If the reviews are accurate — and I imagine they are — Suicide Squad is now the latest in a string of big-screen misfires from DC Comics. To find the last unambiguously good movie set a DC universe (though not in the this current one) you probably have to go back a full eight years to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Many of the offerings since then have been indefensible; I can confirm this with Green Lantern, and I gather that both Jonah Hex and Batman v. Superman were trainwrecks, albeit of different sorts. The better offering, including The Dark Knight Rises, Watchmen, and Man of Steel are all worth watching, albeit with caveats. During the same period, however, Marvel has churned out more than a score of films which — a few duds aside — have tended to fall somewhere between serviceable (Thor II and Ant-Man come to mind) to excellent (Iron Man, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy*, Captain America II).

What gives?

The conventional wisdom is that DC has gone for dark and gritty while Marvel has gone for fun and spectacle. There’s a lot to be said for this; if your intent is to convince a lot of people to get off their couches and go to a theater, simply showing them a good time is probably a smarter bet than trying to depress them. (Interestingly, the gritty-vs-fun dynamic is largely reversed on the small screen, with DC’s television offerings tending for camp while Marvel’s have been gritty and violent; curiously, both are quite good). But I think the bigger problem is that Marvel’s made better choices in leadership while DC blundered in choosing Zach Synder to helm its franchise.