The Scooby Cinematic Universe?

I had low-expectations for SCOOB!. From its trailers, it looked like a bad attempt at marrying modern sensibilities with an expanded universe. It also made Scooby-Doo too articulate, giving him clear, complete sentences instead of a partially-incoherent lisp. And while the voice talent was solid, including Frank Welker as Scooby, it didn’t feel like it’d work as a film. And now that it’s critically-panned, I was right.

However, the whole “cinematic universe” component bugs me the most. Because SCOOB! falls into the same trap that The Amazing Spider-Man films, The DCEU, The Dark Universe and Spectre did: the false start of an MCU-style franchise. And by that, I mean attempting to create an interconnected franchise without doing the legwork. They saw that The Avengers was a money-maker, realized the potential for a juggernaut of their own and jumped on it haphazardly. And all without understanding what made The Avengers work.

In order to give proper framework, I need to touch on what made The MCU tick. It all goes back to Iron Man. A surprise hit, Marvel needed it to save them from bankruptcy, the film paved the way for a multi-billion dollar franchise that, to this day, is still going strong. But what people miss is that Iron Man was self-contained. It had brief references to SHIELD and War Machine, ideas that’d be expanded upon in future movies, but it was a closed story that saved its in-universe surprise for the end-credits scene. In other words, you could watch the movie, be satisfied and not worry about another entry if you so desired.

That’s been The MCU’s secret for 12 years. Even when the franchise’s future was uncertain, it took everything one step at time. It focused on contained stories, getting the audience to care, and only then having crossovers. It didn’t always pan out, Iron Man 2 was a giant mess, but for the most part it did. And by the time The Avengers debuted in 2012, the investment was there. You cared because you’d had time to.

I’m not sure why this is so hard for other franchises. Crossovers aren’t new. Comics have done them for decades. The DC animated shows in the 90’s and 2000’s were a class example of them too. Even The CW’s shows managed to pull this off in their annual crossover events. Making a shared universe work isn’t impossible. So why are so many franchises getting it wrong?

I think part of the answer is “greed”. (Or maybe it’s most of the answer.) Studio execs look at what The MCU did, make a shared universe, and jump on it without doing any work. It’s the same end-result: an introductory movie sets up everything awkwardly halfway through, leaves no room for a story to be told and fails. The studio execs see that, and instead of fixing it, they abandon the idea altogether. It’s not like The Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn’t guilty of this too, hence it struggling, but that was already many films in. It had a whole franchise to fall back on, hence it being more forgivable.

Which is more than I can say for other shared universes. As any good architect knows, if the foundations aren’t there, the top is irrelevant. It can look as pretty or expensive as possible, but if nothing’s supporting it, then it’s an ornament without purpose. It might as well be window dressing. When will these franchises understand that? Who knows?

A shared universe idea isn’t inherently bad. The DCEU recently learned to do it by keeping the franchise building in the background and focusing on the stories in foreground. Additionally, the recent LEGO movies, most of them, have succeeded by making crossovers where every character serves the story. It’s not impossible.

“Okay,” you ask, “but what Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?” To which I answer, “Well, what about it?” Keep in mind that the movie not only acknowledges pre-existing Spider-Man knowledge, but also makes sure that its crossovers still serve the grander narrative. It’s still a movie about legacies and expectations. It’s a movie first, essentially. Everything else is extra.

Which me leads back to SCOOB!. It wants to mark the beginning of The Hanna-Barbera Universe, otherwise it wouldn’t contain The Falcon Fury and Dick Dastardly. It’s not even like this couldn’t work, like Wacky Races did. But at this rate, it doesn’t seem like it really had a shot. Plus, it messes with Scooby-Doo in the process. Considering how easy it is to do Scooby-Doo as a concept, that’s embarrassing.

You know what could’ve worked? Going the route of the Scooby-Doo crossover comic. You know, the one where every iteration of Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma collaborated on a case? That not only had great jokes, but it was a clever way to execute the shared universe idea. It’s not like film, particularly animation, hasn’t made this work before…

I’m annoyed and disappointed because I expected more from SCOOB!. I actually expected relatively little, but I was still disappointed. It makes me sad when a Scooby-Doo concept falls this flat, and I thought we were done with the “second-rate shared universe” idea after the 5th failure. And while I’m sure there are smarter people at Warner Bros. than me, it doesn’t make me less sad. It actually makes me more sad, honestly.

So yes, that’s all I have to say here. Wake me up when a good Scooby-Doo movie comes to the big-screen, will you?