We Could Still See Origin Stories in The DC Extended Universe After JUSTICE LEAGUE

After establishing characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor by giving them their own origin stories, we've heard rumors that Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios have decided to avoid telling traditional origin stories moving forward. (Doctor Strange, for example, is said to begin in media res and flash back to the character's origins.) The executives at DC have clearly been paying close attention to the Marvel model, but perhaps in another effort to distinguish themselves from their cross-town rivals, we now know that the company isn't opposed to including origin stories even after their planned two-part Justice League team up film.

Collider spoke with Charles Roven, the producer of Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad, and Roven had this to say about the future plans of the DCEU:

"The Flash movie or the Aquaman film is gonna come out after Justice League 1, it’s not gonna be a completely different character; that character will have evolved from Justice League 1. Wonder Woman, when we see her in Justice League 1, will have evolved from Batman v Superman. Unless we decide that in one of these stories we’re gonna do something that happened in the past and have it be more of an origination story, in which case you’ll realize how that character became what they were in the movie that they were first introduced."

That sounds an awful lot like confirmation of the relatively recent rumor that Wonder Woman will be a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is definitely an interesting way to separate themselves from the competition. Marvel spent a lot of time building the characters before unleashing a team movie; DC's apparently confident enough in the name recognition of their characters to unleash a team movie right out of the gate and then take its time to go back and build them up afterwards.

Roven also spoke about bringing in various filmmakers and allowing them to play in what he calls "the sandbox" of DC properties, and the unique changes that they can bring to the table:

"So that’s really challenging and interesting, and you lay out a road map but then when you bring somebody else in they kinda go, ‘Well you’re going to San Francisco by Route 5, what if you took the 101?’ [And you go] ‘Well that’s interesting, maybe we should go Route 101. What if we did?’ And so that changes the whole thing and all of a sudden you realize you can actually get to where you need to get to by a whole different methodology than what you originally planned. Or you might decide to blend the routes. And by doing that it’s very fresh. You’ve got very fresh ideas, very interesting ideas. It’s just really a lot of fun if you’ve got really great collaborative minds working together to try to make things better, more interesting, more fun, more provocative."

Marvel Studios movies are all very much the products of Kevin Feige's influence, and that's clearly worked wonders for them so far. Warner Bros. and DC are trying to establish more of a filmmaker-driven environment, but we'll have to wait and see how a few of these movies turn out before we can tell how effective (or even truthful) that approach ends up being. If Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, feels a lot like Batman v Superman, for example, it's probably a good sign that Zack Snyder is the real guiding hand behind the scenes. We'll just have to wait it out for the real results. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see if we hear anything about The Flash and Aquaman solo movies being origin stories for those characters.

What do you think about DC's approach to storytelling?