Why the "DCEU is rushing" narrative makes ZERO sense

Since the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, there have been many narratives and negative opinions that have picked up steam about the DC Extended Universe. To be completely fair to them, they are all subjective opinions (because opinions can't be objective) that people are more than entitled to form about a franchise or movies for whatever reason they feel like. 

That doesn't mean that we can't take a closer look at just how silly some of them might be. 

Of the silliest negative narratives against the DCEU, the one that has to be the most ridiculous in my opinion is this one:

To clarify this, people believe that the DCEU is rushing their shared universe, as in they are doing a Justice League movie entirely too soon. For me personally, this might be the most annoyingly illogical of the negative DCEU narratives that exists. 

And now we're going to debunk it. Thoroughly. Starting with the most obvious counterpoint:

1 - MARVEL IS NOT THE GOLD STANDARD FOR SHARED UNIVERSE BUILDING

You are going to hear people say that what Marvel Studios does with the Marvel Cinematic Universe has no bearing on their opinion that WB is rushing with the DCEU. That's a lie, because prior to the existence of the MCU there is no other example of a shared cinematic universe on this scale to compare the DCEU to. So if you are going to criticize the timing of a shared cinematic universe franchise, you must have a reference on how you think it should be done, and right now the only reference anyone has is the MCU. I mean, you could try and argue X-Men if you like, but that franchise has so many continuity and structure issues over the past 17 years that it's not a very solid example to use. The problem with using the MCU as an example of "how it should be done" is that it is the ONLY example of how it has even been done at all, and that's an extremely restrictive and limited view. Marvel Studios may be wildly successful with its franchise, but to treat it as the definitive way to build a shared cinematic universe when no one else other than DC has truly attempted it in this manner is lazily close-minded. Marvel has presented A way, not THE way. If everyone else that attempts a shared universe afterwards is considered "wrong" because they do it differently, that's a major fallacy on the part of critics and fans for thinking so. 

Now that we have established that Marvel bias is part of this equation, let's continue: 

2 - THE DCEU AND MCU WILL HAVE BOTH RELEASED THEIR TEAM-UP MOVIES IN THEIR FOURTH YEARS OF EXISTENCE

Iron Man kicked off the MCU in 2008, followed by The Incredible Hulk later that year. Then Iron Man 2 in 2010, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, before hitting the first team-up movie The Avengers in 2012. Four years total.  

Man of Steel kicked off the DCEU in 2013. Three years later comes BvS and Suicide Squad in 2016. Then this year we will have Wonder Woman in June and Justice League in mid-November. Four years total. 

So basically people are punishing the DCEU for the fact that instead of taking one year off like the MCU did, they took three years off. Never mind that those three years were spent developing the plan for the franchise, which included shooting and producing BvS which is arguably the franchise's largest film to date, and Suicide Squad, the franchise's most popular and profitable film to date. On top of that, Justice League will be the fifth DCEU movie, only one behind the MCU's pace with The Avengers, which was its sixth movie. So if the DCEU is rushing, then wasn't the MCU a little fast too? I mean, there were six Avengers in the movie and four of them had solo movies going into the team-up effort. Black Widow and Hawkeye got cameos in other movies and it's difficult to say which one was lesser because while Hawkeye's cameo was two minutes at the most in Thor, Black Widow's cameo was in an Iron Man SEQUEL. Yes, Marvel gave one of the Avengers TWO movies before even giving two of their heroes one movie. 

But somehow it's "wrong" that going into Justice League, the arguably most important three members will have had origin movies, one of which all three of them were in, along with a movie in Suicide Squad that served to further establish and develop the world that the DCEU operates within, all in the same timespan of the MCU's first six movies. Right, the detractors will tell you that Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg were introduced via email in "cameos," when it was actually a foreshadowing sequence for when they all come together in Justice League. I guess since those three members didn't have a movie each, this is just happening way too fast. 

No, that's still silly because: 

3 - THE STRUCTURE OF THE JUSTICE LEAGUE FORMING MAKES COMPLETE SENSE TO THIS POINT

I know I'm referencing the MCU a lot here, but since this particular issue is really based on that more than anything, it's completely justified. Now, in the MCU Marvel decided that they were going to setup each of their heroes minus Black Widow and Hawkeye fully before The Avengers happened, so that when the team-up came along all that was needed was 10 minutes of re-introduction total to remind you of who they were and what they were doing before jumping into the main plot of the movie. That's fine and it clearly worked for Marvel, no one is saying it didn't. 

Perhaps another way of doing it would be to completely set-up your biggest, most well-known and popular heroes first and then introduce a catastrophe that is borne out of whatever they were dealing with in the first four movies and use the team-up movie as the call to arms where the team is literally forged because of it. That's what the DCEU is doing. We already know that the primary threat of Justice League is Steppenwolf, the general of Darkseid's army on Apokolips. BvS has teased that threat fully with the parademons and the omega symbol in Batman's apocalyptic vision, one where he is also contacted by The Flash, and in the added scene of the Ultimate Edition where Lex Luthor is shown communing with Steppenwolf via intergalactic transmission in the Kryptonian scout ship. 

So the villain in Justice League is someone from outer space where Superman has come from, has appeared in visions that Batman has already had, and is someone that Wonder Woman is likely already aware of, given that she admitted to having killed things from other worlds before. At this point, why do The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg need solo movies if "The Trinity" as they are called in DC Comics circles, already is aware of what is coming? I could almost understand the rush argument if Steppenwolf and Darkseid were being treated the same way as the MCU is treating Thanos, where not one of the Avengers has even made contact with him or is aware of his presence because he hasn't done anything directly yet, but that's not the case here. Moves have been made and half of the Justice League is aware of it already. Why drag that out with two or three more movies before bringing the team together? 

One other thing here: When you look closer at the DCEU structure to this point, it makes much more sense for their characters to build the team-up in a way that was completely different than what the MCU did. Marvel established Iron Man first because he needed the most "help" in terms of popularity and integration into a fantastical world. That's also why he got two movies before the team-up while Hulk, Thor and Captain America just got one. Those three characters are super-powered and far more well-known than Iron Man and their introduction was well structured. After bringing in the human tech genius, you bring in the human that got his powers by accident. Then comes the alien that changes the game completely by bringing magic and other planets into the mix, and you cap it with the human that willingly accepted his powers decades earlier and de facto started the whole process in the first place. Very solid. 

But in the DCEU, you have two of the most popular characters in comic book and pop culture history in Batman and Superman, a fact that the haters love to toss in the face of DCEU fans when they like to try and laugh about BvS missing a billion dollars at the box office. Silly, but they are right about the popularity of the characters. Any shared universe you start with DC MUST start with one of them, and it DID with Superman in Man of Steel. So now you have a universe where aliens are on the table immediately and the game is already changed at the start. Now the story is about how everyone else is going to react to that game change, which is what BvS does in showing you Batman and the rest of the world's reaction to Superman.

After three hours everyone's on the same page that he's cool, but now he's dead presumably because Steppenwolf wanted him out of the way and used Lex to do it with a Doomsday construct. So now Bruce Wayne is searching for others to build the Justice League because he knows what's coming, while the rest of the world deals with the fact that aliens are out there but there's no Superman to protect them, hence the Suicide Squad, which also introduces magic (Enchantress), metahumans (El Diablo) and plain old-fashioned gangsters (The Joker) into the mix.

When Wonder Woman comes out, we will learn what she and the world had already known for 100 years presumably, and when Justice League comes out everything is on the table and with The Trinity already established, it can develop The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg along the lines of the conflict and provide a more organic reason as to why the team has formed. 

I'm not feeling the rush here, people. This really seems like a planned and coordinated effort to me. Of course, that will just get me labeled a DC fanboy that will say and do anything to defend his franchise, including dreaming up incredibly elaborate explanations for what the franchise is doing storyline-wise because I can't accept how rushed and chaotic it is. Whatever, people are always going to hate and find rationalizations for their hatred even if they are dead wrong, but this is one rationalization that just doesn't hold water no matter how they try to spin it. The DCEU is not being rushed at all and there is clearly a plan in place through Justice League and probably into 2018's Aquaman. Just because it's not exactly what Marvel has done doesn't make it any less of a planned out franchise than theirs is.