Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: continuity is not the enemy. Homework isn’t the enemy. You know what is the enemy? Confusion. Mixed messages. Studio execs playing multiversal 4D chess while the rest of us are just trying to figure out if this Batman eats nachos in the same timeline as that Joker who dances on stairs.
This whole push to make “Elseworlds” a major part of DC’s movie slate is the cinematic equivalent of throwing your hands in the air and yelling, “Eh, none of this shit matters anyway.” It’s the death rattle of brand consistency. It’s the creative version of a participation trophy. And it’s exhausting.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love Elseworlds in comics. That’s where it belongs. You can crack open Gotham by Gaslight and watch Batman stalk Jack the Ripper in Victorian England. You can read Kingdom Come and see Superman rocking a mullet and questioning the soul of heroism. It’s imaginative. It’s bold. It’s free from canon. And it works because comic book readers understand the game. They’ve seen the Crisis on Infinite Earths. They’ve survived the reboots, the retcons, the variant covers, the “forget everything you knew about Superman” campaigns. They can handle an alternate universe or five.
But movies? Movies aren’t built like that. Not for general audiences. Not for the mom and dad in Tulsa who just want to take their kid to see a superhero movie without needing a goddamn PowerPoint presentation beforehand.
For 17 years, Marvel spoon-fed the public the idea that continuity = value. That every movie mattered because it built toward something. That even when you watched Thor: The Dark World—and let’s be honest, you suffered through that one—you were still investing in a larger narrative. Kevin Feige didn’t just produce a bunch of movies. He showran a cinematic TV series. He made the average filmgoer feel like they were part of an ongoing saga. You got rewarded for paying attention. You got payoffs. You got Tony Stark snapping his fingers and Steve Rogers catching Mjolnir and audiences screaming because yes, holy shit, that moment meant something.
And now here comes James Gunn—who I actually like, by the way—telling us that the new DCU is going to have Elseworlds stories alongside the main continuity. That we’re going to get our new Superman, our new Batman, and also that other Batman from The Batman, and maybe also another Joker movie that isn’t related to either, but it’s fine, don’t worry about it. “They’re all good stories,” they say. “Let them coexist.”
No.
You cannot build a cinematic universe with an asterisk next to everything. You can’t tell people to care deeply about a new Clark Kent when there’s another billion-dollar Joker sitting across the aisle, flipping the bird to canon and lighting cigars with studio notes. Joker worked in 2019 because people thought it might still be part of something. It played coy. It gave us Thomas and Martha Wayne. It gave us Bruce. It didn’t wear a flashing neon sign that said ELSEWORLDS across the marquee. And that ambiguity—that “maybe this still fits”—is what helped it sell.
Now they want to make that the standard? Imagine pitching that to the same audience that couldn’t figure out who was supposed to be Batman in The Flash. The movie tanked because no one knew what was going on or why they should care. And now they want more of that?
Meanwhile, over in comics, DC’s Absolute line is doing great numbers. You know why? Because it’s not pretending to be a side hustle. It’s not running in parallel with four other conflicting timelines. It’s a clean slate. A reboot. One that lives in its own universe with rules, structure, and a clear identity. It’s not an Elseworlds tale—it’s the main event for that publishing initiative. That’s why readers are showing up. They know what they’re getting. It’s tight, it’s focused, and it’s not trying to juggle seven Batmen and an HBO Max spin-off.
And more importantly: it’s a comic book. It takes a fraction of the time and cost to put out a monthly comic series than it does to write, shoot, market, and release a $150 million live-action movie. Comics can afford to experiment. They can pivot quickly. If a story doesn’t land, they course-correct next month. Movies? Not so much. You’re locked in. You confuse people in theaters, you lose them for years.
That’s the difference. That’s why the Absolute line succeeds, while the Elseworlds movie strategy is destined to trip over itself.
Elseworlds stories don’t help DC build a brand. They dilute it. They give the impression that the studio doesn’t have confidence in its own universe. That if the new Superman flops, it’s okay—there’s another one waiting in the wings who doesn’t count. It’s cowardly. It’s indecisive. It’s creatively flaccid.
Audiences aren’t tired of continuity. They’re tired of bad continuity. They’re tired of aimless world-building with no climax, of movies that act like trailers for better movies that never arrive. They want investment. They want forward motion. You know what made Endgame work? It wasn’t the CGI or the callbacks—it was the fact that it felt earned. It felt like the culmination of something. Elseworlds stories, by design, can’t offer that. They’re one-and-dones. Elsewhere. Alternate. Detached. Disposable.
Look, you can have your Elseworlds movies. But they should be rare. Prestige experiments. Animations, limited series, maybe the occasional theatrical outlier. But they should never run parallel to your main timeline. You don’t feed the public two Batmans at the same time and expect them to give a shit about either. One of them becomes the real one. The other becomes noise.
James Gunn has the opportunity to rebuild DC into something powerful. Something focused. Something that finally lives up to the legacy of these characters. But he’s not going to do that by saying “everything counts” and “nothing counts” in the same breath.
Continuity matters. Canon matters. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t still be arguing about what Zack Snyder meant with that nightmare scene. It’s not about homework. It’s about trust. And right now, DC needs all the trust it can get.
So pick a lane. And stay in it.
Hollywood After Dark 