Hellbeast
He/Him- 4,922
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Introduction:
So this is going to be big but basically our DCEU pages have some issues and it’s high time we worked on fixing them. So hold onto your butts, this is going to be a long one folks.The Snyder Cut:
How I learned to stop worrying and love the canon
So they did it, after nearly four years, thousands of tweets, petitions and support from the cast and Zack Snyder himself, they finally released the Snyder Cut.On the 18th of March Zack Snyder’s Justice League made it’s big boi debut thanks to HBO Max (or whatever streaming service is in your country) and is expected to make a big release into physical media too.This is a huge event for a number of reasons but on this wiki there’s one in particular, how does this affect the wider DCEU canon going forward and do we need to revise the ratings? We’ve obviously been using the Theatrical Cut of Justice League from 2017 so surely we’d have to rework our scaling to accommodate the Snyder Cut right?
Well….
Some people are going to hate what I’m about to say (and I’m not fond of it either) but it has to be said before we can go forward - the Snyder Cut isn’t canon. There's been dozens of statements from Zack Snyder and one accredited to executive producers that seem to indicate the universe is progressing with the understanding the Theatrical Cut of Justice League is the canon installment with Zack’s film being spoken of as being an elseworld of sorts, canon to the wider Multiverse but not the core film franchise
Zack has said this himself no less than nine times and since he’s accredited in the latest example that this was a studio directive, we can assume this isn’t just a headcanon that Zack has and is actually the official stance going forward. There’ll surely be some disagreements but as someone who’s spent the last three months going through everything I can safely say that there’s far more against the SC being Canon then anything supporting the opposite. And that sucks since the Snyder Cut is so damn good but sometimes that’s just what we have to live with honestly.
This has already gone on too long so I’ll just link this Google Doc that I’ve used as a compendium of everything said about the matter. It’s long but I’d advise a read since it provides all the statements I’ve gathered and some checks for certain counter arguments I guarantee will be heard.
Where this leaves us
Power Scaling Shenanigans
Now you’ll surely have some questions for me about this and I’ll be sure to go through it with you.The most basic result is the fact that we’ll still be using the scaling set out by the Theatrical film, so any feats found in the Snyder Cut won’t be changing anything major. Cyborg getting new feats there won’t affect his current ratings and anything Snyder says about Superman or Steppenwolf’s relative power levels will be ignored in favour of what Josstice League portrays.
Superman will still be the strongest Leaguer by far and Flash will still be fodder. It’s not exactly great if you’re a fan of those characters or want new scaling
Incorporating the SnyderVerse
Now this doesn’t mean they won’t be on the profiles. Considering Zack Snyder’s Justice League is practically a wholly new film with a very different structure, narrative, aesthetic and character arcs as well as having entirely new characters to play around with for the film’s four hour runtime (Darkseid, Desaad, Joker and Martian Manhunter) with entirely new scaling and feats would easily be enough of a reason to incorporate the Snyder characters on the Wiki - as keys.This means we’ll have one key for the main DC Extended Universe and one for what fans are calling the “SnyderVerse” which comprises Man of Steel, Batman V Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Wonder Woman would also be canon thanks to the photo in Batman V Superman and Aquaman may be included because of some WOG mentioning it happens in the SnyderVerse (grain of salt because there are some continuity errors)
This will apply to the core Justice League, Steppenwolf and other characters who appear in both visions like the Joker or the Old Gods (Zeus and Ares). This won’t apply to everything though.
Ocean Master for example won’t be getting a key because while he’s mentioned in the Snyder Cut, he doesn’t get any new feats or scaling and the continuity would mean we prioritize the canon scaling.
Likewise Darkseid or Martian Manhunter will have their pages specifically for the SnyderVerse interpretations until we see them in the main series of films and then we can just add keys for their “prime counterparts”.
This might seem inelegant to some but this is the best compromise we can offer and if the Snyder Cut is ever officially canonized we can just merge the keys accordingly.
And Now Back To Our Standard Battleboarding
With that out of the way we need to get back on track and make some of those revisions I mentioned. This section is for the downgrades.Pour one out for Tier 6
Opening up the revisions, the Attack Potency for the Verse has some problems if we’re going to be completely honest and it’s something we’ve agreed to for a while but never seem to have gotten to for one reason or another.Karathen Blues
Opening up with the Attack Potency revisions - why the Hell are we scaling anyone to the Karathen? There’s a leviathan (get it?) amount of evidence indicating she’s above pretty much anyone else.- For a start her “rising from the depths” feat is massively above anything anyone else in the entire setting does
- She regularly swats aside everyone else with ease
- Even King Atlan feared her
- Queen Atlanna tried battling her every day but was always bested
- She also mentions that even with Arthur and Mera they’re no match
- She casually tossed aside Arthur when he confronted her (she only stops when he communicates telepathically)
- Her emerging was able to send Orm flying
- She then single handedly tears a hole through Orm’s join Atlantean, Xebelian and Fish armada
So Themyscira
Oh ThemysciraIt seems like ever since Wonder Woman came out it’s been there for us, allowing us to put the verse at Tier 6 and live safely in the knowledge that the MCU would get clapped easily by the DCEU.
Well times change.
Because of the new revisions towards Creation Feats and non universal energy sources being put on the Wiki, we can’t actually use this feat at all like we used to. Ergo, this means that the feat can’t be used at all to justify the characters being Island level or higher (and this is without talking about some issues with scaling based on the Old Gods)
Gotta Go Fast: A True Story
So currently the thought process is the top tiers possessing Relativistic Combat and Reactions based on Kryptonian Heat Vision is legitimate and we’ve had quite the discussion on thisSpecifically the feats we use are Cyborg blocking Clark’s Heat Vision (KAL EL NO!) in Justice League and Wonder Woman blocking point blank Heat Vision in the battle with Doomsday
The calcs can be found here for your viewing pleasure and while they seem accurate there are some issues with this rating
Firstly while Kryptonian Heat Vision is Speed of Light currently fits under our standards, these standards may be revised by not one but two threads, one focusing on attacks being stated to be made of light and another for how light reflection works.
So it’s entirely possible that the Heat Vision may no longer qualify as Light Speed anyway
Theatrical Scaling
Theogony
Mother Boxes
So the Old Gods of the DC Extended Universe have been fairly controversial over the years, especially with the advent of Justice League thanks to one infamous feat.If you’re somehow unaware, when Diana tells Bruce of Steppenwolf and Apokalips first invading five thousand years ago, we learn that the King of the Gods, Zeus, was able to split the United Mother Boxes with a single thunderbolt, halting the Invasion then and there.
This is impressive because the amped Superman struggled significantly with performing the same feat (even more impressively because Cyborg was already exploiting a weakness within the boxes). This was deemed an outlier several years ago so you might be wondering why I’m mentioning this here.
Well that might not be the case.
Because of the fact that Zeus’ island feat is being nuked thanks to our heavy revisions on Creation Feats (see above) this is literally the only feat that Zeus quantifiably performs throughout the series and thus it isn’t inconsistent with his portrayal in terms of power (I mean it is literally his only feat we can use now).
It also would scale only to Zeus and Ares because Ares was able to completely annihilate the Old Gods by himself as seen in Wonder Woman and Zeus was the only one who could even remotely challenge him, even then leaving both horribly wounded.
Now to quote the page, the reason we haven’t accepted this is because of “ the circular scaling it creates with Ares, Wonder Woman, Steppenwolf and Superman.” Now this doesn’t hold up and I’ll be happy to prove why
Misconception 1: Steppenwolf
Looking back to Justice League’s history lesson, we have the first big misconception - Steppenwolf is > Zeus and Ares because it took the Old Gods together to combat him. While I get why this is a thought I can’t agree with that at allWhile it took a massive coalition to drive back Steppenwolf, only three of those parties are confirmed to have battled the New God. The Amazons and Atlanteans went to battle with the Parademons with Artemis, the third Old God, focusing her firepower on the warships Steppenwolf used to deploy his troops meaning the only three characters who battled him were Yalan Gur (Whom was immediately killed), Zeus and Ares
Looking at that we see Steppenwolf blocking Zeus’ lightning with the Electro Axe (notably a feat for the axe’s durability and not his own) before the God of War enters the fray, smacking staggering Steppenwolf with a double sided battle axe.
And this is all we see of the battle, Steppenwolf is next seen being forced into his ship with his Parademons and Zeus then splits the boxes. There’s no prolonged battle or any evidence remotely indicating that Steppenwolf was able to battle the combined effort of the two Gods and considering Superman (who Zeus is likely above thanks to the Motherbox feat) absolutely demolished him in combat, it’s really not a stretch to believe that the fight here went the same way, especially with the fact that Zeus has nothing else to be scaled off of at all.
So Steppenwolf clearly isn’t above Zeus or Ares and that leads to the next one
Misconception 2: A Wild Ares Appears
The second big misconception is that Ares being killed by Wonder Woman would imply the Gods aren’t remotely close to the likes of the Revived Superman and there is some reasoning for this, Diana murders Ares at the end of Wonder Woman, Zeus left the Godkiller (Diana) which infamously has the power to kill a God and could be used as a weapon of sorts against AresThe reason this doesn’t pan out is because Ares was weakened during the events of Wonder Woman. This has been “rejected” in the past but there’s actually a large amount of evidence claiming this
- Hippolyta (who knows the story behind this) references Ares sustaining terrible wounds
- Ares straight up mentions he was left too weak after his battle with Zeus to destroy Humanity directly
- The script for Wonder Woman references Ares leaking “violent, blue power” (page 10)
- The Wonder Woman script outright describes Ares as “powerless” after the duel with Zeus (page 116)
- Ares then mentions that Diana’s actions have made him feel stronger for the first time in thousands of years, healing his wounds (implying his wounds weakened him) (page 117)
- His power is again referenced as increasing thanks to Diana (page 126)
- Ares is again described as having growing power (page 128)
- Ares is again described with growing power (Page 130)
- Ares is described as using the last of his power to blast Diana with lightning (page 134)
So as you can see there’s quite a lot indicating that Ares isn’t at his prime in Wonder Woman, he’s regularly stated as being weakened and is only gaining the power he has in the third act of Wonder Woman thanks to Diana’s rage. The best feat this version of Ares has is the lightning bolt that kills him, which is not only clearly not a high Tier 7 - low Tier 6 feat, but is outright described as the last of his power when he’s going all out to kill Diana (indicating it’s not representative of his average displays of power).
The evidence is blatantly supporting the idea that Ares isn’t what he used to be during the events of WW and there’s also no evidence to support Ares not being weakened in Wonder Woman at all.
A Game of Tridents
A big part of Aquaman’s plot is the quest for the legendary trident of Atlan, a legendary weapon forged of Poseidon Steel and used by the first king of Atlantis as a weapon and symbol of Atlantean might over the nations of the world. It’s also a sign of Atlantean hubris, as their hunger for more power leads to the Trident shattering Atlantis in a mighty earthquake. The feat has been quantified at requiring 621 Megatons to just over a Gigaton of TNT equivalent (meaning Mountain - Small Island level), a solid lowball considering the guidebook claiming Atlantis is a continent (Not sure how that would impact the calc)Consistent with Clark’s World Engine feat if one takes the high end and a solid place for a new key right?
Well no. While it sounds bizarre the Trident of Atlan doesn’t seem that beyond the likes of Orm and Arthur.when one considers the actual showings. Firstly while Orm does defeat Arthur Curry during the “Ring of Fire” sequence it’s a fairly even fight in terms of strength, both characters managing to stagger each other before Orm, with several strikes, breaks Atlanna’s Quindent in half.
The relevance here is that Orm is also able to fight Trident of Atlantis Arthur fairly evenly, at one point pinning him with his Trident. There’s an issue here, if Atlan’s Trident is superior to Atlanna’s Quindent by such an incredible degree then the even fights don’t make sense, either Orm battling Arthur evenly is an outlier or Ocean Master clashing with King Arthur is an outlier for Ocean Master.
There’s no statements the Ocean Master grew in any power aside politically so it has to be an outlier right? Well no. The fight comes down to kill rather than power, Orm is stated within the lead up to the battle to be an 8th Dan in a fictional martial art called Xebel Fu and an “undefeated Trident Champion”, making Orm Marius an incredibly skilled combatant. Adding to this interpretation is the fact Vulko warns Arthur that he’s out of his depth fighting his brother who has trained to fight underwater all his life while Arthur is a more skilled combatant on the surface.
We see this proven within the final battle too, Mera advises to take the battle to Arthur’s home element, the surface, and we also see the fight end because of Arthur's skill in learning Vulko’s block. This not only pays off as a visible display of Aquaman’s character development but it also serves to further the narrative that Arthur won because of skill rather than sheer power.
The Trident definitely adds new powers such as Electricity Manipulation and enhances his Ocean Telepathy but it’s not a reason to have a whole new key representing him with the Trident.
Power and Abilities
Additions
Wonder WomanBasically in Wonder Woman: 1984 Diana shows the ability to make objects invisible/unseen via her powers. The reason this is Illusion Creation rather then Invisibility is because one
- Diana never uses this on herself or others, only an object
- She explicitly claims this is the same power Zeus used to cloak Themyscira
Diana also deserves an upgrade to her Regeneration based on her serious bullet wounds healing immediately after regaining her powers in 1984 and the script for the first film mentioning that she was actively regenerating damage done to her by the gas Dr. Poison engineered (The latter is ambiguous though since it’s not translated to the film)
She also gets flight.
Steppenwolf
In the “Steppenwolf the Conqueror'' featurette on Justice League’s home media, DC creative and writer/producer for Justice League Geoff Johns mentions that Steppenwolf’s world of Apokalips is quote “toxic to both the body and the soul”. While the soul mention is likely speaking figuratively rather than literally saying Apokalips soul haxes all who go there, the mention of toxicity should be noted on the profile.
I’m not sure what this is though.
Conclusion:
Basically the DCEU pages will have big revisions including:- New Powers
- Everyone gets a key for the Snyder trilogy (if they're present in both continuitues)
- Ares gets a weakened key (Probably 8-C, higher with powers and Environmental Destruction)
- Zeus and Ares get to scale above Supes in AP (Not speed tho)
