In a masterful bit of word-mincing, Time Warner CEO admitted on an investor call yesterday that, yeah, Warner Bros.’ DC movies aren’t all that great. Okay, so he didn’t say that specifically, but he did note, according to Variety: “We can do a little better on the creative.” (Just read between the lines on that one.)
The last two films in the franchise—Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Suicide Squad—were savaged by critics, in part because of their unrelenting dourness. To that point, Bewkes acknowledged that the characters “have a little more lightness in them than maybe what you saw in those movies, so we’re thinking about that.” This is not the first time someone involved with the DCEU has figured out that maybe adding some joy into the proceedings isn’t such a bad idea: After all, there was a Justice League set visit designed in part to convince reporters of that fact.
Despite these sobering, honest remarks, Bewkes also claimed that the movies are serving their primary function by operating as a moneymaking enterprise. “The main thing was to launch DC and reinvigorate it with the fan base,” he said. If by “reinvigorate it with the fan base” he means generate meaningless protests against Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a job well done.