(SeaPRwire) – By: Christian Pierce
Five years after its release, *The Suicide Squad* is DC’s greatest lifeline and its biggest threat. DC has lurched from franchise disaster to disaster for a full decade. The old DCEU was on death’s door in 2021. It was still crawling out from the rubble of the *Justice League* debacle. Audiences shrugged at the second *Wonder Woman* movie. Nothing after *Aquaman* moved the box office needle. Superhero fatigue was gaining steady steam across the industry. Pandemic lockdowns gutted theater attendance for nearly two years. DC needed a win badly. No one expected that win would create an even bigger mess five years later.
James Gunn was ousted from Marvel’s inner circle back in 2018. Old offensive tweets had resurfaced to end his tenure there. DC scooped him up immediately after the exit. He was tapped to write and direct a follow-up to the widely panned 2016 *Suicide Squad*. He brought his trademark irreverence and love of deep-cut DC characters to the project. This was the same trick that turned *Guardians of the Galaxy* into a top Marvel hit. The final product became the DCEU’s most critically successful film. *Aquaman* may have grossed $1 billion at the box office. But *The Suicide Squad* did something far more transformative. It gave DC permission to blow up its failed old universe and rebuild from scratch. The hard-R rating let Gunn take big swings no prior DC director could. He killed off major characters and leaned into raw, unfiltered grit. The grudge match between Peacemaker and Rick Flag gave the story real, tangible stakes. Consequences felt real in a way no previous DCEU film ever pulled off. Fans were thrilled to ditch the grimdark 2010s tone that poisoned earlier DC entries. Even with its cast of mostly C-list villains, it felt fresh and fun.
The wild success of *The Suicide Squad* changed everything for DC’s leadership. Just one year after its release, Gunn was promoted to lead the entire studio. He got full creative control to build a brand new DCU from the ground up. His long-standing affinity for obscure outcasts has warped his studio priority list. We are getting a full Clayface movie before Batman even debuts in the new franchise. He asks minor, little-known heroes to prop up his entire shaky new universe. The old DCEU purged nearly every existing actor and existing storyline during the reboot. *The Suicide Squad* and its connected spinoffs survived to become core pillars of the new DCU. That was the first clear bad sign for the reboot. Recent releases and announcements have only made these problems worse. *Supergirl* turned in a lackluster performance with audiences and critics. The head-scratching new Green Lantern Corps origin has left most fans confused. Gunn is copying every trick that worked for *The Suicide Squad* across the entire franchise. Most of those tricks fall flat when stretched across a whole shared universe. Gunn was never a diligent steward of the DC IP sandbox. He got free rein to do whatever he wanted after *The Suicide Squad*’s success. The same movie that saved the dying DCEU is the poison pill that will sink the new DCU if Gunn does not abandon his current blueprint.
Author bio: Christian Pierce, chief financial columnist covering global entertainment and media markets.