Jawafive
Sr Member
Being in a car accident last week has given me a lot of time for reflection about these much-debated franchises and I wanted to offer my opinion/theories.
Marvel:
Let's start back in 2000. X-Men comes out. Well received. 2002: Spider-Man is released and one of the largest openings in history at the time (IIRC) By 2003 I know we had X2 and DareDevil. Maybe a few other films. Then we had the Elektra movie, the "Man-Thing", The Hulk, Ghost Rider and some Blade movies. And let's be honest: Most of these movies weren't very good. Fantastic 4? Ugh. It seems like Spider-Man 3 was really the breaking point. We had all these films that were the same family, but didn't exist in the same universe so it almost didn't matter how they handled them. 2008: Iron-Man arrives and is met with wide praise. Incredible Hulk was also good, but was kinda lost between IM and TDK at the time. But these two laid the groundwork for the shared universe. 2009 gave us Origins and that was pretty much it. 2010: Iron Man 2 comes out and believe it or not, I prefer this to the first one. I always thought IM was good, but a little boring. We're getting close to the Avengers now. In 2011 we got Thor and Captain America. 2012 brought the record-setting The Avengers; I thought this film was really not all it was cracked up to be. Loki and Hulk stole the show for me. Now we've got sequels to three main characters from that either out or coming out within a year and all leading up to Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. Marvel has done things right since '08. At least the properties they handle. I'm not really sure WTF anyone thought made Ghost Rider 2 a film worth making.
DC:
Preface: I love DC. I think their characters are so much better than Marvel's in almost every single way. Now they haven't really done anything right in my opinion. I know the Nolanverse movies are much loved (and hated) by groups of fans. They made tons of money and had some solid (at times) storytelling. The thing is it wasn't what the DCU needed to launch something similar to Marvel and that is what DC needs to do to keep up, IMO. They spent 8 years NOT setting up a universe. Then they spent even more time making crappy movies like Jonah Hex and GL..both of which had a great potential to be good movies. They have spent the last 6 years making some excellent animated films that are not afraid to tell the stories that they need to tell. I thought MOS was dreadful for a lot of non-fanboy reasons despite the fact I was very much looking forward to it when I walked into the theater. They've got to churn out a bunch of movies in the next 3 years to make a good product and I am afraid they will blow it with BvS in 2015. I just don't think it will work. Though I am excited about Affleck as Batman. I think they are in the early stages of setting up their universe, but I'm also afraid they're doing it incorrectly.
Marvel:
Let's start back in 2000. X-Men comes out. Well received. 2002: Spider-Man is released and one of the largest openings in history at the time (IIRC) By 2003 I know we had X2 and DareDevil. Maybe a few other films. Then we had the Elektra movie, the "Man-Thing", The Hulk, Ghost Rider and some Blade movies. And let's be honest: Most of these movies weren't very good. Fantastic 4? Ugh. It seems like Spider-Man 3 was really the breaking point. We had all these films that were the same family, but didn't exist in the same universe so it almost didn't matter how they handled them. 2008: Iron-Man arrives and is met with wide praise. Incredible Hulk was also good, but was kinda lost between IM and TDK at the time. But these two laid the groundwork for the shared universe. 2009 gave us Origins and that was pretty much it. 2010: Iron Man 2 comes out and believe it or not, I prefer this to the first one. I always thought IM was good, but a little boring. We're getting close to the Avengers now. In 2011 we got Thor and Captain America. 2012 brought the record-setting The Avengers; I thought this film was really not all it was cracked up to be. Loki and Hulk stole the show for me. Now we've got sequels to three main characters from that either out or coming out within a year and all leading up to Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. Marvel has done things right since '08. At least the properties they handle. I'm not really sure WTF anyone thought made Ghost Rider 2 a film worth making.
DC:
Preface: I love DC. I think their characters are so much better than Marvel's in almost every single way. Now they haven't really done anything right in my opinion. I know the Nolanverse movies are much loved (and hated) by groups of fans. They made tons of money and had some solid (at times) storytelling. The thing is it wasn't what the DCU needed to launch something similar to Marvel and that is what DC needs to do to keep up, IMO. They spent 8 years NOT setting up a universe. Then they spent even more time making crappy movies like Jonah Hex and GL..both of which had a great potential to be good movies. They have spent the last 6 years making some excellent animated films that are not afraid to tell the stories that they need to tell. I thought MOS was dreadful for a lot of non-fanboy reasons despite the fact I was very much looking forward to it when I walked into the theater. They've got to churn out a bunch of movies in the next 3 years to make a good product and I am afraid they will blow it with BvS in 2015. I just don't think it will work. Though I am excited about Affleck as Batman. I think they are in the early stages of setting up their universe, but I'm also afraid they're doing it incorrectly.