By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In a truly strange twist of events, Clayface just became the most highly anticipated film of the DCU. Sure, the upcoming Superman movie looks fun, but we’ve seen the Man of Steel’s tights and flights on the big screen several times; what we haven’t seen is a prestige horror movie written by Midnight Mass maestro Mike Flanagan and Speak No Evil director James Watkins. The creative powers behind the Clayface movie are proof that James Gunn has learned from the DCEU’s failures and is ready to create adult comic book movies that aren’t just exercises in edgelord nonsense.
James Gunn Rights DCEU Wrongs
To understand the significance of Clayface to James Gunn’s DCU, it’s important to look back on what made the DCEU such a colossal failure. In retrospect, that cinematic universe’s biggest problem was its attempt to position itself as a more serious alternative to Marvel. Basically, if the MCU was filled with family-friendly superheroes, the DCEU would be filled with edgy stories brought to life by even edgier characters.
That idea works on paper. After all, the best way for a new cinematic universe to succeed is for it to differentiate itself from its biggest competitor. The problem, though, is that “edgy” gave way to “edgelord” almost from the very beginning: Superman’s initial adventure ends with him murdering Zod, for example, and only after their fight nearly toppled every building in Metropolis. Later, the DCEU tried to lighten up by bringing Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon to re-edit Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but that CGI mustache cover-up film was so bad that the studio eventually caved in and released Snyder’s original film.
In other words, this cinematic universe went from being edgy to being family-friendly and back again, and it was soon clear that Warner Bros. was throwing everything against the wall and seeing what stuck. It was honestly embarrassing to watch, but as a DC superfan, Clayface has me excited. The big names attached to this villain origin story provide tentative proof that James Gunn learned from DCEU’s failure and can finally deliver a serious alternative to the MCU that doesn’t make us constantly cringe deep into our seats.
While the exact story details are unknown, it is strongly rumored that Clayface will be a horror/thriller written around the title character’s tragic story. It is similarly unknown which version of the villain we will see, as it’s unlikely that this serious film will portray him as the walking mud man that we see in cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series and Harley Quinn. This seems to be a very serious take on a character with some major pathos, and it’s being brought to life by Mike Flanagan and James Watkins, two major players in the horror genre.
While this illustrates how James Gunn knows how to bring together killer talent, how does all of this prove he learned from the failures of the DCEU? In short, it sounds like we are going to start getting serious alternatives to the MCU that treat their characters and their audiences with equal dignity. That’s admittedly a very low bar, but it wasn’t that long ago that Warner Bros. tried to win fans over with self-serious slop like Suicide Squad and boneheaded vanity projects like Black Adam…compared to those films, Clayface has the potential to transform comic book movies as we know them.
Considering the current state of Marvel, James Gunn has picked the best time to give us a more mature alternative to the failed DCEU. The MCU has become a bloated mess of perplexing stories and stunt casting, like the bizarre decision to bring Robert Downey Jr. back as Doctor Doom. If the DCU can hit the ground running with films like Clayface and remind audiences of the potential of comic book movies, then Warner Bros. might finally solve the persistent problem of superhero fatigue, which might just keep an entire genre from following the Western into a sunset of cinematic irrelevance.
Source: Deadline