A defense of the DCEU from a Marvel fan boy



Let me start of by saying, I grew up with both comic book companies, I have just always been a bigger fan of movies than anything ese. I am not going to judge the movies based on any alliance I have with Marvel I promise. In my mind honestly they are pretty much on the same level, but with different tones and representation of their characters.







Just because people are fans of one brand , doesnt mean all from the other one is bad, sucks or is below a certain quality.

So my main thing lately is the hate is see pouring towards DC and I find this a bit harsh, I am subscribed to a ton of movie related outlets and I cannot understand how there is ton of articles on what Justice League needs to fix based on the fact that the movie is coming out in November 2017, how do you know a year ahead?



I understand that people have opinions on Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad which we have already seen, that’s fine, you either like it or not. But looking at a dozen articles on Justice League, Wonder Woman and up-coming unconfirmed DC movies like The Batman makes me think this is coming from crazy people. Who Affleck should cast, what villains he needs to use and other super specific request made years ahead and not based on any facts?







I started thinking about how life is great when you get 6-7 movies a year based on Super heroes you love, and then I thought to myself, what if all this negative stuff gets to people’s heads and companies like Sony, Fox and Warner’s back off and stop making them, it seems to me that some fans want this to happen by reading their thoughts here and other sites.



In the case of Sony it already happened in a way, Spiderman is being developed by Disney and all spin offs will ride the success of the re-boot, also mainly produced by Disney. Fox have one sure hit with Deadpool and the rest is pretty much under fire by fans. Fantastic Four was bashed till death, so I don’t expect it coming back anytime soon. X-Men are ever changing in their praise, but that should be expected, there is no franchise that has 6-7 movies back to back with equal quality right? If there is one let me know, I will be here. The new one coming Logan is either going to be a classic or be Wolverine level of success. With Marvel (Disney) we have a somewhat of a fixed doze of success, we have some movies that are being praised and others that are supposed to be hits but haven’t performed at their best considering they are in the same train as the Avengers. It all depends on the general audience for the super winners as we can see, fans can only get you so far.



So I was thinking is DCEU that much different than the MCU in terms of getting on their feet, here is what I discovered for myself.







In 2011 DC released Green Lantern as an attempt to shared their comic book characters in a single franchise after many previous dead attempts with cancelled movies like Justice League (2007) and Batman VS Superman (2002). The movie grossed 219 Million worldwide, it floped critically and is not a part of the DCEU canon. The movie barely made any money over its production budget. What DC learned from that is the following, a villain in the form of a cloud isnt a good idea, the campiness must die, choose your villains carefully and get a young director who believes in the source material over someone who probably did it for the paycheck.

Now this movie made the studio push an eventual re-boot all the way up to 2020 due to the lack of interest for the tone and story telling showed.



Marvel releases HULK (2003) directed by Ang Lee, this movie was the front runner to bring this new age of movies to the mass audience, to me personally the cast wasn’t working at all, neither was the director. The climax fight reminds of the failure Green Lantern, another cloudy CGI villain that doesn’t peak my interest and this movie forced its makers to re-cast and make another one with much better talent. It didn’t bring a lot of money to their pockets with a 100 Million in profits which probably resulted in something like 20 Million in real profit after marketing cost and mandatory theater percent deducted.



Iron Man (2008) - the foundation of the MCU was a hit, financial success and is now the first movie to be released for the MCU, passing 500 million worldwide. The movie went to gross 585 Million worldwide, it made Robert Downey JR relevant again, he had a shaky career before that, mostly because of drugs and personal issues. The movie was good because (and you can ask DC fans as well), it gave some type of alternative in movies for comic book fans. Today it’s not mandatory to watch only the occasional Batman, X Men, Spiderman or Superman movie.







Before Man of Steel, we had the super successful TDK trilogy, which by choice of the director wasn’t shared with other DC properties – Man of Steel was the same foundation for the DCEU as Iron Man, is was a hit, even considering that the critics score is lower than some other movies, you can’t deny 668 Million dollars worldwide to be a random phenomenon. People complain about destruction, tone and other things but I prefer this tone to the campy Superman movies before that. It had easter eggs in it which clearly showed a broader world, a Bruce Wayne satellite and many more, which i am not going to go into rigjt now.







Iron Man was immediately followed by The Incredible Hulk (2008) a semi box office disappointment, the movie failed to live up to the hype of Iron Man financially and critically. I do not think that the reason was the cast, but the fact that he as a character didn’t have anyone to bounce of story wise. Anyway if this is one of the reasons for us to get Mark Ruffalo then I am perfectly fine with it, he fits the part very good and brings some deserved humor which was lacking in Ed Norton’s version.



Man of Steel was followed by Batman v Superman, in this case the movie unlike The Incredible Hulk was met with less critical praise, but managed to capture some money in the box office and beat Man of Steel with 200 Million worldwide. In no way an Oscar contender, it lacked consistent storytelling, which was then somewhat fixed with the Ultimate edition. To me this movie was hurt by the giant CGI monster by the name of Doomsday fighting the trinity in the 3rd act, I personally believe that he needed to be saved for a Superman movie and that people who were used to TDK movies couldn’t really place Batman next to this villain. Also I think the original vision Snyder had should have been saved in the cinema and not cut by Warner’s. Again Warner’s went full on faithful to the Miller source material, which is too dark for mainstream audiences. Not that TDK was very bright, but it was placed in a more realistic surrounding familiar to everyone, which works for more people at the end.







The third MCU movies released chronologically was Iron Man 2, it made more money than TIH (2008) with a total box office of 623 million worldwide. The movie played on some main themes from iron Man, it featured a new corporate “bad guy” that was interested to surpass Stark’s technology, he recruits a secondary villain that has a grudge with the Stark family and is also very tech savvy. All in all, the movie isn’t as beloved as the original due to its lack of originality towards the development of the rogues, it however introduced Sam Jackson and all that was implied by his initiative. RDJR was still very witty as Tony Stark and was the most interesting thing about the movie, most die-hard Iron Man fans were more or less expecting a cult villain here, but did not get it right away (in reality they still haven't really got it).



DCEU’s third attempt was Suicide Squad, the movie was met with low critical praise, as low as the one we saw for BVS DOJ. Again this didn’t seem to be very accurate when it came to the box office success of the movie, currently sitting at 743 million worldwide and surpassing many other movies its being compared with. Sure the movie failed to bring a worthy villain to the screen with Enchantress and her brother, but it was focused on the main characters. And to all fans that bash the movie on Marvel’s end I must say it’s weird to complain about it, when the MCU has been doing this for a decade now, favor the main character and leave the villain as a secondary non important character with none or less character development.







So far movie for movie, I fail to see why DCEU is being bashed so much, they failed, we failed, they learnt from it, we learned definitely from it and made some kick ass movies on a later stage.







Next year will see DC releasing Wonder Woman and Justice League, something tells me that those movies will be much different than what we have seen from them (DC) so far. Wonder Woman was my favorite trailer from Comic Con to be quite honest, to the people that bash the Justice League trailer, come on guys, that isn’t even a trailer – it was an exclusive piece for you guys and still you managed to spin it in as a negative and complain. What happened to you people? You used to only dream for these movies and get the occasional animated version, now you hate them before you seen them.







I don’t want to live in a world where Marvel is without competition and start believing in themselves so much, that they stop innovating and thinking outside of the box. For Nike to be what they are Adidas had to be always on their back. For Jordan to be the best he needed a Kobe, same with Kobe and Lebron.



The best part is that one company will make one type of movie and that will be their unique way to show us their world, we get diversity and you are all sitting on this site and crying like babies about some nitpick towards Bruce Wayne killing a bunch of thugs in BVS. The upcoming DC-Marvel movies sound so dope that I literally want to jump in time and watch them all in a week, but I can’t and if you cry babies don’t support them, a time will come where General Audiences will get tired of them and it will be up to you to go and pay for them and make it so they exist at all. All trends have their eventual end, westerns died out, buddy cop movies died out, cop movies died out, campy comedies died out, sci-fi movies died out, now those genres are mixed with others so they can exist in some form. Studios are making more franchises and IPs that are known, original movies are extremely low per year compared to big movies in general. Things are reversed from the usual - one comic book based movie vs 12 original material movies per year in the complete opposite.



Comic book movies have been dominating the box office since 2008 (they have been making money before with Batman, Superman, X Men, Spiderman etc., but haven’t had as many sequels as now) constanntly,and are the main talking subject of Hollywood. In 2016 this genre is flooding the market, and if we do not support it, then I can assure you - the people that aren’t fans will kill it in the next 5 years. I know people that think that these movies are stupid and prefer to see Furious 8 or Jurassic World 2, so if I spend a lot of time hating DC and kill it, I just might be forgetting that it kills the genre and this will hurt Disney as well in the long run. Its a situation where you are sitting on the end of a tree branch and you are slowly axing it on the wrong end.



Use your heads, it’s all one genre to regular people, they could care less about DC or Marvel!!



If you think I care for Need for Speed VS Furious franchise, then you give me too much credit, but there are people, fans of those movies that have never read a comic book in their life. Everything has its expiration date and I am afraid that the death of this genre will be triggered by its fans mostly.



Get your act together people, we live in magical times that might not be re-produced ever again. I hope all future movies announced by all companies live to see me eating popcorn in the cinema on a huge IMAX screen with a smile on my face.







You haters can hate as much as you want, stay home and write hate comments about DC and Marvel, I couldn’t care less for real, but if you [frick] it up for everyone, then don't vine about the lack of those movies after.



Hate comes back in double dozes.



P.S All you idiots using Rotten Tomatoes as proof for anything do not use this to justify your opinion and please do not attempt to use such arguments in the comment section to prove anything to me, I could care less what some hipster wrote on some website that is visited by 4 people.