The dust has settled. The fight is over - and who won?
I think we all know it was Marvel. “Captain America: Civil War,” the third installment in the franchise made a whopping $179 million in its first American weekend. Bringing its worldwide box office total to a staggering $942 million.
According to Box Office Mojo, “Captain America” has made more than “Batman v. Superman” already, despite “Captain America” being in theaters for 10 days and “Batman v. Superman” for seven weeks. In fact, if we look at the history of Marvel movies vs. DC movies: Marvel's 13 movies combined just passed the $10 billion mark. That's an average of $769 million per film. By contrast, DC's last 13 movies total $5.312 billion, coming in at just about half of what Marvel has been making.
Of the top 10 grossing comic book movies of all time - eight are Marvel, two are DC (Both of them Batman solo films). DC cannot even outgross “Guardians of the Galaxy,” a movie starring a talking raccoon and his best friend a tree, while using Superman, the third most recognizable fictional character in the history of the world (Behind Mickey Mouse and Batman).
So what is DC doing wrong?
It's pretty obvious. It's so obvious it is downright flabbergasting that DC hasn't figured it out. Marvel movies are fun. DC movies are super dark and depressing for essentially no reason. Here's a quote from Zack Snyder, the director of “Batman v. Superman”: “[Batman] gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn't, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that's how that would go.”
Here's a quote from the director of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Joe Russo: “I want to talk about Spider-Man. I've been collecting comic books since I was 10 years old. I was at conventions every weekend. I have a huge collection that is still in my closet. Spider-Man was my favorite character growing up. The opportunity to be able to interpret him on screen was a dream come true. Also, then being able to interpret some of the biggest crossover events in Marvel history... We feel like kids in a candy store. It's storytelling that had an impact on me as a child. When things impact you when you are younger, you have a strong emotional connection to the content. To be able to now take these characters and execute them, with all the resources that we have... We have the best job in the world.”
I don't know about you - but I can tell you which director's vision I want to see more of. Hint: It's the one that doesn't use rape as a plot device to make something “dark” - how stunted and gross of a human being do you have to be to think it's ok to just casually talk about the raping of a character invented for 10 year olds? Dear God - what would his vision for a Wonder Woman be? I shudder at the thought.
And the last bit of anecdotal evidence that DC is getting their rumps handed to them: I own two comic book stores. My life is talking with people about comics and movies. Usually whenever a superhero movie comes out we have plenty of new customers showing up and asking “What's next!?”. In the seven weeks since “Batman v. Superman” came out, I have had one customer come in and ask for a recommendation for more Batman/Superman comics. In the ten days since “Civil War” came out, I have literally talked with over a hundred people that have been asking to see more Black Panther, a character only in the movie for 20 minutes.
Do you think there's any chance DC/Warner Brothers would just hire Marvel to make their movies?
- By Geoffrey Wood Patterson II
