“Man, DC’s movies are so dark and gritty, there’s no lightheartedness at all.”
“Um… When exactly has DC ever been anything other than dark and gritty? In the Batman Animated Series, there was an episode where Clayface had a daughter and at the end instead of his daughter becoming sentient and her own creature, she was absorbed back into Clayface and fucking murdered and this was a children’s cartoon.”
“I dunno man what about Adam West Batman?”
“Have you ever noticed Batman hasn’t done anything like that again since then?”
“Yeah. I mean except Batman and Robin.”
“There you go.”
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Edit: Okay Brave and the Bold, but other than that.
Batman is typically dark and gritty, DC is typically varied and contains light and dark in varying measures depending on the story and characters. The criticism that the DC live-action properties are too dark and gritty is pretty true, because while Batman is very often dark and gritty, other characters like Superman or Green Arrow aren’t.
Batman’s Batman, but DC has had this nasty tendency to make EVERYTHING Batman of late, and that’s what’s made their movies, and some shows, really divisive.