Batman is DARK, he’s always been the angst ridden DC character... watched his parents murdered, lives in a gritty city.. fighting corruption and crime in a battle that is largely futile, but keeps doing it night after night anyway.... Takes up the mantle of the bat to help intimidate, lives in the shadows.... etc etc etc.. You can’t get more angst ridden and anti-hero than the more adult batman renditions...
DC absolute effed Superman... Superman ISN’T DARK... if anything he’s the complete antithesis of dark... He’s Truth, Justice, the American Way... he’s A Boy Scout.. he does what is right, as he sees it, no matter the cost to himself... he is who he is because of it.... he’s the ideal.. He’s the character that would be just as willing to lay down his life to save 1 person in the dark with no one watching to know he had done it, as he would to lay down his life in front of millions to protect entire world. Their attempt to turn him into this was STUPID.
Batman V Superman was a wretchedly bad film for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest was, because WB had screwed the characters up, they needed a pointless 3rd person in the storyline to get Batman and Superman to fight... when it was the fundamentally different world views that would draw them into confrontation and conflict. The Dark Cynical fatalist faced with a virtually indestructible alien who seems too good to be true, who puts faith in the system to a fault... of course they would, given the right set of circumstances be on opposite sides.
Then to shoehorn in doomsday for no real reason as well... It was a fustercluck.
They are doing the same mistakes with Aquaman... He’s not a wise cracking angst ridden bad arse... The character does have darkness in him, but it doesn’t manifest itself the way they seem to want to take him on film... He’s a character stuck between two worlds, belonging fully to neither... He will die to protect both of them, an yet still is not accepted fully by them...
My expectations of the film is it will be formulaic and largely forgettable, not because there is no depth to the character (and Aquaman doesn’t get the respect he deserves, he’s been in regular monthly for most of the past 60 years). I’d love to be proven wrong, his portrayal wasn’t as bad as I expected in Justice League.. we shall see how his independent film is.. but I am not expecting much.
Batman has been portrayed in a dark manner since the 80s but he's dark because his parents were shot dead in front of him! It's a core feature of the character that he hates murder and he hates guns! But not in the current movies!