The long battle between Marvel and DC

There is a constant battle between Marvel and DC fans. Although there isn’t anything to argue about, people are kind of choosing a side in this matter, even thought they could easily like both or neither. And there are people who are equally loving both Marvel and DC and only want more great movies to be made to simply satisfy their inner geek. In this article we are looking into the reasons why Marvel is doing so much better than DC the last decade.

Please don’t jump into conclusion. For example, DC`s “The Dark Knight” was and still is the best superhero movie ever made and one of the best movies in all genre. The only light spot in a decade of darkness was “Wonder Woman”. Other than that movie, DC has been having troubles creating successful ones. “The Dark Knight” had everything, well-written characters, great story, great visual effects, great point. Unfortunately the rest of the DC`s movies have only great effects and that’s it. “Justice League” was promising a lot in the trailers, but ended up disappointing a lot of people. And we have several arguments as to why people are disappointed and were expecting to see more.

As opposed to DC, Marvel has been doing great in this period. Although they also had some inferior movies, like “Iron Man 2 and 3”, “Avengers 2”, and to some extent “Ant-Man”, the others were all great and won over the whole world. And when we say inferior we don’t mean unwatchable, they were just lower in quality than the others. In comparison, “Suicide Squad” was totally unwatchable. This movie and “Justice League” are my primary source of arguments against DC. Okay, let’s start discussing it.

One of the things people want to see in superhero movies, and in any movie for that matter, is drama. Reality. Of course you’re thinking how real the superhero movies can be when we have flying aliens, indestructible and supersonic people, but I’m not talking about that form of reality. I’m talking about the human side of those heroes, about the people that are behind the masks and how real they are.

Remember this scene?

Let’s compare “The Avengers” with the “Suicide Squad”. Both movies are loaded with violence and have great visual effects. Two of the main characteristics of a movie the audience wants. But why are “The Avengers” so loved and the “Suicide Squad” so embarrassingly booed? According to me, the “Suicide Squad” are just killing everything in their path, sacrificing themselves for the greater good and go back to jail because that’s the right thing to do, while they’re presented as “Worst of the worst”. What villain would do that? What normal person would go back to jail, when having a free pass out of it? You can’t connect with those characters on a personal level, and that’s where they lose the audience`s interest. While we all know self-absorbed people like Tony Stark, selfless like Steve Rogers, angry like Dr. Banner. No one of us can be Iron Man, Captain America or Hulk, but every person is to some extent similar with the alter egos of these superheroes. And that’s what makes them interesting to watch. That’s what makes us genuinely care about them. As if they were real. The “Suicide Squad” aren’t real, their actions are not logical at all.

And maybe the leader of that group is Superman and to some extent Diana Prince and Arthur Curry. Superman is perfect. He doesn’t have flaws. He is the shining example of justice. And with that he is unreal to that extant that no one even a little can identify with him. Diana and Arthur are kind of the same. The only “real” scene with Diana was when Bruce tilted her with mentioning her ex dead boyfriend. And that’s it. Plus the biggest thing that adds to the drama argument is the fact that Luis Lane and Marta Kent weren’t a bit shocked about their favorite person being resurrected. How unrealistically they are represented? And before you say that we are hating DC`s characters again think of “The Dark Knight”. His character is so well-written, so realistically portrayed that you could almost place yourself in his shoes. Not Batman, but Bruce.

All of us were at least once in this position. And we don’t mean sitting in a bat suit looking outside a window in an expensive apartment. We were all in that horrible position where you need to choose between the thing that you are and the thing you love the most. And if we haven’t, we can totally imagine ourselves in it. And that’s what affects us, that’s what makes the Batman so intriguing to watch.

The second thing, development, growth. A dilemma. “Superman – The man of steel” had a dilemma, but he didn’t have growth. He was always perfect, and you can’t get much better than perfect, can you? “Thor” had growth, “Iron Man had growth”, “The Avengers” had growth, especially Hulk. Dr. Banner didn’t want to be the Hulk, didn’t want to show the dark side of him, the horrible side, the dangerous side, until he realized that in order to beat evil you need to introduce a stronger evil. And that’s what we like about superhero movies, when the point of the whole story is to justify the actions of the characters, not just put them into situations where they would smash things. The smashing came after Hulk realized that in order to do good he needs to be extremely bad. And after that the smashing was pretty awesome.

Third point is that movies where the world is ending don’t work. “Avengers 2” didn’t work, “Batman vs Superman” didn’t work, and “Justice League” didn’t work. “Avengers” wasn’t about ending of the world. Loki wanted to enslave Earth and that’s pretty possible ending to a movie. There are a lot of slavery movies, why not this being one of them? But the end of the world is so unreal and so predictable, you know that the good guys are going to win. With “Avengers” we at least doubted it. Why aren’t the writers getting a little bit creative with the threats for the Earth and the creation of the villains? Aren’t they aware that we love the villains more than the superheroes?

One good thing came out of the “Justice League” though. Its soundtracks. Enjoy.

I know that the original is from The Beatles but if it wasn’t for the “Justice League” song, we would have never heard it.