Writer and director James Gunn has recently become top brass at the new DC Studios, which means he's now jointly in charge of all future adaptations of the comic book heroes. Apparently, the plan is for most DCEU (DC Extended Universe) projects to fall under the same banner, much like the better known MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Unlike Marvel's efforts, however, it seems DC is planning to include video games, too.
A fan asked Gunn on Twitter whether future DC games will connect to the DCEU, he gave a straight "yes":
What this potentially means is that titles such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Wonder Woman may tie into the same continuity as the movies and TV shows. It's still very early to see the effects of that decision, but all it'll really mean is future games will become part of the DCEU's canon. We imagine it'll be similar to how Star Wars handles its web of movies, shows, and games.
It's a different tactic to Marvel's, which has elected to keep its games separate from the MCU. The likes of Marvel's Spider-Man, Marvel's Avengers, and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, to name a few, are their own unique takes on the material. It's worked well in most cases, so we're intrigued to see how DC's plans shape up in the coming years.
Are you excited for DC games to interweave with the films and shows, or would you prefer them to be separate? Discuss in the comments section below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 40
Mk vs dc 2.
Kill off various characters (start with Ezras flash...) via horrible story based fatalities and introduce new, better takes on them for the films, games and comics that follow. Easy.
Since suicide squad is supposed to be in the arkham universe,that would make the arkhamverse take place in the movie universe.
Something is off here.
hate this BS.
if i like look of a game i want to enjoy it. not have to watch movies etc to follow.
means people have to spend more. as bad as MTX.
@stvevan Well then spend a lot of your time and money watching the films of the DCEU!
Regards
James Gunn
But nah seriously I get what you mean, I felt the same when the MCU movies were being effected by events in the TV Shows which I never watched nor had any intention of doing so. Hopefully the writers keep the game contained in and of themselves and maybe just make references to what's going on in the movies without making you think you're in the dark plot wise.
This could be anything from an easter egg to a game actually being set in the same Universe and having the same actors as the movie.
I think it'll be the former
@The_Moose the MCU connection in those shows was about as strong as the last thread holding the straps of a tattered and torn backpack together.
They would say 'green guy' instead of hulk, 'the incident' to describe events of the avengers. The effects of the MCU stuff never actually led to anything in the shows, they were just referenced very badly and very few times
Definitely don't like the sound of that. Fun references are cool but outside of Batman and Superman I just don't really care for the rest of DC. Same with Marvel I only really like Spider-Man and X-Men.
I don't want to have to watch a Flash movie to understand a Batman game plot. Simple as that.
@theMEGAniggle For the earlier MCU phases I agree, I think it was Agents of SHIELD which talks about the assault on the Hydra base shown at the start of Age of Ultron, you didn't really need to see AoS to link this up to the movie event, it'll just provided a bit more backstory. Down the line though, Dr Strange 2 was left a lot weaker if you hadn't watched Wandavision and the way the MCU has gone this will only get worse.
Awful idea. Limits creativity. One of the great things about comics an superhero tales, like Fables before them is that different artists have different takes on a character.
The_Moose wrote:
Couldn't disagree more. I think you were in a WORSE place if you HAD watched Wandavision. Why? (minor spoilers for both)
Wandavisions basic story arc was: Wanda was the bad 'guy' and over the course of the show accepted that she couldn't get Vision or her potential children back. She grew as a character. Strange 2 then basically retconned all that and pretended she never had this arc, it basically repeated exactly the same story arc for Wanda.
Hmm I disagree, because you would be less aware of what's happened with Wanda between End Game and Dr Strange.
To be honest though he whole Multiverse idea is just a tool for lazy writers to bring back/alter characters as they see fit. Not Ironman or Captain America though....for some reason the Multiverse can't bring them back.
Welp, not gonna play the games then. Too bad.
James Gunn is officially the arms dealer of the superhero war, playing both sides.
Maybe some games but seems quite limiting. I’d rather the games be based on the comics.
@The_Moose yeah, there's just too much content. You are being punished for having a life and not being able to watch all the Disney+ shows and movies just to understand a major plot point.
Even if you do watch them, thats like four 2-hour movies (sometimes longer), and four or more 6-10 episode shows from the MCU per year. Not even including the Holiday Specials and one offs. Thats a mind bending amount of time to dedicate to something that requires you to remember or understand most of what is happening in the story for you to understand the context of the following movie or show.
DCU will suffer for this because it seems like everyone is getting tired of every other new Disney+ show or new movie being part of the MCU.
@themightyant I'd say it's the opposite. Wanda's actions in Dr Strange 2 only make sense if you've seen Wandavision.
@The_Moose well it can, they're waiting for Secret Wars for that though.
@themightyant Dr. Strange 2 did not retcon or repeat those plot points at all, it's just a continuation, but still a bad one IMO.
In WandaVision, we see Wanda devastated from losing Vision in the way that she does so she manifests a new reality where he exists and then they have children together. By the end of the show, she accepts losing Vision and the kids but manifests all her love and stuff onto her kids and tells them they can never be apart and will always be together. When she loses them, she can't accept that and looks for a way to bring them back, which brings us to Dr. Strange 2. We then land on the major MacGuffin of the multiverse and she goes bats*it crazy trying to get America's powers to access it and get her children.
Very dumb idea. keep them separate. Lots of gamers and comic fans don't like the cinematic counterparts.
@theMEGAniggle @Milktastrophe I get the plots are not identical. But the end of Wandavision she seemed to have accepted losing Vision and the kids as you said. But by DS2 it's like that never happened and we were back at step 1.
Awful movie anyway. Real shame as I like DS1 more than most and had high hopes with Mordo and others.
@themightyant its just a continuation. She went from acceptance to regret and trying to find a way for them to be actually real. It's really not a retcon, its explained. I hate it though
I hate that they took the story away from Strange and Mordo and the Ancient One. They were the most interesting thing about the first one. I know after seeing the post credits scene of DS1 where Mordo does evil stuff, thats what we wanted to see in the sequel.
Wandas story is cool, but maybe give her a season 2 and tell that story there? Why put her front and centre in someone else's movie
He is taking a page of Lucasfilm Star Wars in reality. Right now is the only franchise who really do this, a single multimedia canon. If done right, like Star Wars does, it's amazing!!
There's actually a precedent here. In the original Star Wars canon literally everything followed a canon. The books, comics, movies and games all followed the same story without contradicting eachother, save for the occasional non-canon things like destroying the Death Star over the wrong planet in Empire At War.
However, in order to make new content for the universe without having to make it fit, Disney declared it all non-canon and now legendary characters like Revan, Kyle Katarn, Mara Jade and Meetra Surik (the Jedi exile) are all non-canon, and I am absolutely not salty about that. 😭
That is a huge turn off for me, and one of the reasons I'm not so keen on all the Marvel (and to a lesser extent) Star Wars stuff recently.
@BeerIsAwesome I think I've been relatively unscathed with trying to keep up with Star Wars purely by watching the movies, and some of the TV shows, but I'm not slogging through 7 seasons of Clone Wars just to know who a character is who shows up in a film. What I did find egregious was the whole "play Fortnite to find out how Emperor Palpatine returned" or being expected to read a comic/novel spinoff, or whatever it was they did. A film needs to exist on its own merits, and if you need supplementary material to make complete sense of it, then it fails as a film.
That seems like a really bad idea.
@theMEGAniggle you are right retcon is the wrong word but from my perspective it made Wanda’s character arc from Wandavision’s basically worthless if they are just going to rehash the same again.
Agreed on Mordo etc. and making DS2 more a Wanda movie. Frustrating
The dceu has been awful over all. This doesn't feel like good news, but more like a threat.
Insomniac Games & Rocksteady had the right idea with the Spider-Man/Miles Morales games & the Batman Arkham games, both are loosely based off and inspired by popular Comics & TV Shows, but these games are wholly original in terms of stories & character origins.
However most Movie Tie-Ins just do not work, as they're often severely limited from a creativity standpoint, often forced to abide by the script of the movie with very little room for experimentation, yet we've seen just how great a game based on a beloved IP can be when NOT restricted by it's movie counterpart, Mad Max, Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor, Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, Alien Isolation, many of the Telltale Games, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, the Batman Arkham games, Insomniac's Spider-Man & Miles Morales and I've no doubt Hogwarts Legacy will be another great game too.
@themightyant that is not how Wanda vision ended though.
After Rocksteady did such a phenomenal job with the Batman Arkham Games, I would love to see them tackle the Flash, Green Arrow, Superman or the Teen Titans.
I'm very VERY wary of their Suicide Squad game, everything I've seen so far is setting off alarm bells, but not only that but... why the Suicide Squad?
@Cutmastavictory like a threat hahaha 😂
@themightyant we got a bit off topic but ultimately, that is the bad thing about this new approach DCU will take, if this is what Gunn meant. You miss out on watching a minor show and you've missed out 40% of the plot of a major blockbuster release. Or you don't play a game and you've missed out on the context of a character in a movie. Or what about when movies absolutely butcher a character from the comics, those characters will now have games about them. Yucky.
@JustPlainLoco Suicide Squad is looking really ambitious in trailers. But I keep getting scared and worried, because when you break it down we have:
To me, it looks like Gotham Knights. We have such little gameplay too. I hope they make it very different to what GK did and focus on the playful tone and co-op. I think they gameplay will be good, we just need to see some more of the game.
Terrible idea. Gunn doesn't know video games.
@jdv95 Suicide Squad wouldn't be a part of this, it's too far along I think.
I would wait a bit for Gunn to be more specific about all this because the Twitter follower just asked if there are plans for games to be connected with DCEU, they didn’t specifically asked if "ALL future" games would connect with DCEU.
With that said, having all future DC games under the DCEU banner is one big turn off for me, keep the games separate from the movies for crying out loud! I grew tired of all this shared universe BS a long time ago.
@BeerIsAwesome This is not true. EU had a ton of contradiction everywhere. Even stuff done directly by Lucasfilm themselves was contradicting themselves... Clone Wars and The Clone Wars.
There is a good quote by Leland Chee.
"He [Lucas] didn't really have that much concern for what we were doing in the books and games. So the Expanded Universe was very much separate. What we had to do in the Expanded Universe was, if George did something in the films that contradicted something we had done in the Expanded Universe, then we'd have to change the EU to match what he did in the films."
Star Wars was an absolute mess of contradiction and terrible stories that required fans to cherry pick the few good one in order to make a cohesive fan canon. This is why Disney had to start fresh.
EDIT: A good example of these contradictions is the 5 deaths of Shaak Ti
@Andee Marvel, even without the MCU, has enough cultural penetration for it's characters to be recognisable. An intro series here and there, just so they can get "set up" in the universe and maybe knock off a villain is fine, but combing through the details doesn't do any story any favours when you need the story to flow. At worst, things should be easter eggs or callbacks. Not entire plot points.
@AverageGamer Fair point. I have not read every book and comic, so I couldn't point out the inconsistencies myself. But I would argue my point still stands. The odd little mistakes are just "side content" (for lack of a better word) to the bigger story. That bigger story is the one that never sees any major digression of the plot, and that's the one that follows throughout the entire universe, with basically everything else revolving around it. Save for KOTOR, but that was always the best part of Star Wars in my opinion anyway.
@The_Moose Iron Man is back the moment the money says so
I don't know how to feel about this, will need to wait for official confirmation from the game studios themselves.
@Jaz007 You may well be correct, but that cheapens the whole thing of his sacrifice and every other characters death.
Death isn't final in this series. The reason death is emotional is because it's final whereas in the MCU, it isn't. They can just jump into the multiverse and bring another version back.
Partly the reason why the MCU now sucks.
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