Director Zack Snyder said in an interview with the YouTube channel The Film Junkee this week that he believes that the DC Extended Universe under Warner Bros. will never be the same as the Marvel Cinematic Universe under Disney. Snyder explained that Marvel already had an earlier start when it came to setting up a cinematic universe and was always able to use a consistent tone in their movies. However, because DC was trying so hard to capture the same magic, it eventually did not work out for the studio in the end. Another reason why Snyder thinks that a consistent DC Cinematic Universe that matches the quality of the MCU was impossible due to the fact that DC had already set up a number of television shows that he had nothing to do with during the production of Man of Steel in 2013.
It has been no secret that the DCEU has been unsuccessful in catching up to the success of Marvel. DC attempted to compete with the MCU by using tactics such as having a team up movie as the second installment with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and trying to be a dark and gritty universe in contrast to Marvel’s lighthearted and humorous environment. However, after the failure of Justice League in 2017, DC decided to have their films be standalone stories instead of a larger narrative. “I think that Marvel, they’ve built [their universe] over a long period of time, so by the time they got to their later movies, everything had kinda locked in, and it was all sort of moving in the same direction,” Snyder said. “But that was just never going to happen [with DC] because the DC TV shows were so popular and because their animated shows were so popular.”
