Posted on 08/04/2016 6:10:55 AM PDT by C19fan
When a studio is launching a franchise, one bad movie is an anomaly, two is a problem, and three in a row spells possible disaster. This is the issue facing Warner Bros., which on Friday is releasing its third and newest entry in the universe of films based on DC Comics. Early reviews for Suicide Squad have been largely unkind. Fan outrage is already reaching fever pitch: A petition calling for the shutdown of the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has 13,000 signatures from viewers upset with Suicide Squad’s poor ratings. Rumors of massive studio interference with the film are already beginning to leak out. As a narrative of damage control takes hold, it’s becoming clearer what mistakes the studio has made in trying to roll out an entire cinematic universe—and how it can turn things around for the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
The shared comic universe by Marvel wasn’t actually by design. It occurred because Marvel publisher was to cheap to hire multiple writers. He ordered his nephew, Stan Lee; to copy what DC was doing with reviving superheroes. Lee’s comics sold so well that he was eventually writing every comic Marvel produced. With the volume of scripts Lee was writing it was easier and more fun to intertwine them.
DC on the other hand, has always been a collection of separate companies and universes. National Publications and All-American Publications jointly published under the DC banner, later becoming the same company. DC would later acquire Quality (Plastic Man), Fawcett (Captain Marvel) and Charlton (Blue Beatle).
Marvel was the natural growth of a small publisher and DC has always been a conglomerate.
Also, in the 60’s, DC was Marvel’s distributer and limited the number of titles Marvel could produce in a given month. This also gave them a heads up on what Marvel was doing before they hit the newsstand.
I wish that Warner’s would put Bruce Timm in charge of their live action universe.
Bruce created Batman the animated series, Superman the animated series, Batman Beyond, Justice League and executive produced every DC animated movie since Batman Mask of the Phantasm in 1993.
Even with the same writer you don’t have to tie your universe together as tightly as Marvel always had. It’s easier to do with limited writers because they know what they wrote, but you can still do it. Where you can really see how much DC lives in silos is Batman. At one point Batman was in 5 books: World’s Greatest, JLA, Outsiders, and of course “his” books, Detective Comics and Batman. But those universes barely ever touched each other, Outsiders ostensibly started because he left JLA, but he went back and it was never mentioned. Heck even the death of Jason Todd in Batman barely made a ripple outside of that book, it took them almost a year to even MENTION it in Detective (admittedly Detective always leaned to Batman without Robin, but a YEAR). They just never liked pollinating one series with events in others, outside of a few mega events like Crisis or No Man’s Land.
One of the big things Marvel always did was leverage that shared universe to push sales. It’s always been telling to me that the Avengers was usually built around B characters as opposed to JLA being built around the A’s. If you’re an Iron Man fan you can’t just get Iron Man, you have to get Avengers or you’re missing a bunch of his story, and now you’re getting the Avengers which is being effected constantly by events in Cap’s title and The Hulk etc etc. In relatively short order you’re buying half the Marvel titles just to know what’s going on. In DC if you were a Batman fan you never needed to get JLA (I know, I didn’t) because JLA functionally was its own universe. Even today with the New 52 DC keeps things very isolated. They’ve broadened a little bit, especially in the Batman world where they have Bat Inc and all of his former Robins have their own line and they interact a little bit, but you can still pick and choose in DC and not really miss things.
Joss Whedon may have more to do with the art —
DC doesn't.
And Marvel has a bit of wish fulfillment in it.
Watch the scene between the Hulk and Loki and tell me you have not been waiting for that to happen to some pompous blowhard.
Or at the end of Thor when Loki lets go of the spear, you feel the despair of the child who wants to be loved but is unable to figure out how to make people love him not realizing he is loved.
“Or at the end of Thor when Loki lets go of the spear, you feel the despair of the child who wants to be loved but is unable to figure out how to make people love him not realizing he is loved.”
That was truly beautiful and poignant. Thank you for posting this!
Suicide Squad is about thugs getting their way and it also has Will Smith and his earrings in it.
Here is what the actors went thru. Truly a sick bunch behind this movie.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-suicide-squad-being-the-worst-place-1784804309
It was Stan’s way of writing. He later moved up to editor then publisher and it became Marvels “house style”.
DC never had one person over story direction. Batman and Superman have always had different editorial direction and virtually separate universe’s. Heck, DC pretty much had the same staff from the beginning of comics through the silver age.
It was DC house style to have no to limited continuity until the Bronze age. Tight continuity was Stan Lee thing. DC, as a company, believed tight continuity impeded good stories. This is still true to a large degree.
IMO, Superman should have more of a Captain America personality - perhaps more cautious, but no less innately good.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m simply saying the DC style has always been separate silos while Marvel has always been the shared sandbox and that DC trying to go shared sandbox is bucking against their basic story telling nature and part of why the DCU so far stinks. They’re playing against their strengths.
The animated films have a much higher gem vs junk ratio than the live action ones.
Yes, a friendof mine and fellow comic book fan made the same observation to me a while back - that Captain America’s presentation in the Marvel movies should have been used as a model for Superman/Clark.
You’re right!
In fact MU movies are one of the very few movies that I look forward to seeing.
Some are better then others (I am looking at you "The Incredible Hulk") but they all have heart tugging moments and complex characters.
Not to mention guns, spaceships and explosions.
Heck, they should tap into the live-action TV productions, too. The current Flash is the best superhero-based program ever made. Watching it is like being 10 again. They can do superhero programming right; why can't they do that for the big screen?
Copied and pasted to excel. I have seen most of those, though none of the green lanterns.
Great thing is I can watch with my kids.
Except the 2 Dark Knight Returns films. Way too graphic.
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