Supergirls True Grit Homage Reveals The DCEUs Biggest Weakness

Supergirl’s True Grit Homage Reveals The DCEU’s Biggest Weakness

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Supergirl’s Tom King is finding success in genre-blending, and perhaps it’s time for the DCEU to take some pointers on telling more fun stories.

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Supergirls True Grit Homage Reveals The DCEUs Biggest Weakness

With Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s new limited series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow taking wing, many, including the writer King himself, have been quick to point out the pertinent homage within the story to the classic Western novel True Grit, written by Charles Portis in 1968. This tale of revenge featuring the well-spoken young Mattie Ross and her efforts to enlist lawman Rooster Cogburn to hunt down the outlaw who murdered her father has been faithfully recreated in King’s new series, with new character Ruthye standing in for Mattie and Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, analogous to Cogburn. Already shaping up to be a rollicking ride, King’s success in crafting this homage not only further extends his run of top-tier series at DC, but also reveals a startling weakness in DC’s other main creative endeavor: the DC Extended Universe film continuity.

With Supergirl, King and Evely’s direct space-western approach serves a fitting contrast to DC’s recent screen treatments for their superhero stable. It is well documented that, while the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long been the box-office king of superhero film franchises, with its 23 films currently grossing over $22.5 billion worldwide, the DCEU’s 10 films have only earned around $5.6 billion, failing to live up to the potential set out in DC’s previous Dark Knight trilogy by Christopher Nolan. While critics may differ on the nature of the flaws within the DCEU that have led to this discrepancy in popularity, one possibility might have to do with their differing fundamental concept of the superhero and the following divergence in the methodology that DC and Marvel have taken in bringing this concept to life in their stories of the silver screen.

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow begins with a near identical premise to True Grit, casting Supergirl in the role of a wandering lawman angling to take down injustice in a similar vein to the classic western. While this might seem out of place, or at the very least out of character, what King’s approach highlights is in fact a very old aspect of the superhero genre that goes back to their inception in Action Comics #1: namely that superheroes, unlike other genre archetypes, are a very malleable sort of protagonist and ones who ideally can fit in any situation, and therefore any genre, that their creative teams can devise without issue.

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The Hero With a Thousand Roles

Supergirls True Grit Homage Reveals The DCEUs Biggest Weakness

King himself has demonstrated the versatility of the superhero genre in his own recent series, including Strange Adventures, which takes a classic political thriller tone mixed with an examination of psychological duality to the retro-futurist hero Adam Strange; and Batman/Catwoman which verges on the crime drama/romance side of superhero deconstructionism. In part, King’s stylistic takes on classic heroes showcase this elasticity within the superhero genre superbly, because these parent genres from which the superhero tales are derived are such a formative part of the stories he is paying homage to.

However, another possible reason could be that combining these archetypal characters with classic conventions from other genres, like true crime, sci-fi and westerns, is what has led to some of the most popular stories in the comics medium, as well as the superhero genre at large. What is striking under the circumstances when evaluating King’s approach and comparing it to the MCU and DCEU respectively is how much it resembles Marvel’s screwball tone in the MCU and how little it does DC’s own brand in the DCEU.

A Tale of Two Universes

Supergirls True Grit Homage Reveals The DCEUs Biggest Weakness

The superhero as a genre has waxed and waned in popularity since its inception in 1938, beginning in relatively gritty fashion before moving to the camp of the ‘50s and ‘60s and back to its foundations in the ‘80s. It is important to remember their origins as spinning out of the pulp fiction of the early 20th Century, such as masked western heroes like Zorro or colorful detective yarns like Dick Tracy. These origins have always been important in setting the tone for superhero pieces.

Arguably one important key to the success of DC’s 2008 film The Dark Knight was that it combined Batman’s unique and somewhat outlandish superhero-genre design, colorful rogues’ gallery and action with classic crime-story genre drama, a seamless melding of the two kinds of stories that paid homage to the character’s origins but also felt new and revolutionary. It’s by this same logic that King has Supergirl fighting against space cowboys; it’s a perfect blend of her own classic type combined with a related adventure genre. However, superhero tales have their origins in a tradition much older than dime novels: superheroes are more related to the legendary heroes of days past, like Siegfried or Gilgamesh, semi-religious figures who appeared as characters in epic poems. This is the tradition the DCEU has been trending towards, and it has proven to not be entirely relatable to audiences today.

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Advancing Genre Theory

The relationship between the superhero genre and its sibling/parent genres demonstrated in The Dark Knight has been adopted by the MCU to quite powerful effect: Thor and his fantasy-oriented adventures, Doctor Strange and his mystical journeys, The Guardians of the Galaxy and their ragtag sci-fi escapades were all successful because they featured their superheroics fused inside a framework built alongside other genre disciplines, just as King is currently doing with Supergirl. On the other hand, the DCEU, which includes films like Wonder Woman, Man of Steel, Suicide Squad and Justice League, seems to have largely abandoned this slightly more nuanced approach to instead angle for superhero films that harken back to ancient myth rather than modern fiction. And therein lies their problem.

For example, Wonder Woman is not a superhero film combined with a war movie: it is a movie about a timeless demigoddess told as a period piece that relies little on the history of the actual period it is set in to be effective. By the same token, Man of Steel is not a science-fiction film, so much as an allegorical story of a messiah-like figure coming of age, a parable which even on the surface has more to do with ancient myths than it does any modern branch of fiction.

When examining an editorial approach to the overall storytelling of a franchise, it is important to first gauge the audience for whom these productions, in this case these films, are intended, and while the DCEU has produced a number of visually impressive and grimly philosophical works, one criticism that has been levied against them is that they are not “fun.” Perhaps what this refers to is the somewhat bleak, mythic tone of the “superhero” genre as interpreted by DC, a tone that is dark in part because it derives from what was essentially religious scripture rather than children’s adventure stories. With King’s run beginning on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, it’s clear that, when his parent company instead goes with a slightly more loose approach to their franchise characters, the magic of superheroes is still alive and well.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/supergirl-tom-king-true-grit-dceu-superhero-genre/

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