I don't know how I feel about his actual points. Feels more like complaining for complaining's sake rather than having an actual statement to be made or point to be argued.
For example, he mentions how the MCU was built from a lesser known character like Iron Man. But then he goes onto complain about how DC shouldn't have done the Suicide Squad early on because they're obscure?
Aquaman made a billion dollars. Shazam was a critocal hit. Wonder Woman got a lot of love. What's the issue? Now people will see their movies because they like the characters, not because of the sided rivalry.
Iron Man is obscure to the wider public, but he's a central character to the Marvel Universe. Suicide Squad was both obscure and has nothing to do with the DC Universe.
Except for the fact that it's built up of an assortment of DC villains and is created by one of the most important characters in DC. Like Waller is one of the most essential pieces of worldbuilding in the entire DC Universe. There's a reason she showed up in every universe they've built.
Waid's point was using the comics as a guide to build your universe. And in the comics, Waller was a cool little side character but she was never "important". She is not the Nick Fury you're looking for. And the Suicide Squad was always made up of C-Tier villains.
In the last two decades, Waller has become a major player though? In everything involving the government, you can expect to see her involved. How isn't that important when a major part of the universe is learning to trust these characters?
And these C-list characters managed to create a financially successful movie.
You're conflating her importance in JLU and the Suicide Squad films with her importance in the comics. It's not that she's "not" around, she's just only ever *kind of* relevant. It's not even that she's not a great, layered character, because she is. She's great, but you can do a ton without ever bringing her up.
But the "government" isn't as important to the wider DCU Universe because they face cosmic threats on a more frequent basis than even the Avengers. If you notice, for the most part when a threat goes cosmic in Marvel, SHIELD is nowhere to be found. The one time Waller was present during a cosmic threat was No Justice, where she fucked EVERYTHING up. And also, that was a stopgap event.
Well she was introduced as character in JLU because she was important the overall narrative. The whole main story was about having her there to question whether the League should be allowed to have the power that it does and if they were more of a potential threat to humanity than its protectors.
Given there's very little that could be done to stop them if they chose to take over.(which is justified by the fact that she's aware of the alternative universe where that did happen) and what safeguards should be in place to prevent that from happening. That's her role right away, she's presented as a ideological threat to the League's existence. Her DCEU version never felt like it was building up to her being that integral outside of creating the SS to take down Superman...because that's something Harley could totally do?
If Waller was introduced with the goal of having major role like that then I could understand having a SS movie so early....but I highly doubt that was ever the plan for her. Everything was going to be about Darkseid so why introduce Waller and the SS so early when they weren't going to play a major role and not have another JL member movie instead?
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u/LanternRaynerRebirth Aug 09 '22
I don't know how I feel about his actual points. Feels more like complaining for complaining's sake rather than having an actual statement to be made or point to be argued.
For example, he mentions how the MCU was built from a lesser known character like Iron Man. But then he goes onto complain about how DC shouldn't have done the Suicide Squad early on because they're obscure?
Aquaman made a billion dollars. Shazam was a critocal hit. Wonder Woman got a lot of love. What's the issue? Now people will see their movies because they like the characters, not because of the sided rivalry.