#mutantverse

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A Flourishing Genre

Okay, so Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice... this is a thing now. No I'm not going to give spoilers here, I'm not that kind of person. Also you're probably thinking, why am I even mentioning this movie when it's a part of a completely different franchise? The answer is simple, because I'm about to address something very important that pertains to the MCU. Basically, now that we have more than just Man of Steel to judge the DCEU upon, we can start to get a sense of the landscape we're venturing into when it comes to superhero movies. We've also had Deadpool come out more than a month ago (dependent on where you live it might still be playing in theatres so if you haven't seen it yet, please go, I highly recommend it; unless you're a kid, in which case, wait until you're older damnit). With this film, Fox has seen a new opportunity within their slice of the superhero movies pie. With that in mind, the question is, what can we expect from this genre moving forward?

Deadpool frankly took pretty much everyone by surprise. No one expected it to be the huge financial and critical success that it was, nor the impact that it would have on the future of the Mutantverse as a whole, let alone the superhero genre. In the domestic market, it was R-rated in America, and 18A in most of Canada (minus Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island where it received the 14A rating), but for the sake of how many seemed to look at it, this was an R film, and while there certainly have been R-rated comic book film adaptations before (quite a few in fact), and while this movie was certainly among the better ones (most people consider Dredd to be the best in this category), it has risen to being the highest grossing, and thus the most popular.

Therefore, it has proven a few of things: a superhero doesn't need a large budget to be successful so long as the filmmakers are both talented, and passionate about the material, that a film can have an R-rating and still reach a wide audience, and superhero movies don't have to be PG or PG-13 in order to work. While this doesn't change anything over at Marvel Studios/Television, since their business model is very sound with PG movies, and a similar tone on network television, while using Netfilx streaming for their more mature content, it has impact how both Fox and Warner Bros. execs seem to be approaching their projects in this regard moving forward.

Fox announced that the final standalone Wolverine movie set to release in 2017 will be R-rated, and Warner Bros. have announced that the Blu-Ray release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, will have an R-rated cut included among its content, and that they've increased the budget to Suicide Squad in order to allow them to enter re-shoots to add more humour to the film. Does this mean we'll see more humour and more R-rated home releases in the DCEU moving forward, or that all the X-Men films in the future will be R-rated? Hard to say, but there's no certainty just yet. The approach toward the DCEU is from a line of reasoning of a studio exec, in that they want to pump out product as quickly as they can in order to compete with the other properties that are out there, rather than simply sharing the space of this genre, and coming at it with the passion that seems to be happening moreso now at Fox with the Mutantverse and definitely over at Marvel Studios with the MCU.

We now have two films in the DCEU canon and a third on the way this August, followed by at least two more per year for the next four years. What we've seen so far suggests that the DCEU will take a darker tone than the other two cinematic universes being developed in the genre. Darker visuals, darker storytelling, and darker characters/versions thereof. However, they may be going a bit too dark. In the end, superheroes are meant to be role models; fixtures of hope. No one wants to come out of a superhero movie feeling depressed, therefore there needs to be enough levity to defuse the tension, and one could argue that Dawn of Justice didn't have enough; that it was dower to the point of borderline boredom at times. As such, with the re-shoots for Suicide Squad, one has to wonder how dark are they planning on going with this? One can only hope not too dark. Not that there's anything wrong with a darker tone to separate these films from others in the same genre, but they need comedy too.

“It’s only illegal if I get caught.” Courfeyrac corrected with a grin, looking at at the sky and giving a little wave of his hand, causing some of the snow to swirl around them, ruffling the other’s long blond hair and clinging to it. Alright, so maybe using his powers so boldly wasn’t smart, but it was christmas and there hadn’t been much in the way of snowfall for the season and he’d had a crummy year and didn’t he deserve a small snowstorm at least?

He turned back to her, several flakes clinging to his own dark curls and a glow to his cheeks despite the chill in the air. They weren’t supposed to use their powers, the government had made that very clear, but they weren’t going to assume a small flurry wasn’t anything more than that. Besides, even the assholes in the government had to take time off for the holidays, right? He wanted to believe that, anyway. He gave another little wave of his hands, beaming as the snow fell a little heavier, looking to her.