After ‘Superman,' It's Time To Let Go Of ‘The Batman' Joining The DCU
For years now, ever since James Gunn was announced as the leader of the new DCU, an open question, if not common request, is that Matt Reeves' The Batman 's Batman, played by Robert Pattinson, would be the Batman for that new universe.
The most promising thing James Gunn has ever said about the idea is 'never say never,' but the longer this goes, and especially in the wake of Superman , the less likely this seems to be. And at this point, I think it's just time to give it up. The evidence is mounting that this just is not going to happen:
James Gunn has spoken repeatedly about the script for Batman: The Brave and The Bold , the announced DCU Batman film, which is constantly being worked on as we speak.
Matt Reeves finally submitted his long awaited The Batman Part II script and there's no reason to think at all that he designed it to try to fit in with the DCU. If he did that's what, Gunn and us waiting for a DCU-based Batman script that may not even be used if they do Brave and the Bold ? Nothing about that makes sense, nor would a script for The Batman Part II that does not connect to the DCU if Pattinson's Bats was going to be in the DCU. He's going to have to connect to Superman, Supergirl and all of that without having to wait a decade to do so. Another recent report is that the original plan for Clayface was to have that movie exist in the Reeves universe, but it was pulled over to the DCU instead.
The Batman WB
Finally, if you've seen Superman , boy, it would be tough to put those together. I know that tone shifts are frequent in comics, but those are worlds apart. It's also already been established in the DCU that Batman has been active for 15 years, so this would be a huge timeskip for Pattinson's version, leaving that existing set of storylines almost entirely behind. I also don't think that Gunn would want to wait until 20230 or whatever it might be for a third Batman film to directly connect to the DCU. He probably just wants The Brave and the Bold and more freedom to do his DCU stuff without worrying about Reeves and balancing the other world.
This is just not going to happen at this point. Would it be fun? Sure. Pattinson Batman is great, the movie is great, The Penguin is great. But it's not going to work. We have to give it up.
Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Bluesky and Instagram .
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Geek Tyrant
27 minutes ago
- Geek Tyrant
James Gunn's SUPERMAN and DCU Vision Is the Adrenaline Shot The Comic Book Movie Genre Desperately Needed — GeekTyrant
We all felt it. Superhero movies were starting to feel like reheated leftovers. Sure, we still watched them, but the thrill and excitement? It faded. The genre that once kicked down the door with wild imagination and bold storytelling had turned into a familiar loop of clean, polished, predictable, and uninteresting movies. While Marvel certainly gave us some crowd-pleasers, even their genre experiments felt like they were run through the same shiny factory. Different coats of paint, same frame. Then came James Gunn. With Superman , Gunn didn't just flip the table, he built a whole new one. His take on Superman isn't just a fresh start for DC, it feels like the adrenaline shot the entire comic book movie genre needed. Gone is the brooding, gritty world of the Snyderverse. While Zack Snyder's vision had ambition, it didn't get the the runway it deserved. Gunn stepped in with a full reboot of the DCU, and what he's building is radically different. It's colorful. It's weird. It's wild. It's unique. It's deeply personal, and it refuses to be boxed in. It's got the tone of an actaul comic book! After watching Superman , not once but twice, I found myself more excited the second time around. It's not just the energy of the film, it's the promise it holds. The more I think about it, the more it feels like a turning point. A signal that this isn't just another cinematic universe, it's a creative playground. Gunn isn't interested in repeating formulas. He's curating a universe where no two projects look or feel the same. He previously said: 'It's really important to me that every project has its own stamp on it. This movie is very different from the R rated movie we're making, a body horror movie with Clayface. 'It's very different from the Sgt. Rock movie we're developing. It's very different from Supergirl, which is a space fantasy — Craig Gillespie just walked by here a second ago, who directed that. So every one of these movies is completely different.' And here's where it gets even more exciting is Gunn's approach isn't about building a tightly controlled brand, it's about creating a universe that actually feels like the comics. 'What I love about DC Comics and the graphic novels is that they allowed the individual artists and writers to create their own projects, and they each had their own voice. 'The Long Halloween, All-Star Superman, Dark Knight, Watchmen — those things have very little tonally in common with each other, except for they're a part of the set of communal characters that are in the DC Comics universe. And now, we're doing that same thing in the DCU.' That's the key… voice. Gunn's DCU isn't just about linking stories, it's about honoring distinct visions. It's not one big movie stretched out over 20 chapters. It's more like a mixtape, each track doing its own thing, bringing its own mood. That freedom is what makes this all feel so fresh. There's unpredictability again. There's risk. There's room for bonkers ideas, wild tones, and emotional swings, and Superman is just the start. Imagine what happens when directors with unique voices step into this universe and get crazy! . Gunn's vision is to reinvent what comic book movies can be. Give us variety. Give us style. Give us something we haven't seen before. And finally, after years of sameness, we're getting it. So yeah, I'm 100% on board. Gunn's Superman wakes you up. It's the jolt this genre needed, and I can't wait to see how much stranger, wilder, and more personal the DCU is going to get.
New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
Justin Bieber Awakens His Old Soul
In 2007, back when YouTube was in its infancy and Justin Bieber was not far beyond his, he and his mother posted to the platform a series of videos of him singing covers. Mostly, he gave preternaturally tender versions of R&B hits — Ne-Yo's 'So Sick,' Brian McKnight's 'Back at One,' Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' (!) and more. (There is also 40 seconds of 'Justin Bieber playing the djembe' for the curious.) All of these videos remain on Bieber's YouTube channel and the spirit captured in them has remained in his music, even if at times it has appeared to be shoved into the back seat and told to remain quiet while the adults were talking. By the dawn of the 2010s, he was a pop phenom, and a couple of years after that, he was the most successful male pop star of his generation. The more successful he became, though, the more his connection to R&B was pared back. 'Journals,' his 2013 EP of lo-fi soul, became a connoisseur's favorite, but didn't reorient his trip to the pop stratosphere. On his biggest hits — especially the 2015 pair 'Where Are Ü Now' and 'What Do You Mean?' — his voice, and how it was filtered, was more eau de toilette than eau de parfum. A decade has passed since then, and Bieber has spent long stretches of that time in a kind of public retreat. He's had big hits, and he's toured big rooms, and he's been an object of tabloid scrutiny and public speculation about his mental health; largely, he's been a superstar seeking a shadow. 'Swag,' Bieber's seventh studio album, which was released with almost no advance notice last week, is a winning example of an older artist — though, at just 31, it feels lightly ludicrous to refer to Bieber this way — being willing to toss much of the old playbook away, or at least obscure it really well. It is an album of spacey, sometimes slithery soul music — some of it highly digitally manipulated, some of it refreshingly acoustic — that feels like a reversion to Bieber's core passions refracted through the lens of a performer who has seen too much. The low-pressure environment of this album is tactile — Bieber sings in a variety of modes, he collaborates with unexpected peers, he has standard-length songs and also snippets and skits. But when Bieber finds common ground between his pop training and progressive ear, magic happens. 'Daisies,' a collaboration with the guitar-pop radical is urgent and approachably provocative. 'All I Can Take,' with its hard-slap drums and sparking synths, the quiet storm revival 'Go Baby' and the reverent and patient 'Sweet Spot' all nod to the work that Maurice Starr and later Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did with the crucial 1980s R&B boy band New Edition. On the convincing and elegantly constructed 'Yukon,' Bieber's voice is heavily manipulated, but not in the dehumanizing way it once was; here he becomes a larger-than-life character of flirtatious excess. 'I know you like to go slow, but we could go faster / Tell me the password,' he sings with a wink, in a cadence that could just as easily have come from Drake. There is gospel hiding in Bieber's R&B — he attempts a literal pass at it on 'Glory Voice Memo,' a brief interlude that features his most ambitious singing ('I've been used, and I've been beaten down / I been let down and stalled out'). And the album closes with a benediction from Marvin Winans, of gospel's Winans clan, singing 'Forgiveness.' But the real belief on this album is in commitment. Bieber has been married to his wife, Hailey, since 2018 and became a father last year. He has duty on his mind, though he sings about it as if it were a sensual act. On 'Go Baby,' he references Hailey's success in the cosmetics business: 'That's my baby, she's iconic / iPhone case, lip gloss on it.' On 'Walking Away,' he navigates a relationship experiencing some hiccups: 'We've been testing our patience / I think we better off if we just take a breath / And remember what grace is.' That sentiment recurs on the excellent, Prince-esque 'Devotion,' one of the album's highlights. That song features the soul experimentalist Dijon (a longtime collaborator), who sings as well as sharing writing and production credits. It includes some of Bieber's simplest and most affecting singing, celebrating the virtues of love's tiniest gestures: 'I'd rather take the long way home / So we can laugh and sing a couple more songs.' (Much of the production and writing on 'Swag' falls to Carter Lang, who has worked extensively with SZA, and Eddie Benjamin.) A handful of rappers are invited to the party, though not all are quite sure how to contort themselves to handle these dreamy beats. (Though to be fair, none have ever rapped over Clams Casino instrumentals.) Gunna sounds a bit over-ethereal on 'Way It Is,' and Sexyy Red sounds more patient in her erotic exultations than usual on 'Sweet Spot.' Only Lil B, in chant mode on 'Dadz Love,' and Cash Cobain, already a pop-minded abstract sensualist, on the album's title track, truly stick the landing. Most of the sturdiest music on 'Swag' is on the first half; the second half is a scattershot amalgam mostly consisting of vocal demos with lyrics that feel incomplete, or at least understudied, and humor skits about Bieber's relationship to Black culture, featuring the comedian Druski. Those three interludes are an attempt at explaining something about how Bieber navigates the world, or perhaps how the world navigates Bieber. He presents himself as an object of study and a sponge of perception, a surprisingly passive approach to life for a person of his fame level. (At least he didn't sample a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, as he did on his 2021 album 'Justice.') Which isn't to say that this music is an apology. If anything, it betrays a sly confidence that Bieber has often displayed in real life, but not always on record. It's as if he's unearthed something old and true about himself, and is thrilled to be playing with it again. Even the album's name, 'Swag,' reverts to an early-2010s iteration of innocence that predated his mega-celebrity. It's a callback to the nonsensical exultations of Lil B and Tyler, the Creator, who were committing upheaval in hip-hop's underground at the same moment that Bieber was being ever more firmly slotted into pop superstardom. (It is also a vivid demonstration of the diminishing rate of nostalgia in action.) Is it too late to go back? Never say never. Justin Bieber'Swag'(Def Jam)
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
James Gunn: Peacemaker Season 2 ‘Revolves Around' a Major Superman Movie Element
The following contains spoilers from James Gunn's movie, now in theaters. A significant plot element from James Gunn's Superman film will factor into Peacemaker Season 2. More from TVLine TVLine Asks: Was Ballard Cameo Bittersweet? Will Colbert Go Scorched Earth? Your Superman Spinoff Pick? Did High Potential Cast Ex? And More! The Pitt's Noah Wyle Addresses Tracy Ifeachor's Exit Ahead of Season 2 Harry Potter: HBO Confirms 2027 Release Date for Series Adaptation - See First Production Photo Vice versa, actually. You may recall that Season 1 of the HBO Max series established that the titular Chris Smith's (John Cena) father Auggie (Robert Patrick) had inside his modest home a door that, using a keypad lock, opened into an incredibly/impossibly vast space dubbed the Quantum Unfolding Storage Area. Auggie used this XXXL area — a pocket universe, if you will — to store his White Dragon gear as well as son Chris' Peacemaker helmets. But in Season 2, it takes on greater significance. As teased in the stinger of the first trailer, Chris, once again in tighty-whiteys, opens a second door within the QUSA and runs into… his doppelgänger. In Gunn's Superman film, supervillain Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) uses a pocket universe that he created to, among other things, host a black site prison. The concept there, Gunn says, is similar to Peacemaker's QUSA, minus some big bugs. 'What the whole season of Peacemaker revolves around' is the idea a pocket universe, Gunn says in Superman post mortem. 'The one in Peacemaker works better,' Gunn notes. 'Lex's version is much jankier.' Gunn says that, as suggested by Peacemaker's doppelgänger in the trailer, the Quantum Unfolding Area allows for multiverse-type twists, though on the DC TV series they're handled 'in a much different way' than we've seen in superhero fare over recent years. 'I think of Peacemaker as more of a high-concept story about one other world,' he explains. 'It's more akin to Philip Roth's [1996 novel] The Counterlife than it is to the third Spider-Man movie [2021's No Way Home]… I love that movie, but it isn't about that. It isn't Deadpool & Wolverine. It's really a very simple, simple story about [Chris Smith's] relationship to this one other world.' Gunn then makes clear that this 'pocket universe' DNA shared by Superman and Peacemaker Season 2 did not dictate John Cena's brief cameo in the big-screen launch of the new DCU. 'He would've been in there no matter what,' asserts the filmmaker. 'I like the idea that he's going on this incendiary talk show, and he's one of these a–holes that would be on that show.' Want scoop on , or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to InsideLine@ and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line! Best of TVLine Summer TV Calendar: Your Guide to 85+ Season and Series Premieres Classic Christmas Movies Guide: Where to Watch It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Elf, Die Hard and Others What's New on Netflix in June
