It's been a long hard road for the first new solo Batman film since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, which was initially supposed to be written and directed by Ben Affleck as part of the DCEU. Since then, Ben Affleck has dropped out of The Batman, which will now star Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, be directed by Matt Reeves, and is no longer part of the DCEU.
While the DCEU Batman will be seen in the Justice League Snyder Cut and The Flash movie in production, fans were initially disappointed that The Batman would not be part of a shared DC universe. Nonetheless, there are a lot of advantages to not being part of the DCEU, but undoubtedly some issues too.
10 Shouldn't Be: It's Not Beholden To DCEU Canon
The current established DCEU Batman continuity is that Bruce Wayne's parents died in 1981, around the time the movie Excalibur came out in theaters, and he became Batman sometime around the early '90s, at the latest 1996.
He then spent 20 years fighting criminals up to Batman V Superman in 2016, and at some point, Robin was killed. That is a lot of ground to cover for a new movie, and making The Batman a prequel would lessen its impact because audiences would know how it ends. Keeping The Batman separate means that it is open to surprises.
9 Should Be: Batman Has Already Had Multiple Solo Universes
Batman is one of the most successful superheroes in movies, with at least eight full-length solo features, not counting all the many animated movies or DCEU team-ups. As successful as Batman is, they are all solo adventures, with barely any hint of the wider DC universe. The Dark Knight trilogy, in fact, was created as a world without any costumed heroes even in fiction.
That is why Bruce Wayne's parents take him to see an opera rather than the traditional Zorro. With the DCEU, fans finally had a taste of Batman being part of a wider DC world, and now The Batman is backing away from that.
8 Shouldn't Be: It Can Have Its Own Style
If there is one problem with shared universes such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's that they can feel the same and restrict the style choices of directors. Joker, for example, is one of the most stylish-looking movies around, featuring a very different Joker from the Suicide Squad version, which wouldn't have been possible if Warner Bros had forced it into the DCEU.
Similarly, The Batman looks to be a far more realistic, sinister, and less comic-book take on Gotham City than even the one audiences saw in Batman Begins. If it was a DCEU film, it wouldn't be the film it seems to be.
7 Should Be: DC Needs Its Answer To The MCU
There are currently 23 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Black Widow, Eternals, and more coming this year, and it has made billions of dollars for Marvel and Disney. DC Comics has always been the major competitor to Marvel, and the DC Expanded Universe was meant to be DC's equivalent of the MCU.
While the DCEU is still going, movies such as the recent Wonder Woman 1984 don't always connect to continuity that well. The DCEU needs DC's biggest hero to make it popular, but with The Batman abandoning the shared universe it feels like the DCEU has failed.
6 Shouldn't Be: Shared Universes Have Many Issues
After the success of the MCU, it seemed every movie studio wanted a piece of the shared universe pie. Almost all of them failed, such as Universal's "Dark Universe" or the big Transformers: The Last Knight push.
The DCEU should have been the exception, but mismanagement by Warner Bros meant that it's struggled, particularly with the movie that should've been its ace, Justice League. Even the MCU, the gold standard of shared universes, has its problems, such as the feeling that a lot of Marvel movies are made to a template. They come with more than their share of issues.
5 Should Be: There Has Never Been A Comic-Accurate Batman Movie
There have been multiple Batman movies, all with their own style, design, to attitude towards the source material, but there hasn't been a proper comic-accurate Batman movie. Catwoman's a great example: in Batman Returns she's a sexy zombie with a literal nine lives, and in The Dark Knight Rises she isn't even called Catwoman, she's just wearing a skin-tight black suit with goggles.
The Batman seems to be even more ultra-realistic, with Selina Kyle in a hood that just looks a little bit like cat ears. While Batman V Superman featured an older, meaner Batman, he made an effort at the end to be more like the Batman he was before, and so his movie could have been the closest to comic-accurate a Batman movie has ever been.
4 Shouldn't Be: It Gives The Film More Freedom
There are currently nine movies in the DC Extended Universe, all with different stories and time periods, and some of them even have trouble fitting into the current DCEU continuity. As such, it's far less of a headache for The Batman to wipe the slate clean and start again.
With no complicated backstories and other directors' visions to work around, Matt Reeves and his team have full freedom to make the Batman movie they want to make. And that includes killing off characters if they need to.
3 Should Be: None Of The Best Villains Have Been Done
The Batman villains used so far in the DCEU include The Joker, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Deadshot, Black Mask, Zsasz, and in the upcoming The Suicide Squad, Polka-Dot Man. Those are some key names from his rogues' gallery, but with many missing, including all the villains seen in The Batman so far: Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman.
If The Batman was looking to reinvent these classic villains with impunity, it wasn't necessary to take the movie out of the DCEU, because most of Batman's villains hadn't been established yet.
2 Shouldn't Be: The DCEU Joker Is Unpopular
One major villain currently completely missing from The Batman is his arch-nemesis, the Joker. If director Matt Reeves should want to introduce Joker into the new Batman universe he can do so, since The Batman isn't connected to either Suicide Squad or Joker, the most recent live-action appearances of the Clown Prince of Crime.
If the movie was part of the DCEU, however, it would have to use Jared Leto as the tattooed cartel boss Joker of Suicide Squad. That would be a problem as he remains unpopular with fans.
1 Should Be: It Was Already Set Up
The biggest issue with not having a DCEU The Batman movie starring Ben Affleck is that it was the natural next step after Batman V Superman and Justice League, especially as there were multiple elements in place setting up a DCEU Batman film. The teased death of Robin is one of the bigger plot points that will now never be resolved, nor was there any retribution for his death against the Joker and Harley Quinn.
JK Simmons was in place as Commissioner Gordon, Wayne Manor was being reused, and Alfred's "exploding wind-up penguins" comment teased the Penguin. There was a lot of setup for a DCEU version of The Batman, and now it'll never happen.
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