Back in 2008, DC Comics had massive success with The Dark Knight . And now that Marvel's space opera about a low-vocabulary tree-man is the highest-grossing movie of the year , DC is more than eager to hop back aboard the hype train, unaware that they've aimed it squarely off a cliff. Their main problems?

4 DC's Doing the Exact Opposite of What Made Marvel Successful

DC can't just copy Marvel's film formula, so they're contrasting. Namely, DC's embracing the gritty overtones of the Christopher Nolan Bat-trilogy -- which printed a shit-ton of Bat-dollars, reactions to The Dark Knight Rises notwithstanding -- instead of Marvel's pop superheroics.

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Also, DC is flip-flopping the structure of The Avengers. In that film, Marvel took an armful of superheroes -- most of whom had prior films to establish their characters -- and tossed them all into the same darn movie. If you hated Thor, it didn't matter -- you could ignore that character and instead relish Iron Man's banter, Captain America's befuddled good looks, or Hawkeye's, uh, Hawk-stuff.