So I booked my tickets to see The Suicide Squad on opening day & I will have a spoiler review up on the film within a week but before I do I decided to make this article my final response to this sports team mentality in regards to the Marvel vs. DC.
I’ve talked about this before in a previous article when it came to Zack Snyder. This whole thing started with him when a lot of the online film fan community decided to rip apart Man Of Steel 8 years ago. That trend would continue downward with the releases of Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, & Justice League. DC Comics, particularly their film division, would be reduced to be called a sinking ship, a dying brand, a money-losing franchise at least when compared to the Marvel Studio-produced Films.
You’ll hear inflammatory remarks these days in film fan circles and when it comes to public conversations it’s like playing a game of Minesweeper. You just don’t know who will completely rip apart the DC Films franchise & it isn’t just limited to the DC Extended Universe, Films like Joker will be considered inferior to the “high bar” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
To be fair, there’s always been a friendly rivalry between both of the two biggest Comic brands since the beginning. No different than Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Sonic vs. Mario, Pokémon vs. Digimon, the list goes on. But with how much cultural & commercial success the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had & how much incompetence Warner Bros. has done in regards to their films I can understand why there’s so much talk of it, but credit where it’s due we have some solid DC movies out of their tumultuous drama subjectively speaking but objectively from critical & audience appraisal too.
Now while I do enjoy most Films in the MCU, I don’t like all of them, a couple I would even go as far as to call them bad. I do realize that most fans don’t fully comprehend how a film’s merit of success works & it’s only about 1% of the audience that hops online to talk trash about DC movies.
The rest take it film by film because they judge the trailers, they judge the marketing, they judge the actors, they largely don’t linger on previous entries. They also have different approaches to how they do things. The MCU has ongoing arcs & they build to long-term storylines. The DCEU focuses on either short-term storylines or keeps things stand-alone & that was always going to be true regardless of the films did better or not.
Unless these comic book movie fans are friends with people in the business they can’t measure the success of the films. Also, anyone who says all the MCU movies are good & all the DCEU are bad is either bias zealots, trolls, or don’t care for variety. I do not take them seriously. If you go by appraisal & financial success the DCEU has had some wins. Sure, the difference with Marvel is astronomical but someone once said to me one studio’s gain is not another one’s loss.
The first Wonder Woman & Aquaman have had good to great appraisal & healthy box offices. Batman v Superman & the 2016 Suicide Squad have poor appraisal but high box office even if they had the potential to make more. Shazam & Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn have high appraisals but lower Box Offices. The only true failures the DCEU have truly suffered from is Justice League Whedon Cut & Wonder Woman 1984. They seem to be the only ones that have reported to have cost the studio money but in WW84’s case, that was the result of the Pandemic.
So this concept that the DCEU hasn’t been good or successful is false if we’re going by these metrics. Yes, they have had poor management from Warner Bros. & yes several of them have been at best divisive. WB, along with their parent company WarnerMedia, as a result, AT&T is selling off to merge with Discovery. Only time will tell if this was the right decision. It couldn’t be any worse than it was when AT&T owned them.
When I began to hear good things about The Suicide Squad from Marvel fans, Zack Snyder fans, & DC Purists that don’t like the sensibilities of the darker films kind of felt like this was a cathartic moment that DC Films can win over a lot of the fans that got turned off. It not only feels like a win for the DC brand & James Gunn, who got initially fired by Disney because of old tweets, but also John Cena.
Being a new Pro Wrestling fan in 2004 was different compared to long-time fans. I missed the Hulk Hogan Era, Bret Hart Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin Era, & I just missed the Brock Lesnar era (the first one) so when John Cena was becoming a rising main eventer I was an immediate fan. I meet him at an autograph signing I was rooting for him to beat the Villainous John Bradshaw Layfield for the WWE Championship he was my favorite Wrestler. Then later in 2005 that changed. The crowd turned on Cena, as they felt he was predictable in the ring, he was more aimed for kids than adults, he almost always won his matches, the crowd started turning on him at least a certain demographic who largely are the ones who showed up at shows.
In a way, the DCEU had a similar division amongst fans. Man Of Steel was the movie equivalent to Cena. There were people online who just expressed how much they hated it but there were people who rigorously defended it too. It was Deja Vu for me. So seeing a divisive wrestler like Cena in a Divisive franchise being won over by Critics and the fans feels like a massive win to me.
Sure, Bumblebee you can make an argument for as the 5 Transformers movies just seemed to be actively hated across the board & while they do have the fans they didn’t get defended nearly as much as Zack Snyder’s first 2 DC movies at least in the circles I’ve traveled in. I haven’t seen Critics get attacked by fans online over a Transformers movie (the ones directed by Michael Bay), which isn’t the behavior I condone by the way.
I had been a DC Comics fan since I was a kid. I had read Comics at age 10 but just X-Men then by the time I was 13 to my early to mid-20s, 85% of the Comics I read were DC 14% were Marvel & 6% were other brands like Dark Horse, Image, & Independent titles & I still read Comics on an occasion.
Oh, and for the record, I didn’t just read new ones I read titles years before I was born & I still don’t have a Gatekeeping opinion about Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, etc. nor am I some expert on writing (I got a C in Screenwriting Class). I just am in it for the experience & to see what stories the directors want to tell without being married to one version of a fictional character or another.
Not everyone can do that & that’s fine. I am a fan of the Animated DC series by Bruce Timm, I’ve watched other DC Cartoons TV & Films, I’ve seen most DC film adaptations. I do not think you need a prerequisite to watching these films but if I were to have one there you go.
I also realize there is nothing Warner Bros. can do to change people’s minds a lot of them have made up their minds & the comparisons to Marvel Studios & DC Films will be “Marvel is great & DC sucks” the majority of the time unless Sony somehow sabotages Kevin Feige’s plans or new Disney CEO Bob Chapek continues to forget to renegotiate contracts for day & date releases.
When one considers how long the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been around & how much of the film fan community absolutely gushes over it, one has to wonder what happens if the quality diminishes over time. Despite these pointless anecdotes, DC & Marvel movies will continue to be made by Disney, WB & Sony. Sometimes they’ll hit Sometimes they miss but I feel that way with just about every franchise I see.
My hope during this Pandemic was fans on both sides would be cognizant of the struggles the film industry is going through & that there would be no fighting over competing over 2 multi-billion dollar companies that ultimately are the ones that win at the end of the day. They’re all a bunch of multi-millionaires & billionaires that are all on the same team & have us all dancing like puppets. To paraphrase Doctor Manhattan “We’re all puppets. Only I can see the strings.” It’s all the same when it comes to Sports, News Media, Politics, you name it.
Now, look if you’re someone who doesn’t engage online & just happen to have enjoyed all 24 Marvel Films, 3 Disney+ Shows, or even any of the ABC or Netflix series loosely tied to the MCU & none of the 10½ DC Films or upcoming Peacemaker show that’s fine. It’s also fine if there are people out there that just like all the DC films & shows but none of the Marvel films & shows. It’s all subjective experiences. I know people who love all of the above & none of the above. I know people who are burned from watching DC again and people who are burned from watching Marvel again.
It’s also the same thing with Star Wars. Some fans think the original trilogy are the only good ones, only the original & prequel trilogies are good, only the original & Disney ones are good, a few cases where they’re all good, or in my case where I like the original trilogy, Revenge of The Sith, Force Awakens & Rogue One as opposed to the rest of the films.
The internet is a big place yet we can’t be everywhere online & we can’t discuss the things we like with everyone but 8 years is a long time dealing with the negativity. Especially when I enjoy most of the DCEU films. I really like Man Of Steel, I vastly prefer the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice even though I don’t think the Theatrical Cut is bad, I didn’t like either cut of Suicide Squad but there’s a Director’s Cut waiting to be released that I want to see.
I love Wonder Woman, I don’t respect the Whedon Cut of Justice League but ignoring the drama of that movie, I still find it watchable even though to me Snyder’s Cut is one of best Comic Book films of all time. I really like Aquaman, loved Shazam!, enjoyed Birds Of Prey/Harley Quinn & I like Wonder Woman 1984 even though I found there were some problems.
8 years is also the time between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins. That tells me it’s time to stop engaging with negative people at least for me. As Einstein says negative people are a problem to every solution. The only time I will engage is if someone responds to me, so if anyone wants to leave a comment about how “butt-hurt” I am being over this I’ll gladly have that debate.
That’s a lot of venting I just but at this point, I needed to say what I said. I pointed out to a few people that this is the 10th DCEU film & it has the same director as the 10th MCU film. I admit I was thinking of skipping Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.1 because the trailers were weird & I thought maybe they would end up being destroyed by Thanos to show off how evil of a villain he is. That’s kind of ironic since the plot of The Suicide Squad is basically like Battle Royale or The Hunger Games.
To Be Continued…