SINGAPORE – It is time to say goodbye to the version of the DC superhero franchise most people are familiar with.

With the release of its final film Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, this chapter of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) closes.

For fans of Jason Momoa, who plays Arthur Curry/Aquaman, it is time to start worrying. Recently appearing on American entertainment news programme Entertainment Tonight, the 44-year-old American actor, when asked if he would reprise his role in the future, said it was “not looking too good”.

He added the only factor that might get him called back is if Lost Kingdom – now showing in Singapore cinemas and the sequel to 2018’s box-office success Aquaman – turns out to be a hit.

What happened? Why is Warner Bros – the movie studio which owns DC Comics as a subsidiary – wiping the slate clean on stories and characters developed in 16 superhero films, released across a decade?

The DCEU encompasses works that include characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman. It was an attempt by Warner Bros to create an interconnected web of stories.

Studio heads were looking to create a new MCU, or Marvel Cinematic Universe, the franchise that contains The Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy and other Marvel characters.

The MCU has become the highest-grossing franchise of all time with a global take of US$29.6 billion (S$39.3 billion), so Warner Bros had much to gain from making the DCEU a success.

With the release of the first DCEU film Man Of Steel (2013), with British actor Henry Cavill in the title role and American actress Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Warner Bros was off to a promising start.

The future looked rosy when the Superman origin story made US$668 million globally, a good though not spectacular result.

Then the trouble started. In what would become a depressingly familiar story for fans, the phrase “troubled production history” became associated with too many DC movies, many of which turned out to be box-office flops.

No overall unified vision

The MCU has uber-producer Kevin Feige at the helm. The Marvel Studios president and his team map out the story arcs for all Marvel films with an iron hand, choosing the points where characters and plots intersect.

It is why most movies from Iron Man (2008) onwards built the stories that would culminate in Avengers: Endgame (2019).

The DCEU, until recently, never had its own Feige. Executives could intervene and force changes for the sake of potentially bigger box office.

Most famously, this meddling resulted in Justice League (2017), a mess of a movie that disappointed fans and bombed at the box office.

Director Zack Snyder was not entirely to blame. He dropped out of production because of the death of his daughter and was replaced by Joss Whedon, who was willing to bend to studio demands to reshoot scenes, add more jokes and shorten the film’s running time from four hours to just two.

The fan campaign to see the original resulted in the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), which many judged to be superior.

Instead of taking the time to develop the Superman or Batman characters after the success of Man Of Steel, Warner Bros rushed to make a team-up movie, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016).

Many felt the film put coherent and compelling storytelling a distant second after the introduction of Ben Affleck’s first outing as Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. The movie was also accused of creating a forced welcome for the superhero group, the Justice League.

In what would become a recurring theme, more stories of studio-dictated reshoots would surface for the third DCEU film, Suicide Squad (2016). While the film made money, earning more than US$700 million globally, it was slammed by critics for its incoherence.

These issues and more would result in film-makers James Gunn and Peter Safran being named co-chief executives of DC Studios in 2022.

With Gunn, the writer-director of the well-received sequel The Suicide Squad (2021), at the top, parent company Warner Bros is hoping the DC Comics stories in film, streaming and television will at last find much-needed coherence.

Cast controversies

Despite having fewer characters in key roles than the MCU, the DCEU’s key actors generated several times more negative press coverage.

Ezra Miller, the 31-year-old American actor who plays Barry Allen/The Flash, has been accused of everything from assault to grooming a child to claiming to be the Messiah.

The Flash, the first stand-alone film featuring Miller’s character, was released in June.

It turned out to be a box-office turkey, a failing that was blamed partly on his much-publicised troubles with the law. Other than showing up at the premiere of the film in Los Angeles where he thanked the studio Warner Bros Discovery and director Andy Muschietti, he was missing from the promotional tour and is unlikely to return in a major stand-alone feature.

Amber Heard, who plays Mera, a princess of Atlantis, is also likely to be cut.

Online opinion turned against the American actress after reports of her alleged abusive behaviour emerged following her divorce from Hollywood star Johnny Depp in 2017, and the subsequent defamation lawsuit Depp filed against Heard in 2019.

This October, trade magazine Variety reported that Heard, 37, was to be cut from Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, but for the intervention of her then-boyfriend, controversial automobile tycoon Elon Musk.

According to the Variety story, Momoa had called for Heard’s removal from the sequel after the release of 2018’s Aquaman, citing poor chemistry between them.

The reason she was brought back for Lost Kingdom – albeit in a reduced role – was because Mr Musk’s lawyers threatened the studio with a “scorched earth” lawsuit, according to the Variety report.

Joining Heard out the DC door is American actor Ray Fisher, 36, who has appeared in three DCEU films as Victor Stone/Cyborg. Stone was the first black superhero in the DCEU, first seen in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.

In 2020, Fisher created a series of posts on Twitter critical of Whedon, accusing Justice League’s replacement director of treating the cast and crew in a “gross, abusive, unprofessional and completely unacceptable” manner.

Fisher aimed more volleys at Warner Bros executives, resulting in an investigation and more actors speaking out against Whedon’s conduct. Given the tension between Fisher and the studio, it is unlikely that he will be invited back to play Stone.

The survivors of DCEU, and dealing with superhero fatigue

Here is how the post-DCEU franchise, now renamed to DC Universe (DCU) and under the leadership of Gunn and Safran, will operate in 2024 and later.

Nothing says revamp better than having fresh faces play familiar characters, they had said.

Cavill will not be returning in a starring role as Superman.

Gunn will write and direct Superman: Legacy, a film about Clark Kent/Superman as a young man. American actors David Corenswet, 30, and Rachel Brosnahan, 33, will play Superman and reporter Lane respectively, while English actor Nicholas Hoult, 34, will play Lex Luthor.

The movie, when it is released in 2025, will be the first from the new DCU unit.

Affleck will no longer don the Batman cape. While Gadot has said that she will be returning in a third Wonder Woman movie, this has yet to be officially confirmed.

Zachary Levi, who played Billy Batson/Shazam in two films, remains unconfirmed. Shazam! Fury Of The Gods tanked at the box office in 2023 and, ominously, the third Shazam! movie has yet to be announced.

Similarly, the failure of Black Adam (2022) to ignite ticket sales means the likely absence of Dwayne Johnson from future projects.

Robert Pattinson, who took the title role in The Batman (2022), is slated to return in a sequel, The Batman Part II, in 2025. However, his reappearance is unrelated to the DCEU upheavals, as his films belong to a separate Batman universe, which will include the 2024 television series The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell in the title role.

The 2021 film The Suicide Squad, unlike The Batman, is part of the DCEU.

Actor John Cena will carry on playing the violent vigilante Peacemaker, which he had done in the spin-off series named after the character. Viola Davis, who played Amanda Waller, the treacherous government official in both Suicide Squad films, will return in her own series, Waller, in 2025.

Also surviving in the new regime is Xolo Mariduena, who plays Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle. Despite the flop that was the 2023 film named after the character, Gunn and Safran have hinted at a second Blue Beetle film.

The DCU will be part of a landscape filled with superhero content. Other than a few exceptions, such as Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse (2023) and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), most recent superhero movies underperformed at the box office.

Some are calling it superhero fatigue: the feeling that new films recycle old ideas, so there is little point in watching them in cinemas when they will show up on streaming platforms later.

Gunn, 57, believes that the problem lies not with the quantity of superhero content, but with the quality.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in April, he said audiences are jaded because storytellers have ignored emotion in favour of special effects.

“Superhero fatigue doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. They’re incredible characters and if the movie becomes just a bunch of nonsense on-screen, it gets really boring,” he said.

“I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever the designs and the visual effects are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.”

Best and worst movies in the DC Extended Universe

Best

Aquaman (2018)

Director James Wan made sure that his movie about half-Atlantean, half-human hero Arthur Curry/Aquaman took a more-is-better approach to everything.

There were epic battles featuring ocean creatures straight out of a fever dream, while the levels of goofiness in the plot and set design were off the charts.

Its light-hearted, almost satirical take on the superhero genre made a welcome change from the grim tone adopted by the preceding DCEU movies.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

This reboot of Suicide Squad (2016) with director James Gunn in charge was ridiculous in all the right ways. It featured a humanoid shark character named King Shark and Polka-Dot Man, a hero who can shoot balls of corrosive liquid that give him his nickname. It dared to take comic-book characters seriously while still delivering an emotional story.

Worst

Suicide Squad (2016)

The story of villains gathered to undertake dangerous missions on behalf of the American government was a mess, despite finding a strong performance in Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. Studio reshoots turned director David Ayer’s work into a laughable jumble.

Black Adam (2022)

This origin story of hero Teth-Adam/Black Adam contains several of DCEU’s worst sins, including the insertion of too many characters into one story and a one-dimensional hero who tries to be enigmatic, but who becomes annoyingly dull.