Moral of the story here: Don't rush your cinematic universe just to try to play catch-up with your rival

Exactly.

WB needs to stop thinking that everything DC needs to be dark and serious. On that same token they need to hire better comedy writers, better actors and better directors/producers.

They need to stop being so reactionary to everything as well. They act like a new kid on the block desperate to fit in and willing to do ANYTHING to be like "the cool kids".

What worked so well with Burton Batman way back then? They way I look at it is this: they weren't viewing anything as a competition. They took a comic book property and had fun with it, not knowing if the concept would work or not. They took a deep risk and gamble that paid off. Gee, what does that sound like? That's right--it sounds like what MCU did.

Somewhere along the way WB lost their way with their DC property and never truly found a way to get it back.

They need someone with a love, fire and passion at the helm of their DCCU. They need a true Kevin Feige as well as a special division that only focuses on DC films, just like what Disney Marvel has done.

Furthermore, they need to dump everything they have now--all of it--and start COMPLETELY over. They need to swallow their pride and accept:

1. "We fcked up."
2. "We'll never catch up to MCU at this point."
3. "We have to just do our own thing."


MCU caught lightning in a bottle and every single attempt to mimic it by multiple companies has failed/drawn in mixed results.

Their biggest problem right now is their apparent refusal to dump it all and start over. They refuse to. They keep adding and adding and adding to the mound of $hit they started making and won't call it a day and start over. They'll never even so much as have a HOPE of pulling themselves out of this mess if they don't bite the bullet and start over. They need a built-in audience who will have faith in them. They can't achieve that now--it's impossible. Their foundation is weak and full of controversy: MOS and BVS. MCU caught people in their net from the very beginning and had--

Let's say the average ticket (for arguments sake only) is $9.00/Ticket. That would mean that the roughly 74 Million people saw JL in theaters. Not every one of those viewers disliked JL or where the DCEU or DCCU and the JL is going.

Warner/DC embarked on a different view and a different take of these characters which was very much in line with what the print side of both houses have done for decades. What was wrong with what Warner/DC was trying to accomplish? Nolan's Batman garnered critical acclaim and success but the Nolan-Ubniverse for that Batman I never personally liked, acclaim notwithstanding. I found Nolan's Batman and the world that Nolan's Batman operated in to be quite a departure and a one-off. The Nolan-verse needed THAT Batman which was a Batman In Name Only. But fans, many fans adore that Batman but any other DC-Verse hero would have rendered that Batman impotent and useless.

This JL and the characters that inhabit the DCEU are to someone's liking and provide just as different take on the character as any of the versions that have been introduced for over 75 years. The endless comparison of DC to marvel does both houses a disservice. There are aspects of this MCU that are tonally off to me also. Hugh Jackman and Fox's version of Wolverine, along with Cyclops, Storm, Rogue are poor imitations of their TV animated and print versions. Fox's Movie renditions were entertaining but just a bit of a let down. My take is that audiences loved them because they had no other movie version to compare them to. Now a generation has made them canon because it is all that some fans know.

Next...

If given enough time and distance from the Christopher Reeve Superman the DCEU Superman would have made the Donner version replaceable and disposable just as the Adam West Batman was thankfully and quickly discarded by the Burton Batman. (Mind you as a kid I faithfully watched the West version and enjoyed it.) The MCU had to make due with the characters they had but some fans bought in and new fans are now being weaned and are accepting the movie version of the characters as their New Marvel Gods. The one aspect that Marvel is doing right is that the Movie versions (the MCU versions) are all composites of the print characters (616, Ultimate, etc) across different print stories. The MCU decided to at least attempt to make the Marvel Characters true to at least a solid core aspect of that character. Warner/DC instead used several celebrated stories jammed into one movie event to define their characters.

DC fans are getting exactly what they wanted but are unhappy because the average movie-goer is rejecting the DCEU because they don't recognize the DCEU Batman or Superman or Flash and when did Cyborg leave the Teen titans????

WB indeed panicked and there was really no need to create a DCEU as it would have and does severely hinder their attempt to tell new stories and show new sides of the large slate of DC characters. Wb panicked by not allowing Snyder to complete is trilogy. WB rushed into BvS and jettisoned Man of Steel II. WB then rushed into JL off of the outstanding (but mediocre rendition of WW).

Here is an example of the fickle nature of DC fans. Even though the attendance for JL was not competitive with Marvel's first Avenger's film it still is pretty good with the exception of how much it cost ($300 Million) to produce. Once the Avengers:Infinity War trailer was released the DC Fans became crestfallen. They see what staying true to a vision can yield outstanding results. Bet they don't reward their own Studio creation by bothering to attend??

As a studio WB wants to turn a profit. The studio for the year of 2017 is very much doing that with the rest of their IP's. WB does indeed need to stop chasing Marvel and allow their IP's to expand. WB has been too reliant on two characters Superman and Batman. They have been milked to death and when they attempted to reimagine those two characters they didn't allow them to sit in the marketplace long enough. If anything WB overvalued those two characters and the WW results show that. GL had other problems but I guarantee you that the fans truly wanted WB and DC to put a new character on the screen.

Thor and Captain America didn't have big Box Offices and neither did The Hulk. It was the Avengers that hit the jackpot. The DCEU could have easily started with a JL movie after man of Steel and made bank. Not as much bank as the Avengers but they would have did very well if they had NOT done BvS.