3 - THE STRUCTURE OF THE JUSTICE LEAGUE FORMING MAKES COMPLETE SENSE TO THIS POINT

I know I'm referencing the MCU a lot here, but since this particular issue is really based on that more than anything, it's completely justified. Now, in the MCU Marvel decided that they were going to setup each of their heroes minus Black Widow and Hawkeye fully before The Avengers happened, so that when the team-up came along all that was needed was 10 minutes of re-introduction total to remind you of who they were and what they were doing before jumping into the main plot of the movie. That's fine and it clearly worked for Marvel, no one is saying it didn't.

Perhaps another way of doing it would be to completely set-up your biggest, most well-known and popular heroes first and then introduce a catastrophe that is borne out of whatever they were dealing with in the first four movies and use the team-up movie as the call to arms where the team is literally forged because of it. That's what the DCEU is doing. We already know that the primary threat of Justice League is Steppenwolf, the general of Darkseid's army on Apokolips. BvS has teased that threat fully with the parademons and the omega symbol in Batman's apocalyptic vision, one where he is also contacted by The Flash, and in the added scene of the Ultimate Edition where Lex Luthor is shown communing with Steppenwolf via intergalactic transmission in the Kryptonian scout ship.

So the villain in Justice League is someone from outer space where Superman has come from, has appeared in visions that Batman has already had, and is someone that Wonder Woman is likely already aware of, given that she admitted to having killed things from other worlds before. At this point, why do The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg need solo movies if "The Trinity" as they are called in DC Comics circles, already is aware of what is coming? I could almost understand the rush argument if Steppenwolf and Darkseid were being treated the same way as the MCU is treating Thanos, where not one of the Avengers has even made contact with him or is aware of his presence because he hasn't done anything directly yet, but that's not the case here. Moves have been made and half of the Justice League is aware of it already. Why drag that out with two or three more movies before bringing the team together?

One other thing here: When you look closer at the DCEU structure to this point, it makes much more sense for their characters to build the team-up in a way that was completely different than what the MCU did. Marvel established Iron Man first because he needed the most "help" in terms of popularity and integration into a fantastical world. That's also why he got two movies before the team-up while Hulk, Thor and Captain America just got one. Those three characters are super-powered and far more well-known than Iron Man and their introduction was well structured. After bringing in the human tech genius, you bring in the human that got his powers by accident. Then comes the alien that changes the game completely by bringing magic and other planets into the mix, and you cap it with the human that willingly accepted his powers decades earlier and de facto started the whole process in the first place. Very solid.

But in the DCEU, you have two of the most popular characters in comic book and pop culture history in Batman and Superman, a fact that the haters love to toss in the face of DCEU fans when they like to try and laugh about BvS missing a billion dollars at the box office. Silly, but they are right about the popularity of the characters. Any shared universe you start with DC MUST start with one of them, and it DID with Superman in Man of Steel. So now you have a universe where aliens are on the table immediately and the game is already changed at the start. Now the story is about how everyone else is going to react to that game change, which is what BvS does in showing you Batman and the rest of the world's reaction to Superman.