There will always be at least two sides to an argument. Sometimes there are three or four, tangled into a sprawling mess that requires several weeks of re-shoots and a change of director; you end up completely rewriting the third act and before you know it you're in the World Health Organisation headquarters in glamorous Wales and nobody has a clue how we got to this point.
DC vs Marvel is probably one of the more frequently argued subjects I come across; I'll admit that working in a comic shop did rather increase the chances or stumbling into this particular crossfire exponentially but even having since moved on to other careers it still keeps cropping up. Obviously with the raft of Superhero movies release over the last 10 years, that conversation is seeping out of nerd-dom and into The Real World. Very rarely do you find those who sit on the fence about it; you're on one side or the other, so if you're not with us you're against us and before we know it we'll be charging at other with muskets.
I am, to use the phrase DC fans thought was insult but unwittingly spawned an entire run of hugely popular comics, a Marvel Zombie. I can't really put a finger on why exactly. With the exception of Batman I just can't get behind any of DC's characters. Obviously, we don't want to get into the whole Superman thing because we both only have so much tolerance for me flogging that particular horse carcass. There's just something about DC characters that comes across as 'off'. They're no more or less goofy than anything Marvel has produced; similar ludicrous primary-coloured jumpsuits, similar preposterous back stories and origins, similar slabs of cheddar masquerading as dialogue. OK, that's not entirely fair, there is some fantastic stuff written for comic books, particularly more recently. I just can't get behind them. It's probably just how I relate to the world and I can't fault a comic publisher for that. In the movies however, it's much more straight forward.
Most of DC's superhero movies have been crap.
There is a very short list of DC movies that I actually enjoyed and they're all Batman movies. Tim Burton's two Bat-flicks with Michael Keaton were great; the first more than the second but still, both of them beat seven shades out of the horrible neon crapfests we got with Batman & Robin and Batman Forever. As much as I love Arnie, watching him gurn his way through those puns was painful for basically everyone involved. I also seem to remember the terrifying controversy surrounding the Batgirl suit apparently making Alicia Silverstone look fat. If that forms the most salient point of your review, you're looking at a movie with problems. Holey metal rocks indeed Robin. Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy forms the rest of that list. Fairly divisive in itself I think it deserves praise. Yes it was needlessly complex and there's a reason Christian Bale's ridiculous Bat-voice became a meme (because it is truly ridiculous) but I'll happily argue it gave us a couple of great movie villains and rounded itself off nicely as an actually trilogy rather than the start of the much vaunted Cinematic Universe everyone is trying to cash in on now.
Marvel Studios movies however, for me, haven't really put much of a foot wrong. I've enjoyed pretty much everything they've done since Marvel reclaimed the rights to most of its characters. The Sony and Fox produced stuff has been a bit hit or miss (Spiderman particularly, and the Fantastic Four films have all been huge duds) but still beats out DC easily. Even the weaker movies the Marvel/Disney collaboration have produced like Thor: Dark World and Iron Man 2 weren't exactly barn-stormers but were still really fun to watch and fitted in to the grand scheme of things nicely.
That's the real strength of the MCU model. They grew the characters organically with their own movies and then wove them into the ensemble movies like Avengers and Civil War. DC made an OK Superman movie, then just launched into Batman vs Superman, chucked Wonder Woman in there, quick (pun intended) and confusing cameo by the Flash and suddenly Justice League. They didn't even try to build up into Suicide Squad, they just jumped in with two feet and had a pop at an ensemble piece full of bad guys. If you were feeling polite you might call that ambitious. I would be (and have been) much less forgiving and called it something more akin to a heaping pile of horse shit. To each their own.
The other main contrast is the overall tone. There's something almost joyful about the Marvel movies, particularly if you take the Guardians of the Galaxy films; brightly coloured Sci-Fi romps with genuinely witty dialogue and especially at the end of Vol 2 all of the feels. Literally every feel. Vast expanses of feels, all grown especially for the movie in hyperbaric chambers. DC on the other hand seem to insist upon creating the cinematic embodiment of Dementors; Batman vs Superman made me feel like I might never be happy again. They seem to be trying to learn something from Marvel though because both the Justice League and Wonder Woman trailers had what I assume you might call an attempt at humour. Look, there were jokes at least, even if they were crap.
There's a very simple reason I think Marvel are ahead of the game. I'm not going to take credit for coming up with it, that goes to my friend Drew (feel free to check him out at http://inkandbooze.com/ for comics, illustration and other similar shenanigans) with whom I was discussing this very topic. His point was that Marvel have stopped making superhero movies. Winter Soldier and Civil War are spy thrillers at heart. Ant-Man is a heist movie. Guardians are space operas in the vein of Star Wars. Thor Ragnarok looks more like Gladiator than anything else. The Phase One movies are definitely superhero movies but they've evolved in a new effort to avoid the law of diminishing returns. DC seem to have only just worked it out; there's only so far you can go trying to be edgy, gritty and grim before people give up and go off to do something actually enjoyable.
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