We Have Got to Stop Giving These Movie Universes Ridiculous Acronyms

Thanks to an unyielding 16 years of Marvel moviemaking, we unrecorded successful the property of the shared universe. We person for a while, really, but things person present evolved to a higher level of a tendency to ape the occurrence of Marvel’s interconnected texts: it’s not capable to hastily conception your ain connected beingness successful their footsteps, it has to ape the branding. The happening is, “MCU” is elemental and clean. Three letters, precisely what it says it is: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some studios conscionable don’t look to get that.

Enter Warner Bros., who’ve present declared that determination is an authoritative mode to notation to the postulation of films and TV shows that present marque up Matt Reeves’ Batman continuity: “The Batman Epic Crime Saga.” Or, you cognize TBECS for short. Just rolls disconnected the tongue!

The uncover comes courtesy of Entertainment Weekly‘s latest preview of the HBO/Max/the creator formerly known arsenic HBO Max amusement (see, that’s a full other branding issue), The Penguin. The archetypal TV bid introduction successful TBECS, it’s besides what necessitates TBECS being a thing, according to producers Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark, who usage TBECS arsenic their interior notation constituent for The Batman, its upcoming sequel, and The Penguin. After all, erstwhile you commencement throwing TV shows into the premix conscionable saying “Matt Reeves’ Batman movies” doesn’t chopped it. No 1 astatine Warner wants the Matt Reeves Batman Universe, oregon the MRBU. They privation TBECS!

It’s conscionable the latest successful an awkwardly agelong enactment of studios trying to unit these acronyms connected audiences and fanbases successful ways that conscionable truly don’t recognize what makes the MCU acronym enactment successful the archetypal place. Sony flubbed its ain Spider-Man branding twice, first with SPUMC–that’s the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters–and past the SSU–the Spider-Man Shared Universe–when they realized that naming their movie beingness aft thing Peter Parker does erstwhile helium gets a small excessively excited astir his sticky webbing was a atrocious idea. The happening is, nary 1 extracurricular of a concern enforcement astatine Sony is calling those movies portion of the SPUMC oregon the SSU. Everyone just says Spider-Verse, due to the fact that it’s simple, it’s short, it’s already portion of the connection of the films, and it gets the constituent across.

It’ll beryllium the aforesaid happening with TBECS–it’s conscionable excessively awkward, excessively flowery, excessively galore sounds to go casual parlance among fans. It’s silly even, considering Warner Bros already got this close with the DCU (or adjacent the erstwhile DCEU, the Extended Universe). Will anyone extracurricular of Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark, oregon anyone extracurricular of Warner Bros. ever really accidental “The Batman Epic Crime Saga” earnestly? Probably not. But it is comic to ideate it arsenic a comic publication onomatopoeia for Batman punching a goon’s lights out.

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