No, you’ve just got an eye for detail.
Other than what’s already been discussed, the most notable distinction between DC and Marvel heroes is whether “man” is treated as a suffix or a separate word.
DC: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Hawkman, Starman, Hourman, Robotman. (Notable exceptions: Plastic Man – who wasn’t originally a DC character anyway – and Elongated Man.)
Marvel: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Power Man, Wonder Man, X-Man, Machine Man. (Notable exception: Iceman.)
If you asked the question 20 years ago, you’d have the companies reversed: Marvel movies were terrible, while DC had plenty of good ones.
Marvel just did a better job with their properties, making a string of good movies while DC never seemed to know what to do with the characters. And DC tried to make their characters more like Marvel’s instead of playing to their own strengths.
The most obvious is Superman. The current cliche is that he’s a godlike character which makes him uninteresting. But Superman (like most DC characters) is marked by his intelligence. Essentially, DC characters (especially in the Silver Age) were smart and Marvel characters were dumb.* DC villains had to outwit the hero, and the DC heroes had to figure out their plans on the fly. Marvel heroes always fought it out with the bad guys, who never tried to avoid them, in long fight scenes**; few DC villains were stupid enough to go mano a mano with the heroes.
But the fight scenes became what people wanted to see in movies. So Superman depended on the villain fighting him, something you’d have to be pretty stupid to try***. Batman was always one step behind the bad guy (though his fight scenes made more sense). The movies insisted on world-shaking villainy, which wasn’t what made the characters great (though The Dark Knight is clearly the best superhero film, since it’s the only one that has anything important to say).
It was a mistake not to do more with the supporting characters. DC evidently thought that their iconic two characters were easier to market. Remember, too, that while Marvel Entertainment deals with both the comic books and the movie rights, DC is owned by Time Warner. Warner Brothers is the movie arm of that arrangement, so the people making the decisions on movies are not really connected to the comics. It’s just a properly to them and decisions on films are made a long way from the publishing offices, often by people who have no clue (how else do you explain Catwoman and Green Arrow
Now, Warner Brothers is playing catchup and you cam see the desperation.
*I don’t count genius by definition – Reed Richards or others who could come up with some sort of device to defeat the bad guy because they were geniuses. I’m talking about the way they can figure out the bad guy’s plan and can defeat him without confrontation. The red kryptonite stories of the 60s may have been a lame plot device, but they required Superman to be clever to deal with it; Marvel heros are rarely clever, since the villains always come to them.
**I remember one letters column in Spider-Man that talked about how the past several issues all had the same plot: A villain challenges Spider-Man to a fight; Spider-Man loses; Peter Parker has crap dumped on him in his personal life; the villain attacks again; Spider-Man wins. He described this formulaic pattern in praising the book.
***The Superman TV show indicated how the character can be used – having to track down the villains, who knew better than to challenge him.
I think Marvel is getting way too much credit here and DC not enough. Batman was one of the major movie franchises for both the 90s and the 00s. Superman has been a very succesful franchise since the 70s, the Christopher Reeves movies were fun and entertaining, so was Smallville which ran for like 8 or 9 seasons and hell even the Dean Cain superman wasn’t terrible. The reboot was a flop but the reboot of the reboot seems to have done good enough to guarantee more movies. DC is also doing great on the animated market. Green Lantern and the first superman reboot flopped, but so did Daredevil, The Punisher, Elektra, Ghost Rider, two Hulk movies and two Fantastic Four movies for Marvel.
The Signal vs the Noise
Just to get this out of the way, let’s not be overly swayed by Marvel’s hard-won string of successes at this point in history. This is like talking about the Chicago Bulls’ dominance of the NBA through (much of) the 90s: this is the case now, but this too will pass.
Powerful, iconic characters
It has nothing to do with the quality or nature of the characters or their interconnectedness. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, et al are great characters who have not only withstood the test of time, but have a deep bench of iconic story arcs by the best writers of the medium that could be adapted. Moreover, Marvel characters have far more failures than just Daredevil: Fantastic Four 1 & 2, X-Men 3, Elektra, Punisher 1 & 2, Hulk 1 (and some would say 2), Ghost Rider 1 & 2. (And I say this as someone who reads almost exclusively Marvel).
Bat-factor
One factor for modern-day DC that I think may limit their success is that they seem to be using as a template the dark anomaly within a their historically optimistic community of characters. This seems to be an analogue of the “grim & gritty” trend of 90s-era comics. One of the most interesting aspects of the Batman / Superman relationship is the stark difference in their approach and attitude, yet it seems like their current theatrical incarnations have a lot in common. Man of Steel seemed to be embarrassed of Superman’s likable, non-compromised morality while across the street, Captain America and Thor were reveling in those same characteristics.
Marvel Studios are comic book readers at heart
The biggest success of Marvel isn’t that their movies take place in the same universe — that’s a novelty, not an indicator of quality — their success is that their studio is a movie studio startup borne from the comics industry. The head honchos who run Marvel Studios are comic book readers and makers and use that model to create movies. In much the same way editors are the stewards of the characters and seek out writers to apply their creative vision within a given character’s integral DNA. Their appreciation for, and belief in the source material (though not a slavish adherence to it) is evident all the movies they are making and they seek out directors who are cut from the same cloth. Compare this to the classic Hollywood production studio operating procedure at WB, Fox, and Sony. Whatever lip-service they pay to comics, their level of appreciation and belief in the quality of comic books are limited to a kind of raw material to mine for things that fit into familiar, preconceived movie conventions and discarding the stuff that don’t fit into that template, regardless of whether those elements are integral to the character’s DNA.
Vision and skill
So long as the director is on the same page with producers who know what makes a character tick, all that remains is the creative vision of the director and their ability to execute — like every other creative work ever made.
Former comic book writer Elliot S. Maggin said in an interview that when editor Julie Schwartz offered him the chance to write Superman, he was told “He’s our hardest character to write” because he’s so powerful. “Nobody can figure out where the conflict is.”
Elliot said, “I thought that was idiotic. Conflict doesn’t come from power. It comes from difficult moral and ethical choices.”
Most of the Superman movies either missed that point, or didn’t come up with interesting ethical choices. Man of Steel did present the hero with some good moral dilemmas; unfortunately, most of the choices he made were bad ones.
As a bit of a non-sequitor, I am actually a little disappointed that DC is going the same-universe route. On one hand, it makes them look like late-to-the game imitators.
But more substantially, it throws away a point of difference that they could have had and are locking themselves into a limiting framework. Unlike the Marvel Universe, the DC characters developed in worlds that were isolated from one another. That made them unique and special in their worlds, and allowed for more freedom in storytelling. Some of DC’s greatest stories are the self-contained out-of-continuity books that really dive deep into the world of a character without having to worry about the ramifications it has on other characters. (Though to be fair, The Dark Knight Returns did feature Superman, so maybe I’m talking out of my butt)
I’m enjoying the shared universe thing now because it’s new and novel, but I have to wonder if it’s going to become more and more restricting as time goes on.
Just wanted to acknowledge the shout-out to Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. On the rare occasion I drop a reference to something I always wonder if everyone missed it…or more likely, if everyone thought it was stupid but was too polite to say so.
The problem with DC movies hasn’t been that their characters are all-powerful icons of goodness, or that they can’t do anything other than grimdark, or that DC comics people haven’t been involved – the DC problem has been that their movies have sucked.
Green Lantern was far from grimdark; it was just a really bad movie: they tried to cram too many plotlines into it, too many enemies, too much exposition, lead characters with poor charisma. It was a hot mess. But Geoff Johns was involved in the story and script which had loads of comics shoutouts, and other than being visually dark was so non-grimdark that they actually had the power-ring-makes-boxing-glove schtick.
Marvel’s movies have succeeded because they are good, fun movies. Even though they’re fluff, the acting is pretty good, the action is solid, and the storyline is punchy and makes sense. Marvel has a formula they’re following for their success: good actors + good writing, fun movies.
DC is going to keep floundering for a while, because they don’t have a solid formula or vision, other than Nolan’s Bat-films.
B. Serum:
They don’t “look like” it, they are it. They got Avengers envy, that’s the only reason they’ve started going down this road.
And I say this as a man who has mainly bought DC Comics over the past 20 years. I’m no DC-hater, but I find it hard to describe the push toward a JLA big-screen movie as anything but imitation.
The biggest single factor is the casting IMO. Everybody has an idea of the characters in their head. And you have to get a casting that the critical mass of people can accept it.
Daredevil and Green Lantern Sucked because Affleck and Reynolds just suck.
Ironman rocked because Downey was perfect. The old Superman moves were good because Reeve was perfect. The XMen movies were well liked because they were well cast.
The quirky ones are the Hulk and Batman.
The hulk is hard to judge because you cast Banner, but everybody is there for the Hulk. So everything is in the hands of the CGI team whether you can buy him. And Batman is just there to give the Bad Guys someone to screw with.
Of all the problems that Green Lantern had, Ryan Reynolds wasn’t one of them, and he didn’t cause them. He wasn’t amazing but he would’ve been just fine in a better movie.
I read comics in the silver age - boring and simple Superman, Batman, etc. and the very beginning of Marvel. Though I was a DC fan because that is what I started with, the Marvel characters were always more interesting.
In order to get a mass audience, the movies have mostly gone back to the basics. The Marvel basics are more interesting. The Reeve Superman movies were good because they were pretty much the first superhero movies anyone put any decent amount of money into. The one exception to this was the Dark Knight Batman reboot, and see how well they did.
And of course you can just get lucky. Reeve was a perfect Superman, and Robert Downey Jr. is an awesome Iron Man - a character I never cared for much in the comics, but love on screen.
I think there was a Seinfeld where Jerry and George were discussing why Spider-Man is (phonetically) called spiderMAN instead of Speiderm’n. “It’s not his name!”
In large part, this meme nails it. DC is almost apologetic about the “super” part of “superhero”. Marvel is just like “Here’s a talking raccoon/a giant green guy/a Norse god/whatever. This is Marvel.”
I always read Slender Man as Slenderman which makes him sound like a CPA.
Wait, what?
And I would say that Green Lantern was in no way terrible. It was, however, remarkably consistently sub-par. The script, the casting, the acting, the plot, the dialog, the effects: It was bad (but not terrible) in just about every way it’s possible for a movie to be bad.
He’s talking about the actual graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns. Superman is in that. Actually as a quasi-villain.
That meme is pithy but doesn’t nail much really. Just this week Marvel also talked about not being ready for a female-led movie. That’s not a gun-shyness specific to DC.
As for the crazy space stuff, again, people are conveniently forgetting Green Lantern. GL had all that crazy alien stuff first. DC didn’t shy away from anything. They just did it badly.
Marvel movies are just as ‘real world’ grounded as DC’s. In fact, Marvel has probably made a lot more concessions to the ‘real world’. They’ve just rolled with a lighter tone to go along with it. Which is hitting a lot of buttons at the moment.
All this talk about how particular characters aren’t suited for movies, or are overpowered, or how shared universes are good or bad, are all window dressing to the real reasons for Marvel’s recent success relative to DC.
It all comes back to the people making the movies. And it has fairly little to do with the tangible details of the characters themselves.
Marvel’s recent success correlates very, very closely with their handing the reins of the films over to Kevin Feige. Now, Feige’s no saint - the stories of the backroom contract negotiations for some of Marvel’s star actors do not paint him in a particularly generous light. But he knows his stable of characters deeply - he’s as much a longtime comics fan as he is a studio executive. He’s also demonstrated in the past seven years that he knows storytelling and filmmaking as well as anyone in the business.
And perhaps most importantly, he’s consistently demonstrated a talent for matching up other strong filmmakers with material that matches them well. Starting with Jon Favreau for the first “Iron Man” film. But continuing with guys like Joss Whedon for “The Avengers,” Kenneth Branaugh and Alan Taylor for the “Thor” films, and Shane Black for “Iron Man 3.” There have been a few misfires along the way, but nothing truly awful on the level of “Green Lantern.” He’s given these filmmakers just enough direction to keep everyone on the same page, but then has largely let them each do what they do best. As a result, the current Marvel movieverse manages to be both an interconnected single continuity, with a certain shared irreverent tone, and yet also feature movies that are very stylistically distinct from one another. “Captain America” was a war movie. “The Avengers” was action comedy. “Thor” and its sequel were essentially fantasy epics. And the upcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which may be the film most directly driven by its director’s unique vision, is shaping up to be a Star Wars-esque scifi space opera.
And all these films occupy the same continuity, without feeling like they shouldn’t.
In other words, Feige has created a situation in which he can pull fan favorite characters and settings from one film to another with ease, and yet still tell a wide variety of different and interesting stories. One story can be about an alien invasion of New York, while another is essentially a feature-length meditation on PTSD (and those two came back to back).
Meanwhile, DC has shown no perceivable sense of authorial, well, authority. They struck it big with Nolan’s Batman films, although forcing him to come back for a third when he clearly didn’t want to pretty much sucked the air out of that continuity. And otherwise, they’ve pretty much spent the past decade playing catch-up, watching what other movies do successfully and then aping it as best they can. We’re getting a Justice League movie because “The Avengers” was successful, not necessarily because someone high up in DC thought, “I have a great fucking idea for a Justice League film!”
If DC can get their own Feige (and let me just say that Nolan could be that guy… but Zack Snyder cannot be), they still have a great chance to turn their movie studio around. As others have noted, they have a fantastic stable of characters, for which you CAN tell compelling stories on film - just look at “The Dark Knight” or the original “Superman.” But they need to think story first, franchise second. That approach has paid off so well for Marvel that third-tier characters like Thor are spawning massive blockbusters (and I fully expect “Guardians” and “Ant-Man” to do the same). *That’s *the lesson DC needs to learn from Marvel. Not that “ensemble superhero movies will make money!!!11”
Focusing on the other stuff, about whether Superman is too boring, or “dark and gritty” being passe, or audiences not liking crazy space stuff… that’s what’s killing DC right now! No, they need to learn to ignore that stuff. Focus on finding good, compelling stories for your already good, compelling characters, hire talented storytellers to put words on a page and give those talented storytellers the breathing room they need. And don’t hinder them with “what the fans want” or “what the established continuity is” - let them figure out what will turn people who didn’t think they gave a crap into a whole new generation of diehard fans.
speaking as a non-comic book person, Marvel has new, interesting stuff with crossovers. why, again, would i want to watch yet another Superman or Batman movie with the same villains? wouldn’t that appeal only to a niche group of diehard fans?
