Warner And DC’s Latest Victory Proves Connected Universes Aren’t Everything

gamerant.com:

Hollywood blockbusters are all about connected universes now. Marvel set the trend and has maintained the status quo for how to create an interconnected universe spanning multiple movies and now even TV shows. DC has had their own attempts at a shared universe, with mixed results. It's a very hard balance to strike, and it can be difficult to keep up the continuity of a cinematic universe where every story has to connect to at least one of the others. Even the MCU has struggled with this in the past, sometimes leaning too hard into the shared universe side of things and failing to create stories that hold up on their own.

That is the fundamental flaw of the cinematic universe model; every story can no longer exist on its own and be a standalone, it has to fit into the wider story arc of the franchise and all of the characters need to be able to go between stories. These days, it's rare that studios invest in superhero movies that are not connected to any other movies and are their own standalone stories. That is, until The Batman was released and proved that superhero movies can still be massive hits even if they have no connection to a wider cinematic universe.

This Classic Neo-Noir Is Essential Viewing For Fans Of The Batman

Batman has shown up on the silver screen in so many iterations that it's getting hard to keep track of them all. DC attempted to slot him into a shared universe with Ben Affleck's version of the Caped Crusader (with Batman v Superman and Justice League), but these efforts fell a bit flat and it never worked quite as well as the Marvel model. The narrative around the current climate of superhero movies is that there needs to be a cinematic universe in order for them to be successful in any way. It's