Why DC universe movies struggle so much compared to Marvel ones ?

[Mormolyce]

Snyder. That’s why.

I feel like he's a guy who loves 90s comics and makes early 2000s movies. Not a recipe for success these days.

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War can't be solved with first cuffs or sword matches ? (Wonder Woman) Well actually, the guy who said can be killed to solve magically all problems ! (Also, put your movie in WW1 while being even less subtle than Captain America with characterization of the enemy)

I swear to god it felt like WW was this great movie made by Patty Jenkins right up until that final "battle", when Synder turns up and says "oh an action scene, here I'll handle this one. You guys go get coffee". Sudden massive drop in quality and intelligence of script.

I choose not to hold it against the film :P

[lockblock]

I would have gone to see Aquaman but they don't have a single showing with dreamloungers. There is no way I'd pay to sit in the assbuster stadium seats.

[Crillam]

Curious, are the two bad ones the first two thor films?

Iron man 2 and Thor 2.

[sarahtasher]

That's not a popular opinion, but as much as I liked Bat-Nolan, Batman might work too by not taking itself so seriously.

Example, the Caped Crusaders movie of 2016, which is an hommage to sixties Batman. The big fight (with ZOING noises) is not Batman vs Superman. It's Robin, Catwoman, Black Widow (no, not that one), Mister Freeze, the Siren, Egghead, King Tut, Shame, the Archer, the Minstrel, Louis the Lilac, the Bookworm, False Face, the Mad Hatter and the Clock Master...vs 30 clones of evil Bat-Adam West.


With Bat-dancers and Bat-jazz players and Bat-cameramen.


It's as ridiculous as Batman vs Superman fight scene, but by Jove, one of them admit it and relish into it.

[RobertoCarlos]

That's not a popular opinion, but as much as I liked Bat-Nolan, Batman might work too by not taking itself so seriously.

Example, the Caped Crusaders movie of 2016, which is an hommage to sixties Batman. The big fight (with ZOING noises) is not Batman vs Superman. It's Robin, Catwoman, Black Widow (no, not that one), Mister Freeze, the Siren, Egghead, King Tut, Shame, the Archer, the Minstrel, Louis the Lilac, the Bookworm, False Face, the Mad Hatter and the Clock Master...vs 30 clones of evil Bat-Adam West.


With Bat-dancers and Bat-jazz players and Bat-cameramen.


It's as ridiculous as Batman vs Superman fight scene, but by Jove, one of them admit it and relish into it.

Why didnt Batman Ninja do better then. That was crazy fun and not "dark" and barely anyone watched it.

[Raptor With a Saber]

DC is writing stories about Super Gods and Superheros, Marvel is Gods and Heros. Its hard to make gods relatable or good. Not to mention if they wanted to make a true superman movie they would basically be making nothing but a CGI movie.

[Airlick]

All of the Marvel movies combined have nothing on The Dark Knight.

[sam86]

many reasons
i'm dc fan far more than marvel, but i can clearly see what went wrong
for start : extreme rush: DCEU Batman has no movie at all about who he is and why he is in that state, yes everyone know batman, but no one know DCEU batman and why he is so violent in compare to every other batman movie version
BVS is very rushed and weird paced, with horrible cgi Doomsday, we talk about the guy who killed superman and made comics mainstream for years (maybe even the reason why i followed comics when i was kid during the early 90s boom), they treated him like sh8t
so many plotholes that can't even start writing, like why Zod want to turn earth to krypton, when they are godlike in earth environment
the worst one : Justice League was very obvious done by 2 directors, making it inconsistant
Marvel has horrible plotholes, f8cked their own story many times, but we not talking about marvel here, and i think reason why marvel escape with many things is because they started it (the idea of cinematic universe of comic superheroes) in first place so ppl let them escape with many sh8t

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Why didnt Batman Ninja do better then. That was crazy fun and not "dark" and barely anyone watched it.

the style was horrible, it use an anime style for a western comic movie, its refresh no question, but the combination failed badly

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The pretty interesting point that superheroes would have massive effects on Earth religions ? (Batman vs Superman, Justice League) ? No effect on plot

yeah that idea was amazing... only to be ignored after first 10 minutes, i felt tricked badly by trailer and thought they will discuss it, only to be just 1 line early movie -.-

[msdos]

Trying to do too much for no reason other than compete with Marvel.

They seem unwilling to just make one, really good movie, that stands on it's own, great beginning, awesome conclusion, the end.
Instead they want everything open ended as possibly, so they can have a trilogy, a series, books, chronicles, a universe, a multiverse, etc, etc.

Maybe if creators tone down the money amassing and just try to create something really great they might succeed.

[Surfd]

That's why I'm puzzled about how DC struggle so much to build a franchise compared to Marvel

I can explain this to you very, very easily. It is because 95% of the time, the people at Warner Brothers who are responsible for making DCcomic movies have absolutely no fucking idea what they are doing.

The MCU works because disney has Kevin Feige in a position of power with nominal control over literally EVERYTHING that goes on in the MCU. Why is this important? Because it gives the MCU direction. There is a roadmap, a plan, that has been in place literally since way back before the first avengers movie even went to script that laid out a general idea of what they wanted to do, and that plan plots YEARS into the future. They probably had a basic outline of everything up to infinity war back before avengers 1 even started filming.

The other reason why Kevin Feige is important? Because he fucking understands comic books. He is a comic book fan, with a thorough understanding of the characters, the medium, and the way they tell stories. He understands the differences between different heroes, and how to make "superhero" movies featuring vastly different characters, that can be stylistically and thematically different while still being superhero movies, and is very willing to hire people very specifically for director roles in movies to fit what he wants the movie to be.

DC on the other hand, has absolutely none of that shit.
- They have no plan. Warner literally decided to create their cinematic universe almost purely in response to the absolute asskicking that marvel was handing them in the box office, but they have absolutely no idea why Marvel is doing so well.
- They have no clue. Almost nobody working in the current Warner DC moviesphere actually understands the comic characters they are bringing to the screen. Which is why we end up with straight up aweful shit like emo, brooding, grimdark Superman.... Because the only thing the Suits at Warner understand is that Brooding and Grimdark made them money on their last Superhero outing (The Nolan Batmans) so it must work for every Superhero, right? They put people in charge of their movies who literally are on the record as saying that they find comic book fans to be terrible people. The fact that Wonderwoman was actually a pretty awesome movie was more by way of happy accident than any intentional efforts by the people in charge at Warner.

To be short, DC Movies suck because the Suits running things at Warner literally don't give a fuck about the source material, and for the most part can't be bothered to actually hire people to make their movies who care about giving the source material a proper treatment.

Which is REALLY fucking baffling, considering that the Warner Animation side of things producing the DC animated products have been solidly knocking shit out of the park for literally decades......

[cparle87]

Isn't this because he is not yet Superman ?

Kinda reminds me of the core thesis of Smallville. "No flight, no tights."

[JepJepa]

"good guys" didnt win in infinity war lol

[Aleksej89]

I dunno, I actually feel like secret identities make a lot of sense. If everyone knew Bruce Wayne was Batman then Wayne mansion would be permanently under siege by a million villains, anyone tangentially involved in his life would be captured or assassinated and Wayne himself would probably be arrested for about a hundred things. Being a vigilante might be tolerated by Gordon but it's not exactly legal.

You kinda missed the point i was making.
Batman secret identity makes no sense because he is literally the only one in Gotham that has the money and the tech to actually afford being batman.
There was an episode in animated batman series where a robot villain actually easily deduced that Bruce is batman and even explained to bruce how simple it was to figure out.

Superman and his glasses are frankly just a silly thing, even with all the wacky explanations comics tried to create about how his identity remains a secret it is still a silly unbelievable concept.

A lot of heroes like some versions of green lantern and arrow wear extremely minimal masks that frankly would not fool anyone that knew them IRL or any modern/futuristic facial recognition software.

On top of that all these heroes get beaten up on an almost daily basis, even if their masks don't fall off during combat the blood/hair that is spilled can easily show who that person is through various tests.
In one of the batman episodes amanda valler from cadmus even explains how she knew who batman was simply by analyzing the blood he lost at many crime scenes.

DC movies is trying to sell these grim/dark characters that are shallow and one-dimensional when compared to how they are shown to be in comics/cartoons.
To make matters worse DC movies then constructs this very unbelievable and borderline wacky and silly world around those overly grim/dark characters.

In essence it is as if a shallow version of a character from an edgar allan poe story is thrust into the world of freakazoid or bugs bunny.
They just do not mix well in any way, shape or form.

[Deleted]

DC films tend to be wank and go hard on the grimdark visuals. Which clashes with everything superman is

[ellieg]

No, I actually don't know what you consider "normies" to be, I just assumed that you meant "people who like superhero movies" because that's what this thread is about. It has nothing to do with your choice of silly labels and everything to do with basic reading comprehension and logical progression of thought.

You sound like a normie lol

[Altrec]

That wasn't Marvel. That was FOX.

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Apocalypse exists in the DC universe, but it's not the same as the one in the Marvel universe. In DC, Apocalypse is known for being the first to actually "kill" Superman. This guy:

That is Doomsday not Apocalypse.

The only "Apocalypse" that comes to mind in DC is the planet Apokolips ruled by Darkseid.

[DoctorDoomkin]

Comics popularity does not translate well into movies. Sure, they can be good movies, but they need to build up into it.

Marvel SLOWLY built up the universe. It wasn't until the Hulk movie that followed Iron Man that we learned that the two characters are actually in the same universe. One at a time, each of the heroes of the Avengers team all got their back story developed in their own move, giving us a reason to at least like one of them. Those who enjoyed Iron Man, but may not be interested in Thor, would not be lost if the two suddenly came together for a team up. We know who Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Capt. America is by the time the first Avengers movie came along.

DC started with Superman. Suddenly, Batman is also in, but as a villain? And now, the following movie, he is ok with Superman...and where the fuck did Wonder Woman come from? And now we get her movie AFTER Superman vs Batman? Sure, the Wonder Woman movie was good, but their timing is off. Now, suddenly, we got Cyborg and the Flash, both characters who did not have their backstories done popping up and we are left with more questions than answers. It also doesn't help that Steppenwolf is nothing in comparison to the Avengers' first main bad guy in terms of character, both in what he actually is and his overall development. Steppenwolf was just an obstacle. Loki was a character.

If DC didn't try to rush their movies out, and instead gave their characters a proper sequel, as well as lighten the fuck up instead of being all broody and dark all the time, they'd probably have a good series of movies that I would at least enjoy. Instead, they rushed them out, and fell on their ass. Just because Batman and Superman are both known characters doesn't help if the stories they are in are not good.

[Daevied]

You have on one side Superman that is the embodiment of all the american dreams and standards for a man from the 50s, and on the other side you have Spiderman, your friendly neighbor from NY.

[Everwake]

Lack of likable actors.

I think you are correct. Compare Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, etc. to Ben Affleck and the other DC heroes. You can easily see why Marvel movies are smash hits compared to DC.

[Techno-Druid]

Only people who don't read DC comics think Aquaman is lame...

Anyway, it comes down a few factors, but the biggest in my opinion is trying to be too dark and not entirely understanding the motives of the characters. Superman is the alter ego, not Clark Kent, a simple farm boy from Kansas who tries to do the best he can with the powers he's giving; saving cats from trees, comforting people about to jump off buildings and if necessary, fighting to protect his home.

That's why Wonder Woman ultimately succeeded, because it mostly got her characterization right. Granted, DCEU Diana is a little more soft and girly than her aggressive, headstrong comic counterpart, but the point still stands.

Superman - a simple man granted great powers and trying to help the world
Batman - a millionaire who uses his wealth to stop crimes from being committed and as brutal as his tactics can get, he ultimately fights to keep the streets safe for children like the one he was
Wonder Woman - a superhero with faith in mankind, succeeding in a world with preconceived notions of women and gender roles still exist and ultimately fighting to shape man into a better race
Flash - same as Superman, struggling to do the right thing with power thrust upon him
Aquaman - a king caught between protecting the surface world and ruling his nation

Another thing has to do with the heroes they develop as well. Superman and Batman are popular heroes and WB has been trying to focus on them, brushing most of the heroes to the side. The MCU started with Iron Man, a relatively unpopular hero at the time compared to the Hulk or Captain America and they took risks with Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther as well.

It would have been better for the DCEU to start with the slightly less popular heroes like Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl, Aquaman or even Red Tornado and build off of that.