Henry Cavill Was Biggest Mistake of DCEU, Says Writer

For nearly a decade, Henry Cavill was the official Superman of the DCEU, the Big Blue center of Zack Snyder’s grim and dark envisioning of DC Comics. According to David S Goyer, however, Warner Bros’s biggest DCEU mistake was about Cavill.

Henry Cavill began portraying Superman (or, if you prefer, clumsy Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent) in Man of Steel (2013), the movie that kicked off the entire DCEU.

The expectations for the movies, Zack Snyder, and Cavill himself were ridiculously high after the massive success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and it turns out that things were unsurprisingly chaotic behind the scenes.

Related: See First Look at Henry Cavill as Marvel’s New Captain America

According to David S Goyer, one of the key players behind the Dark Knight trilogy and a controversial figure in the DCEU, Warner Bros had absolutely no idea or consistency about how to construct a viable competitor to the dominant Marvel Cinematic Universe.

On a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, David S Goyer revealed that, in his opinion, Warner Bros’ biggest blunder was not following up Man of Steel with a Henry Cavill solo Superman movie, but immediately teaming him up with Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).

Apparently, that was reflective of the development process of the DCEU, which Goyer describes as “[T]he pressure we were getting from Warner Bros., which was, ‘We need our MCU! We need our MCU!’ And I was like let’s not run before we walk… The other thing that was difficult at the time was there was this revolving door of executives at Warner Bros. and DC. Every 18 months someone new would come in. We were just getting whiplash. Every new person was like, ‘We’re going to go bigger!'”

Goyer says that the DCEU’s biggest mistake was to move directly from Man of Steel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) instead of taking the time to build a more established world. After all, it took the MCU six movies to build up to the crossover event of The Avengers (2012), rather than following up Iron Man (2008) by having Tony Stark team up with Captain America and Thor.

It is difficult to see Henry Cavill’s tenure as the DCEU Superman as anything but a lost opportunity, given that he was only able to star in a single solo movie and closed things out with a brief cameo in the notorious Dwayne Johnson flop Black Adam (2022).

Related: Henry Cavill Reportedly Left Huge Franchise Because It Was Too Much Work

However, it is not Henry Cavill’s fault that the DCEU was shut down after Black Adam bombed and James Gunn and Peter Safran were brought in to right the ship (as well as sow confusion about the current status of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman).

James Gunn righting the ship, of course, meant that Henry Cavill was cut loose, and David Corenswet was brought in as Clark Kent in the new DCU for the upcoming Superman: Legacy. Warner Bros just didn’t know what to do with Henry Cavill, and now we’ve all paid for their mistake.

Should James Gunn have kept Henry Cavill as Superman? How bad is it that Black Adam was his last appearance? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!