It’s just more of the same from DC and the DCEU…sadly. Blue Beetle just released its second trailer, and even though the movie could be great, it’s probably going to fail at the box office regardless.
You’d think after a decade of humiliating failure and the complete domination by your biggest rival, DC and Warner Bros. would have learned something about what audiences want to watch? I guess not.
The second trailer for Blue Beetle, one of the last films in the DCEU came out a few days ago, and the campy, heavy-handed humor nature of the movie is most likely going to see it fail at the box office as audiences are sick of these Marvel knockoffs. And, to be honest, I really don’t even care if this movie succeeds or fails at this point.
When you start calling Batman a “fascist” in one trailer and then double down on the same mistakes that caused the entire DCEU to fail in the other, you’ve completely lost me as a mega fan of the comics and DC brand. Yes, I know perfectly well that Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle comics are funny and lighthearted by nature, and I have no issues with that as not every superhero needs to be as serious as Batman or Wonder Woman.
But have DC and Warner Bros. truly not learned these types of films don’t work anymore!?!?
As I said in the intro, you’d think Warner Bros. and DC would have picked up on the fact that slapstick, campy humor superhero movies, such as Suicide Squad (2016), Justice League (2018), Birds of Prey (2020), Wonder Woman 2 (2020), Black Adam (2022), Shazam 2 (2023), and The Flash (2023), are box office bombs…considering all of them either failed with audiences, were utter duds at the box office, or managed the impressive feat of achieving both.
I don’t know how many times DC and Warner Bros. needs to lose hundreds of millions of dollars and grow ever closer to the brink of bankruptcy to realize that DC films and characters are special because they are DC characters, while Marvel films and characters are special because they are Marvel films and characters.
Both brands have very different tones when it comes to presenting their heroes, villains, and the worlds around them. And just because Marvel has been an overwhelming success in the recent past with funny, sometimes campy films that don’t take themselves too seriously all the time (the good ones still do take themselves seriously, just with a little humor), it doesn’t mean DC needs to copycat that formula into their own films.
There’s a reason The Dark Knight, The Batman, The Joker, Superman, Man of Steel, Tim Burton’s Batman Duology, Wonder Woman, etc. are considered to be the best DC films ever made, and you don’t see these ones being plagued the campy, Marvel-comedy style.
Now, as I mentioned, Blue Beetle might very well be a successful, beloved title and a welcome introduction of some new superhero blood (this will be Blue Beetle’s big screen debut) into the genre, but I just don’t like how goofy and surface-level this movie seems to be.
I mean, is there really going to be another 80+ year old grandma as the big baddy? Wasn’t having a trio of octogenarians as the main antagonists enough in Shazam 2 for DC to realize an 80-year-old grandma is about as intimidating as The Rock’s Black Adam?
We’ll have to wait and see if this film can overcome the DCEU curse, but I’m really not hopeful. Or even excited at this point.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Warner Bros. Pictures/DC) (BLUE BEETLE | OFFICIAL FINAL TRAILER – YouTube)
