Saturday, April 02, 2016

Screen Super Heroes Ups and Downs

A short history of the DC vs. Marvel screen competitions:

... In 2008, Marvel Studios released Iron Man, which kicked off its ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’. Just like Stan Lee had once envisaged all of Marvel’s superheroes being part of the same universe, studio chief Kevin Feige saw all of Marvel’s cinematic characters operating within the same ecosystem. Thor, Captain America and The Hulk (after Marvel regained its cinematic rights) got their own, successful, films and collectively powered The Avengers and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (along with some help from characters like Black Widow and Hawkeye) to become global box office behemoths.

DC, meanwhile, didn’t seem to have anything to bolster the Nolan trilogy’s success with. Superman Returns (2006) and Green Lantern (2011) were hardly films that could stand up to Marvel’s big performers. ...

While Marvel eats DC's lunch in the live-action department, DC has had it all over Marvel with animated product. For dark and stylish animated half-hours or long-form direct-to-videos, Warner Bros. Animation had the style and approach down to an artistic science, one with which Marvel's newly-minted animation division has been playing catch-up.

Warner Bros. Animation/DC has had years to polish their product line. They've made good use of the head start. A shame Warner live-action producers never did the same. The Tim Burton and Christopher Reeve pictures were a long time ago.

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