The Critical Corner

    I'm not going to mince words: 2016's "Suicide Squad" is bar none one of the worst movies I have ever seen based on a comic book property. Here was a film with so much potential (an interesting choice of director, a great premise for the comic book genre and a killer cast) completely, utterly wasted due to massive corporate mangling after the negative reception for "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice". To me, it massively damaged the idea of this ecclectic property from DC Comics ever resonating in film after such a high profile, confused disaster.  Enter James Gunn.  Fresh off the heels from his unfortunate ouster from Disney following the unearthing of some old, unsavory tweets, Warner Bros. absolutely struck gold by immediately bringing in James Gunn and giving him carte blance to do anything he wanted with any DC property. Considering Gunn absolutely cemented his reputation with handling a band of misfits with the "Guardians of the Galaxy" m...

If you had told me back in 2016 the movie DC Films would nail the most would be Shazam , I think I would have laughed at your face. Let us not forget this was the time when DC and Warner Bros. were releasing the misguidedly grimdark Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice  as a desperate attempt to catch up to Marvel’s successful “cinematic universe” while also trying to seem different no matter what. We all know how it all turned out. BvS released with complete critical failure and not breaking their coveted 1 billion box office goal, which led to extreme overreaction as they tried to forcedly retool 2017’s Justice League which led to slightly better critical reception but an even poorer box office turnout. In other words, the “DC Extended Universe” was seemingly doomed into oblivion. Yet there were actual glimmers of hope around this time. Buried between the disaster that were BvS and Justice League was the release of the critical and commercial success that was Wond...