The Tortured Existence Of The DC Films Fan

On Thursday February 6, I had the day off from work and eagerly went to my local IMAX to see Birds Of Prey(And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn). It was fantastic, I thoroughly enjoyed it and left the theater in a great mood. The conversation was strong, reviews and reactions were good and for that one day, it was actually great to be a DC Films fan.

Then Friday happened.

It was supposed to be an awesome weekend, seriously. It should have been a celebration of a new DCEU movie that a majority of the people had fun with for once. It should have been a time where we all talked about what we loved in the film and speculate on what we might see in the future with this cast of characters.

Instead, it was a weekend of being told by trades, fanboys and in many cases outright misogynists, that the new DCEU movie was already a box office flop because of how much lower the expected opening weekend came in for it. Instead of celebrating a film I enjoyed, I was defending it not even a day after it released.

Such is the life of a DC Films fan.

Anyone that tells you it has been an easy road for fans of DC movies since 2013 is living in a world of make believe, or they are just not paying attention. Amid brief highs and standing on the mountaintop, there have been a lot of lows filled with Twitter trolls hitting below the belt from all sides as much as they possibly can, and that’s only if the “trusted trades” like Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter take a break from doing the same.

This wasn’t supposed to be like that. Birds of Prey was supposed to be different, and instead it’s just rinse and repeat for a DC Films fan, up to now and fully including the fact that a day after the $80 million worldwide opening weekend, word got around that WB had changed the title of the film at theater listings to “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey,” for SEO(Search Engine Optimization) purposes.

Terrific. You guys want to kick my dog while you’re here? Well you can’t, I don’t have a dog so at least I have that going for me.

If you think people like me are making a bigger deal out of this than we should be, then I’d argue that you don’t fully understand what a DC Films fan has been through just in the last 4 years. We’ve seen a film that many of us enjoyed thoroughly in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice get skewered by critics, bloggers, fanboys and our own fanbase, AFTER WB decided to play a game of Operation with the edit for theatrical release. Then we saw them order knee-jerk changes to Suicide Squad as a result of BvS backlash, which helped that movie get skewered just as badly by a large majority. Both films made money and were profitable, but that wasn’t the point as far as the masses were concerned. It was all about how polarizing they were.

Then came Wonder Woman, the movie that WASN’T polarizing and had enough legs to weather competition from a new Spider-Man movie en route to an $821.8 million box office haul. Great……except that before that we had to deal with complaints about how it wasn’t being marketed properly, it was offensive that her armpits were shaved, and a letter allegedly written by an insider claimed the production was a complete mess. Happy happy, joy joy.

Then Justice League happened. You know the details, and if you don’t just check Twitter. You’ll find them pretty fast.

The Walter Hamada era was supposed to be the course correction, the sign that DC Films was getting organized and being more solid in its execution, and it’s difficult to argue that hasn’t been the case. Since Hamada was put in charge in January 2018, not a single DC Film has missed a release date and productions have gone off without a hitch. There’s actually a full slate of films set between now and December 22, 2022.

The thing is, even with the success and consistency that DC Films has enjoyed in the last two years, social media and the masses have still found a way to shift the conversation negatively. With Aquaman it was about whether or not the movie would open on time, whether or not Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Mary Poppins Returns or Bumblebee would ruin its box office, and when it opened at $67.8 million it was being called a flop unless it hit $750 million. Well it went over that by a LOT, but still it wasn’t a calm conversation period.

Shazam is STILL being called a flop by many despite the fact that it made money while having one of the worst release dates of all time, mere weeks before Avengers: Endgame. Then the Joker controversy that actually had law enforcement and military agencies on high alert for the “dangerous incels” that were going to use the film’s subject matter as a rallying cry. You see where we’re headed with this?

Literally the happiest opening weekend a DC Films fan has had in the past few years was when nothing violent happened at a Joker premiere showing, even though many of us watched the movie with a police presence in our theater.

So after all of that, after all of the stress of dealing with these narratives and perceptions about DC Films from trades, bloggers, fanboys and the like, you really think it’s “too far” for someone to be upset about Birds of Prey getting a name change four days after it releases? Take everything that’s happened surrounding DC Films in the last few years into account and then consider this:

First, the optics are AWFUL. You had the lowest opening weekend of your franchise to this point and decided to change the name in theater listings to help going forward. That’s fixing the barn door after the horses have already run off. The damage has been done and this isn’t going to do much to fix it. So now WB looks just as incompetent as they have in the past, since no one did this BEFORE the movie was released. It looks knee-jerk, desperate and reminiscent of bad decisions made pre-Hamada that led to a lot of people getting fired. Not good.

“But it’s just for the theater listings, the title of the movie isn’t actually changing.”

Sure. For now. But what happens when it’s home release time and WB wants people to buy or rent the Harley movie they just saw? If they thought they needed to change the title now, why wouldn’t they do it wholesale later? Right now they can’t change the title cards on 4,236 domestic copies of the movie in theaters across the country, but they can certainly change it later for the digital and Blu-ray releases if they want those same people to find it. Why wouldn’t they?

This means that those of us who loved the original title, including Cathy Yan and Margot Robbie, are out in the cold, and while it’s easy to say “business is business” and we need to suck it up for the sake of the movie’s future, it’s just another case of business outweighing the actual art and that sucks for fans. It’s not like WB is hurting for money here, especially under AT&T’s bottom line, and now you’re taking what was a unique title for a unique film and making it generic for the masses to more easily consume……AFTER you already released it.

So now the narrative about DC Films continues, and we get “think pieces” from Comicbook.com, CBR, Collider, Forbes, and many others about how DC still doesn’t know what the hell they are doing, so much to the point that it seeps into other walks of life as well, like my Michigan football message board on Rivals. It was barely a week or so ago that someone posted about New Gods and was intrigued about the characters they could possibly use in the movie.

The very first response to it: “DC will find a way to screw it up. It’s sad how bad their movies are.”

This is why I’m upset that Birds of Prey got its name changed, because it’s just another kick in the sweet spot for a DC Films fan that seriously just wants to enjoy one movie without some kind of controversy or negative spin, or knee-jerk reaction to a box office or critical result.

Such is the life of a DC Films fan.