John Oliver Takes Hilarious Shot at Failure of DC Universe Movies

I’m a DC Comics guy! That was the first universe to really capture my imagination, and I spent most of high school familiarizing myself with the geography of Gotham and Metropolis more than, ya know, real places. Much of my fandom was kickstarted by Batman Begins, which made me want to read the comics, which in turn made me want to watch more movies, shows, and such. To that end, if a DC movie or show was coming out, I was watching it, and that is still (mostly) the case, even if they haven’t been the most successful.

While there is plenty of blame to go around for why DC has not had the same big-screen success as their Marvelous competitors, the fish rots from the head. Warner Bros. has been filled with people fighting for power over the years, and that has led to an incredibly disjointed series of films which have been connected, but also not connected, and eventually, Patrick Wilson eats a cockroach on a hamburger or something. James Gunn and Peter Safran have been brought in to streamline things, but even that has had some bumps in the road.

I really wanted to like the new Supergirl movie. Instead, I really liked the actor who played her, and just felt bored by the whole endeavor. Gunn often touts having completed scripts before a movie starts production, but behind-the-scenes reports claim that Supergirl was tinkered with during post-production quite a bit, and you can feel that. Audiences could apparently feel it as well, since the movie bombed hard enough that stories started circulating about how it made a bunch of money from tie-ins. That’s all well and good, but audiences showing up is better.

It’s a bummer, because I want all of these movies to succeed, because I love the world of the DCU. If they do well, it means we get to visit weirder corners of the universe, ala Guardians of the Galaxy or Wonder Man. But if it doesn’t do well, we end up with projects like Booster Gold getting cancelled. So I’m certainly not here to dance on anyone’s grave, but I’m also not immune to jokes about big studios faceplanting.

Case in point, John Oliver took a jab at DC’s failed films in a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, according to Variety. While commenting on new Attorney General Todd Blanche’s attempts to dodge questions about failure on part of the Justice Department to commit acts of revenge on behlaf of the president, Oliver took shots at his business daddy as well.

“OK, first: No one’s accusing you of ‘running away’; they’re accusing you of losing. Rest assured, everyone believes you ran cock-first as hard as you could straight into a brick wall,” Oliver said of Blanche. “And second, I didn’t realize the existence of repeated unsuccessful attempts was actually good news — that’s huge for DC movies, if true.” He then revealed a collection of posters for DC movies, including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, Birds of Prey, Supergirl, The Flash, and Black Adam.

I’m actually relieved to say that of the films shown, I’ve only seen Birds of Prey (which I remember enjoying) and Supergirl (which I did not). I won’t just walk blindly into any DC movie. Still, I love that universe, I love James Gunn, and I want to see more of it. Oliver is correct. DC feels cursed by poor planning and bad leadership, but hopefully, those things will start to turn around and not be taken out back and shot dead by David Ellison.