The Rise of DC and the Benefit to Marvel
In recent weeks DC has been on the ascendency when it comes to the movie news coming out. Man of Steel, like it or hate it (review will come later), has made over 630 million dollars, and is the first movie for the larger DC universe. At San Diego Comic Con, with thunderous applause, the team of the Man of Steel announced that the next Superman film will be a Superman Batman team-up movie, in 2015, a Flash Film in 2016, and a Justice League Film in 2017.
As someone who is a huge DC fan. This is welcome news to someone who was raised on the Justice League, Superman, and Batman cartoons from the 90’s. I have a few hesitations but I think if DC puts faith in their characters and have the film be put in competent hands. It will be a glorious era to be a geek for Marvel and DC fans alike.
Before I continue let me say that I love the Marvel movies. All the lead-up films were incredible, (with the exception of Iron Man 2 it was okay,) and the Avengers Midnight premiere has the distinct honor of being I and my Girlfriends first date. When I say that I am a DC fan, people give me strange looks and say the only half decent characters are Batman. Worse yet, I say I am a Superman fan, and they think I’m smoking something. Can we fans just like what we like and not make fandom a competition it is pure subjective opinion anyways.
The thing about the Marvel films are, I was not raised on those characters the same way I was raised on Superman and Batman. What I know of Captain America is vastly film related. My Marvel fandom growing up was Spiderman and the X-Men (a-la non Marvel Studios Films).
The thing about America is, we have a thing here called Capitalism, and it promotes competition among rival companies to put out the best product for the consumer. After Marvel was bought out by Disney, Disney made some key decisions that has brought forth the ascendency of the Marvel universe to the big screen.
The creation of Marvel Studios was critical, the prior model was that Marvel would license their characters out to different studios and the studio executives would take over. Its still the case for 3 prominent franchises.
- X-Men (Fox)
- The Fantastic Four (Fox)
- Spiderman (Sony)
Now that most of the Marvel Universe is consolidated into on studio. Disney has wisely allowed Marvel itself by and large have complete creative control over their properties. The corporate head honchos have stayed out of the creative side and has only concerned itself with the marketing side. DC, while being a WB property, does not have a DC Studios, and it clearly shows. The Nolan Batman Films were great, Man of Steel was wonderful, but we have floppers like the Green Lantern, Catwoman, and Superman Returns, and thats just the 2000’s. Marvel wisely let someone like Joss Whedon make the films, a man with a known track record in Film and Comic Books and it paid off. DC gives their films to filmmakers who do not know comic books very well and it shows.
Marvel has made tremendous films, but they are starting to show some cracks in Phase 2 as my more Marvel geek friends have told me with Iron Man 3. If Superman Batman is as good as I hope it is, the Flash film races to greatness (ba da cha), and the Justice League film is truly epic. Then Marvel will only have to step up their game and make the Avengers even better.
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