MCU vs Extended Universe: Where did DC go wrong and Marvel go right?

[stethacantus]

It has been explained to me this way: Marvel Studios is run by comic book men who think they are studio executives. Warner Bros. is run by studio executives who think they are comic book men.

It happened again. Warner Bros. released another high profile superhero movie that has gotten mostly negative reviews from both critics and fans. Meanwhile, most Marvel fans and critics love the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Once again another franchise is in jeopardy. It does not matter that Batman v Superman will break box office records. All that does matter is how many bad reviews it got from those not wanting to see a sequel, and how much of a drop off in the box office this film gets in it's second week. Batman & Robin ( 1987 ) may have been successful, earning the studio over $100 million, but it's drop-off and bad reviews had Warner Bros. cancelling a planned sequel with ( possibly ) Howard Stern as the Scarecrow. The only saving grace is that the Wonder Woman movie was already a week into filming when Batman v Superman was released, which makes it unlikely that Warner will cut there losses and run, and Suicide Squad has already been completed and is awaiting a summer release. So Warner has no choice but to release the next two Extended Universe films, and who knows, if they are both a success, then we may see a Justice League movie in our lifetimes. Then again, the next two movies could be buried as direct-to-video releases. Worse, both could end up as streaming videos with cheap Syfy Channel quality computer generated special effects, or worse than that, end up as a Syfy movie of the week.

The Green Lantern ( 2011 ) was suppose to be the second film in the Extended Universe. But with at best mixed reviews, and a fall off at the box office, Warner Bros. decided to retroactively decanonize that version of The Green Lantern from the Extended Universe. In other words, the character is in need of another reboot before he has earned his place at the JLA table. Batman v Superman is doing worse in the reviews. Does this mean Warners needs to reboot both characters? Doest the Wonder Woman film make that impossible? Or will they do what they did in the original Superman franchise when they decanonized Superman III , Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and pretended Superman Returns was the next film in the series. Or will they go to "Plan B"?

Plan B is something discussed on another board. Basically, it goes like this. D.C. exists in a multiverse where an untold number of parallel worlds that are just slightly different than our own exist. D.C. came up with this idea basically to trick their readers. An issue where Batman accidentally kills Robin, and a crying Batman carries off Robin's dead body in the final panel, would end with the caption "This all took place in a parallel universe." The real Batman and Robin were still safe and sound. Every time a a character was killed or an identity was outed, it always ended up taking place in a parallel universe. Later D.C. realized they could use the idea of a parallel universe to explain all their continuity errors between their current comic books and those written ten years earlier. In the 1980s the mini series Crisis on Infinite Earth's was to put an end to D.C.'s multiverse, but that concept was soon tossed on the poop pile, and eventually D.C. was back to having multiple versions of their universe. The concept of a multiverse was never part of the movies or television shows. Theoretically Batman did exist in Superman Returns, but was not the same Batman found in Batman & Robin. All were seen as property owned and copyrighted by different producers and studios, and none had anything to do with the comic book multiverse, or each other.

This Monday, there will be a crossover between the CW's Flash and CBS's Supergirl which is suppose to be explained ( for legal reasons ) as characters  from alternative universes. For now Supergirl's reality only has Superman as the world's other superhero, and Barry Allen is just a visitor from the CW's Arrowverse. But if two universes exist, then that could mean that Smallville and it's characters also exist in a parallel universe, as does the original Batman and Superman television series. It also means those universes could exist in a multiverse with every D.C. movie released so far. Since fans seem to love the Arrow and Flash series and their shared universe, then why not follow that universe into the theaters. The current Extended Universe could be thrown out, and replaced with the television universe, complete with rebooted Superman and Batman, and possibly even rebooting Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, Marvel Comics, which back in the 80s and 90s could not do anything right, currently has a single unified cinematic universe that extends to television and streaming video. They even got Sony to throw out their current successful Spider-man franchise in order to reboot for a Spider-man that exists in the MCU. So, what is Marvel Studios doing right and D.C. doing wrong?

[Johnny Unusual]

Well the thing you mentioned about the people behind it is a good part of it, but there is another element among the many differences: patience.

First, Iron Man was very much a one-off, despite Nick Fury at the end.  So, was Man of Steel (as I understand it).  But it felt like DC really rushed into this compared to Marvel.  Yes, Marvel is currently releasing two MCU movies a year, but while their films are part of a bigger thing, they tend to stand alone.  One of the complaints I'm hearing about BvS: DoJ (or Bevis Dodge), is that some of the film being a mess is related to all the Justice League set up.  Now sometimes this happens in Marvel and though sometimes expanding things get people excited, if fans feel it is setting the current story aside to do this, they aren't happy.  Generally speaking, Marvel's mostly made few mistakes in this department.  Some noticeable ones but not big ones.

From what I am hearing, it seems like (and it certainly felt like) DC is willing to dive into the shared universe pool but they aren't taking the proper safety steps to create a cohesive universe.

That is tricky, btw, since (despite the Justice Society of America), DC didn't really do shared universe until much later particularly in the 50's, mostly in Justice League.  They did it more often when Marvel got successful (which is interesting since the first "Marvel" book was Fantastic Four, which was a response to Justice League, though it more resembled the Challengers of the Unknown and Doc Savage's team of experts).  So the DC Universe wasn't meant to be cohesive (Marvel wasn't either, at first, but sort of became that quickly and organically) so characters generally stayed in their own corners.  That's not to say they shouldn't.  Becoming a mostly cohesive universe worked for them (though I think their attempts with the New 52 to become even more unified resulted in it becoming more of a mess).

Sorry about the tangent (let's not even talk about the Tangent Universe) but anyway, it seems they want to catch up, but they are trying to take big narrative leaps to get there.  Not to say you couldn't accomplish this well, but it seems they arguably didn't (though there are definitely some BvS defenders on the board.  Curious to hear their take.)

Personally neither Man of Steel nor Bevis Dodge look appealing to me because of the tone.  Batman dark I'm good with.  But when Superman is also pretty dark, it leads to a different kind of contrast that doesn't appeal to me.  A Superman who is constantly scowling and frowning doesn't seem that much different to me than Batman, except he's doing it in a much more colorful suit.  To me, Superman is supposed to be an aspirational figure.  Apparently some people find that boring, but I could never be bored by a guy who, even when things get tough, will do the right thing.  I actually am not so bothered by him having to kill in a no win situation.  But maybe after you destroy the city in your bid to save the world isn't the best time to be making out with Lois.

Sorry, again, I kind of lost track.  I may actually see Man of Steel and BvS some day, but I'm certainly not excited to.  But Civil War looks fun and Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange?  That's interesting.

[Pak-Man]

One thing Marvel did very well was play the long game. They threw out Iron Man. No promises of crossovers or franchises. Just a movie that gave us all a chance to love Iron Man. Then came Incredible Hulk (Which _I_ liked..) and they threw in a few little easter eggs here and there to get the audience thinking, "Hey wouldn't it be crazy if they started connecting all of their movies like the comics do?" Like it was our idea. Then along comes Captain America and Thor and the WOW this is actually happening, isn't it? By the time Avengers came out, we loved every main character and it was a treat to see them all united against a common foe. Avengers didn't need to waste any time telling us who anyone was. It did what the comics do- Assumed you knew what was going on, and if you had any problems, go back and BUY Iron Man #234.

What DC is doing with BvS is like if Marvel had just given us The Incredible Hulk and then jumped right to Avengers. They should have let us get to know this Batman First. And get to know Wonder Woman, and maybe a few of the other brief cameos. Maybe thrown in another Superman movie to endear him to us a little bit better.

[Edward J Grug III]

What DC is doing with BvS is like if Marvel had just given us The Incredible Hulk and then jumped right to Avengers. They should have let us get to know this Batman First. And get to know Wonder Woman, and maybe a few of the other brief cameos. Maybe thrown in another Superman movie to endear him to us a little bit better.

Well, they are also not faithfully adapting the characters.

[Darth Geek]

What DC is doing with BvS is like if Marvel had just given us The Incredible Hulk and then jumped right to Avengers. They should have let us get to know this Batman First. And get to know Wonder Woman, and maybe a few of the other brief cameos. Maybe thrown in another Superman movie to endear him to us a little bit better.

Well, they are also not faithfully adapting the characters.

I agree with both of these. The characters have been changed so much from what we are used to from the majority of the comics. So we can't use the comics as a basis for these characters (and really shouldn't have to anyway).

Had the darker version of Superman come at the third movie where he is put in a situation where he has to kill Zod, it would have been significant. As it is, we don't really get any indication in Man of Steel that killing is a big deal to him. Which effects his likability and whether we see him as a hero at all.

And they apparently do the same thing with Batman in this. While his character certainly lends itself to being darker, this version kills people and shoots guns without any hesitancy. If this had been done in the third movie, we would see Batman pushed to the point where he had to throw his moral code away, and it would have had a significance. But this is the first time we are seeing this Batman, and I haven't even heard if they indicate that he didn't used to kill. So how are we supposed to see him as a likable Batman if he's just shown as a psychopath?

There is also the HUGE factor that the changes to the characters have made them similar. Missing the whole point of why it's interesting to see these two characters interact and fight in the first place, because they are so different!


I think the only fix to this is a hard reboot. I can only hope that the Wonder Woman movie turns out good.

[Pak-Man]

And they apparently do the same thing with Batman in this. While his character certainly lends itself to being darker, this version kills people and shoots guns without any hesitancy. If this had been done in the third movie, we would see Batman pushed to the point where he had to throw his moral code away, and it would have had a significance. But this is the first time we are seeing this Batman, and I haven't even heard if they indicate that he didn't used to kill. So how are we supposed to see him as a likable Batman if he's just shown as a psychopath?

Some of the scenes are fast paced, and a lot of the bat-gadgets are very gun-like, so I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure the only scene where Batman fires a gun that doesn't shoot a batarang or something is during a dream sequence, and that's the only place he directly kills. He does do things that will probably get certain criminals killed indirectly, and Alfred indicates that he's getting more lax about his rules. That's all we're given, though, and to your point, there should probably be some more to establish what pushed him that far.

[stethacantus]

I would argue that most of the D.C. characters are so iconic that they never needed a reboot film for an introduction. For example, with Batman there were two movie serials, the 1960s live action series,  every single Saturday morning cartoon, and the Burton/Schumacher films, and none of them had Batman's origin beyond mentioning that his parents were killed. Even Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Begins did not have the full origin, but rather just the final bit. All of those movies and shows depended on the audience being familiar with the Batman legend.  Even today if you mention the name Bruce Wayne, most people of any age will immediately recognize it as Batman's alter ego. The same if you mention the name Clark Kent. The characters are so familiar to everyone that they could have just produced a Justice League movie as the first film and got away with it. Produce a JLA movie every other year, and later spin off the heroes in solo movies in the off years.

If Warner Bros. is so worried about the damage Batman v Superman did to the D.C. Extended Universe, there is an easy fix. Recall all copies of Batman v Superman. That won't be so hard as most theaters these days have digital projectors and get their film prints as downloaded data. Once recalled, just make one minor alteration to the film. Just before the ending credits, have the following text on the screen: "All of this took place in an alternative universe." That's how D.C. comics does it.