James Gunn’s Superman shows influences from both Richard Donner and Zack Snyder, but it might run far deeper than anyone realizes, and could imply huge things in store for the DCU and DC Elseworlds alike. The first teaser trailer for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman film has finally arrived online, showcasing David Corenswet’s Man of Steel in a high-flying adventure. Gunn’s Superman film and DCU draw inspiration from multiple sources, but the symbiosis between some of them is more than a little surprising.
Even still, what Gunn’s DCU will ultimately present itself as is up in the air. That mystery might finally be gaining some clarity in light of the Superman trailer’s release, however – and point to James Gunn’s DCU quite literally being a cross-pollination of Richard Donner and Zack Snyder’s universes into a new DC timeline, something that leads to an epic pay-off down the road.
Everyone Has Opinions On What James Gunn’s DCU Will Be – But What Has Gunn Himself Said?
If there’s one thing the superhero genre is rife with, it’s opinions, and often some of the most entrenched and seemingly unmovable sort. When it comes to DC’s cinematic future, it seems two perspectives are inescapable – those being “James Gunn’s DCU is a reboot that will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, or lead DC to cinematic ruin”, and “The Snyderverse will/won’t/can/can’t/must/or shouldn’t be restored”. If we’re being intellectually honest, there’s a lot of blind commentary in both outlooks, and a good place to break that down lies in just what James Gunn’s DCU is actually going to be.
Despite Gunn’s 10-year plan for the DCU commonly being referred to as a reboot, the one person seemingly reticent to commit to such a description is James Gunn himself. It turns out, Gunn’s own descriptions of the DCU are a lot more nebulous that the term “reboot” or even “soft reboot” indicates.
In one of his first major public comments on Twitter/X regarding the DCU on December 8th, 2022, Gunn stated he and DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran knew that there would be a necessary “transitional period” to get their plans in order. Gunn also capped this off by stating that “but, in the end, the drawbacks of that transitional period were dwarfed by the creative possibilities & the opportunity to build upon what has worked in DC so far & to help rectify what has not.”
Note Gunn’s statement on building upon what has worked for DC and rectifying what hasn’t. Such phrasing implies a more involved and surgical approach that simply going for the nuclear option of a hard reboot. Moreover, for all the media commentary, rumors, and speculation of what Gunn is doing with the DCU, he has been especially emphatic to not trust the rumor mill or news cycle on the DCU unless it is directly coming from himself or Safran.
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Gunn’s Superman Is Showing Donner & Snyder Influences – But Why?
With the trailer for Gunn’s Superman film now released to the world, the internet commentary machine has already kicked into overdrive, but one element that is worth pondering is how much Gunn’s Superman movie seems to be drawing influence from both Richard Donner and Zack Snyder’s Supermen. This is noticeable in the score for Superman, which carries unmistakable chords from the John Williams Superman theme, while other Donner influences are also visible, including the ice palace version of the Fortress of Solitude, the return of Superman’s red trucks and S-shield on his cape, and the generally earnest tone established in the trailer.
At the same time, Gunn’s Superman film seems to also share a surprising amount of parallels with Zack Snyder’s take on the Man of Steel, including in the score itself, which carries a noticeably Hans Zimmer-esque mythic vibe alongside its John Williams chords. Gunn’s Superman also shows Kal-El in what appears to be a very challenging period of his superheroic life, with Superman being battered and bloodied right in the first scene in the trailer, along with a crowd crying out angrily at him, and even one man throwing a tin can at Superman’s head.
For all the talk of Henry Cavill’s Superman ostensibly being insufficiently hopeful and too dour among the Snyderverse’s detractors, David Corenswet’s Supes isn’t exactly all smiles himself. Indeed, Corenswet’s Superman doesn’t smile once in the trailer, and there are points where he is also visibly angry, depressed, or struggling in tough situations, to an arguably even greater extent that Cavill’s Superman. With Superman also battling a giant monster in Metropolis, Gunn seems to be making a sincere effort to challenge the Man of Steel both physically and in other ways. That’s not far off from Zack Snyder’s philosophy of superhero deconstruction.
Before you brush off Gunn’s Superman bearing any similarity to Snyder’s, the man himself has publicly cited both Snyder and Donner as influences on his Superman film (among others). Speaking to Comicbook.com, Gunn recently stated, “I think that obviously the original Donner movie influenced me, but there’s also a lot of things that this isn’t, like I’m just making a Donner-type movie. It’s very different from that. Zack [Snyder] did some excellent stuff. So there’s a lot of ways that influenced me”, with Gunn also citing other influences like various iterations of Superman comics and animated shows and movies. The fact that both Donner and Snyder elements are so visible in the trailer itself might hint to more than just Gunn tipping his hat to both filmmakers.
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James Gunn Is A Fan Of DC As A Multiverse
Upon his beginning as DC Studios Co-CEO, James Gunn delineated the upcoming DCU and DC Elseworlds projects (i.e. those not set within the DCU continuity) as two separate silos within the studio. Gunn most recently re-emphasized the co-existence of the DCU and Elseworlds when addressing the place of Matt Reeves’ The Batman franchise. Admitting that he did, at one point, contemplate integrated Robert Pattinson’s Batman in his DCU’s plans, Gunn revealed that he ultimately decided against doing so, stating in an interview with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, “I’m committed to both telling stories in the DCU and telling Elseworlds stories. I want the freedom to tell Elseworlds stories. We want to be able to tell a story in which Superman’s very different or tell a Red Son story or whatever. We want to be able to play with these characters in different ways”.
Importantly for the sake of this conversation, Gunn’s statement re-affirms his commitment to not just DC Elseworlds projects, but DC as a multiverse, something that is truly baked into the DNA of all things DC. While Gunn’s commitment to the DCU and DC Elseworlds projects being made concurrently is something he’s made clear, that might actually play into his Superman film and his DCU plans in a far more direct and tangible way than has been clear until now.
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Is The DCU A Literal Donnerverse-Snyderverse combo?
In a nutshell, the DCU Gunn is establishing might actually be a hybrid universe combining the Donnerverse and Snyderverse continuities. Aside from the Superman trailer itself, a major piece of evidence pointing to that is the fact that the DCU isn’t truly severing ties with the DCEU.
Several of Gunn’s DCEU projects – namely Peacemaker season two and the originally DCEU-intended Waller series – are carrying over into the DCU. Moreover, Gunn’s animated series Creature Commandos builds upon story elements and references events in his DCEU movie The Suicide Squad. From the outside looking in, it would be easy to infer that Gunn’s DCEU projects exclusively are surviving into the DCU, and reach the conclusion that Gunn is simply telling DCEU fans, cast members, and creatives “Reboot for thee, not for me.” However, Gunn has also specified Peacemaker season two as an explainer of sorts for the DCEU-DCU continuity leap, and that it will address why the events of Peacemaker season one, save for the Justice League’s cameo, are canon with the DCU. Additionally, Gunn’s commitment to DC Elseworlds projects and the level of enthusiasm he put into the marketing of 2023’s The Flash could also paint a more complex picture.
However much of a financial letdown The Flash may have been, that’s arguably much more attributable to a mountain of unfortunate external circumstances than to the movie itself (to say nothing of the fact that Gunn’s own The Suicide Squad wasn’t exactly a runaway hit itself.) More to the point, the fact that Gunn is maintaining ties to an ostensibly failed franchise in the DCEU-DCU connection indicates that he recognizes that the former was far more hampered by a lot of horrendous behind-the-scenes management than the quality of the films themselves. If Gunn isn’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater on the DCEU, The Flash’s multiverse story might actually be more directly relevant to the DCU’s origin.
With The Flash establishing the multiverse as akin to a bowl of spaghetti with both parallel and intersecting timelines, the DCU could be revealed to be an example of the latter that combines the Donnerverse and Snyderverse, either as a byproduct of The Flash’s story, or as one pre-existing spaghetti strand of many, sitting right in the same bowl alongside the Donnerverse and Snyderverse individually. If that’s the case, it could theoretically indicate that Gunn’s plan involves covertly keeping the DCEU alive, but out of sight, with the ultimate intended pay-off being a meeting of multiple big and small screen DC universes not unlike the CW’s Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover, and done on a much larger scale. If that’s what Gunn is laying the groundwork for with Superman and the DCU, it might finally pull off what multiple Warner Bros. regimes have tried and failed to do, largely by their own hand.
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Could The DCU Finally Crack The Code On Pleasing All DC Fans?
If, in fact, James Gunn has fashioned the DCU as a Donnerverse-Snyderverse crossover world while keeping DC Elseworlds projects on the DC Studios slate, he might be the first WB or DC films executive to actually deliver on the hype of DC as a multiverse that first began with Crisis On Infinite Earths and 2020’s DC Fandome. That one-two punch combo seemed to finally unite DC fans across the globe and made being a DC fan fun and exciting in a way that it hadn’t been since the disaster of 2017’s theatrical version of Justice League. WB’s heavy multiverse push of that period seemed to indicate that no door was closed and that anything was possible for DC cinematically and on television. Snyder fans could proclaim Hallelujah to the release of the Snyder Cut and the possibility of Snyder finishing his intended Justice League five-movie arc, while fans more enamored with what Matt Reeves was cooking with The Batman franchise had something completely different they could gravitate towards. Ditto for the then-upcoming Superman & Lois and still at-the-time active Arrowverse, Gunn’s own entry into the DCEU with The Suicide Squad, and everything in between.
Then, of course, Warner Bros. then-management made (thoroughly transparent) attempts to undermine Zack Snyder’s Justice League before, during, and after its release, with no real alternative plan in place for the DCEU, which left the entire franchise adrift and directionless until the formation of DC Studios and the beginnings of the DCU. However, Gunn seems to have recognized that the poor leadership provided by Warner Bros. management and repeated shifts in planning was the real issue that plagued the DCEU. In pointing to a desire to build upon what worked and repair what did not in the DCEU, Gunn’s starting point might be a Superman movie that is familiar on multiple levels, but whose purpose is not simply to evoke nostalgia for Donner or Snyder’s versions, but to be an actual primer for the DC multiverse pay-off that WB has been promising for half a decade.
Imagine, for example, a Spider-Man: No Way Home-style portal scene in which David Corenswet’s Superman or Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl peers into another world, meeting Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman or Jason Momoa’s Aquaman? Or imagine the same scene playing out with Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart coming face-to-face with Zack Snyder’s intended Green Lantern Wayne T. Carr? Or Wally West, already confirmed to exist in the DCU via Creature Commandos’ apocalyptic vision of the future, zooming through the Speed Force and encountering other Speedsters, including, yes, Ezra Miller’s Flash? Or if Gunn’s general DCU plan adheres to the DC Comics lore that the New Gods exist outside of the multiverse, meaning that there’s only one of each of them in all of existence – and therefore making Ray Porter’s Darkseid a threat to the DCU and DCEU alike?
And if anything like those scenarios happen, what does that imply about the Snyderverse itself in the larger context of Gunn’s plans? Is it a dead franchise driven into the ground by studio mismanagement, or a universe being kept in stasis to heal from its wounds and battle scars, waiting to be revived when the time is just right?
The Flash, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Deadpool & Wolverine have all already made clear the fallacy of writing off any superhero movie comeback, however impossible it may seem, in this day and age. That becomes all the more important to remember when the factor of Gunn maintaining links to the DCEU is a part of the conversation, and the fact that Gunn himself has never positioned the DCU as a reboot in the true sense of the word. Moreover, if Gunn’s DCU is, in fact, a Donnerverse-Snyderverse hybrid, the specifics of why are bound to be addressed within the DCU itself. If James Gunn and DC Studios are playing their cards right, there just might be cause to think that Snyderverse aficionados, DCU fans, and every other corner of DC fandom might be in for a mutual day of jubilant celebration when that day finally comes.
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Tell us, do you think James Gunn’s DCU is heading towards a big multiverse event?
