EVERY time DC tries to go with the comedy poppy "gee shucks" tone it fails. Reeve got so pissed with the tone of his Superman movies he tried to make his own only for the studio to give him zero budget to do it, Schumacher basically turned it into Batman 66 and killed the franchise for years, Whatever Johns and Hamada did with DC killed the entire universe and now we have James Gunn films flopping on their arse. Meanwhile, Tim Burton's dark Batman had the world in a grasp when Batman 89 came out, Nolan had 2 billion dollar Batman movies, Snyder's Batman was in an $873m grossing epic, Joker cleared a billion and even Reeves Batman, as much as I disliked it was one of the only recent performers for DC. You only have to look at the evidence to see the general audience prefer DC and especially Batman to be dark.
Ben Affleck comments on DC and whether or not comic book movies should be family friendly:
“It seems to be an ongoing question, and I don’t know the answer: Do you go all the way to a hard-R rating like ‘Joker’? Or do it like Marvel, which does something broad, unless you’re talking about ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’?
The interesting thing with the DC characters [comes down] to the legacy of Frank Miller. There seems to be more tension between, ‘Are we doing the grown-up version or the one that’s open to kids?’ There’s a risk of being a feathered fish.”
(Source:
@Variety)