This, exactly this, explains in a nutshell the difference between Marvel and DC and why I like Marvel vs. DC when it comes to the movies despite preferring DC comics wise.
There is, of course some level of corporate shenanigans on both sides. As has been said several other times in this thread and the Marvel one, Iron Man 2 was bogged down by too much future movie setup stuff, and while I loved Age of Ultron overall, it definitely did have the same problem to a smaller extent.
However, overall, Marvel and Disney seem to be a little more willing to take some risks, and let the directors be creatively free. I mean seriously. Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man were both movies that had analyists calling failure on Marvel before they came out. Those movies were DEFINITELY A huge gamble, but they ended up paying off. Maybe it's because this was Post-Avengers so they knew the Marvel name was strong and knew they could risk it, but the point is that they're willing to.
Meanwhile, DC appears ENTIRELY reactionary rather than revolutionary.
Dark Knight did well, but the more humorous Green Lantern bombed? CLEARLY the humor was the problem, make our future movies like Dark Knight, that's what people want!
Avengers made all the money?! Start work on Justice League RIGHT THE HELL NOW! Forget that it was good because it was built up to over 5 movies, meaning more screen time in the movie proper could be devoted to its own story rather than setup, CLEARLY people want to see superheroes team up!
Deadpool, an R-Rated Superhero movie, is making humongous bank? Quick, announce that we're gonna put out an R-Rated Blu-ray of our most recent movie!!! Forget that it was good because it was made on a shoestring (For a modern superhero movie) budet so the studio was cool just letting the director do whatever the hell he wanted as a result because hey, the legion of fanboys will show up opening night and AT LEAST turn a small profit as a result… and the director and lead actor actually loved the character and wanted to do him justice.
No, the R-Rating is CLEARLY what sold about that movie, it's too late to make BvS R-Rated in theaters since we've been advertising it as PG-13 for too long, but we can put one out on Blu-ray!
And finally, people complained that BvS was too dark. That plus the aforementioned Deadpool being more fun in tone means we now have to make Suicide Squad lighter as a result!
Very unsurprisingly, DC Animation has the right idea and reactions to all of this rather than the folks working on the DC movies. I remember hearing that they were given the Go-Ahead to make the upcoming Killing Joke adaptation R-Rated if need be, and the creative team behind it were basically like "It's nice to know we have that freedom, but we'll just adapt the story faithfully and see what happens. If it take the R to do that, so be it". They weren't like "THIS MOVIE'S GONNA BE R NOW! That's what Deadpool taught us people like now!" it was "We have a respect for these characters and stories and want to do them justice, and we'll take whichever rating allows that".
I'm still hopeful for Suicide Squad because, Dark Humor fits VERY well for the property, especially when Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang are two of your lead characters, but if DC pulls it off, I won't have faith they did so because they respect the characters and know how to show them properly, It'll be because their reactionary tactics managed to accidentally lead them in the right direction for a change.