known and popular members of the group. So instead of one more solo hero setup movie for The Flash, Aquaman or Cyborg, we get a movie that helps build the world of the DCEU and its villains in Suicide Squad, before pulling a Captain America: The First Avenger move and going period piece with Wonder Woman in June 2017. Wow, how impatient of DC Films to do that. 

Suicide Squad, instead of focusing on establishing one hero will focus on establishing the DCEU world and its evils. 

3 - THE NUMBER FOUR

By the time Justice League is released, we will have spent four years in the DCEU as an audience, watching four movies to help build that world into what we will see when the team-up starts. In that same year, 2017, Marvel will release the 15th (Guardians of the Galaxy 2), 16th (Spider-Man: Homecoming) and 17th (Thor: Ragnarok) movies of the MCU, with the 18th (Black Panther) and the next Avengers movie which will be the 19th, set to come out less than a year after Justice League is released. So going back to 2013 when Man of Steel launched the DCEU and going four years ahead to 2017, DC Films will have released five total movies in the DCEU in the same time frame that Marvel will have released 11 movies (Iron Man 3 in 2013, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man in 2015, Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange in 2016). 

Now, that's not to imply that Marvel is in a bigger hurry than DC is, because we still won't see The Avengers finally face Thanos until 2018, but it does beg the question: Where is DC's impatience? Shouldn't they and Warner Bros. be pushing out as many movies as possible to catch up to Marvel as soon as they can? Doesn't look like that's what they're doing at all. Amazing how that works out when you actually look at the situation as a whole. 

The bottom line with all of this is that of course, just because the MCU follows a particular formula for building its world doesn't mean that the DCEU must follow suit with the same one. If there is one thing that we can all agree on about the DCEU after MoS and BvS, it's that the DCEU world is VERY different than the MCU world. Whether you think that good or bad is up to you, but it means that the rules and how things are built are going to be different and SHOULD be different. DC is giving support movies to the "stronger" half of the Justice League and adding a world-building movie in before releasing Justice League as only its fifth movie in four years of existence. If that's impatiently rushing, then being patient and steady must be glacial.