I do not like MCU films

[fireproof78]

I also would argue that Injustice is among the better comic series out there right now. It certainly takes the whole of the DU universe and attempts to craft a very large world. Some if works, and some doesn't but it presents a conflict to which there are no easy answers.

I personally don't understand the broad sweeping generalizations about either the DCU or the MCU. Despite the fact that they are building a universe, I still take each movie as it comes. BvS is actually more interesting to me because of the way Batman actually fights Superman. But, it's hindered by rushing numerous plot lines that are not really earned.

MCU is a mixed bag because there are so many. But, I wouldn't insist that the whole is weaker just because Thor was lackluster or some plot points were glossed over.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Well, it's true. After all, that's why WB made Man of Steel the way it is.

MoS is dark by necessity and in-story circumstance, but his full character would grow into accepting his status in the world, but the tone and message from Nolan's films have nothing to do with this

Baloney, the MCU's been under attack from day one for daring to not go for the ashamed and bankrupt "grounded" approach and due to that they've been under heavy scrutiny ever since for daring to be unashamed. Nothing is satisfactory for MCU Detractors.

^ A mountain of BS. The MCU were not under "attack." The MCU was not facing more criticism than any other high profile and/or big budget superhero movie dating back to the 1966 Batman spin-off film, and I've read/viewed/heard reviews for all to know that you are piling on the Marvel-defensive BS. They are all examined, and unless the film is exceptionally bad, they are not targeted, which--again--is what you are claiming. A patently false claim.

Moreover, the fact, a film like The Winter Solider was produced in the MCU (its creative / political bridge built in The First Avenger) means your ridiculous notion that it tried to avoid being more grounded is more of your Marvel-defensive noise. The MCU serves two masters--one (the kiddie, Power Rangers one) is stronger than the other (the Winter Soldier one), which leans in the creatively natural direction of the grounded and serious. For this reason, the MCU will never appear to be a cohesive fictional universe, as its individual parts are so disparate in intent and tone, that some "chapters" may as well occupy the same place as old titles such as What If?--where the events are mere speculation, not an official part of the MCU. If the Marvel/Disney desires a franchise and more importantly, a legacy that is able to appeal to future generations, they would declare the Power Rangers side to be the equivalent of What If? material.

Because until the last 30 years or so, there have hardly been any.

More nonsense proving you have not read any Batman comics--which (obviously) span more than 30 years. That's why board members continue to challenge your very false "memories" of Batman stories--you spit out some sweeping claim that even a casual Batman reader knows has no relation to truth.

Anything that embraces the fantastical nature of the source material instead of selling out for that 'grounded' stuff the Comic-Disliking Directors (Nolan, Singer) have been advocating as the only way to do CBMs.

Translation: you want comic films to march to the tune of--

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It wishes. Plenty of stuff you'd expect BvS to cover from MoS is ignored. Same with SS.

The relevant plotlines were covered and influence the following film, no matter how much you want to pretend the opposite.

So now characters aren't allowed to joke at all or battle anyone who isn't a "grounded" villain. Good to know. Honestly, you're making a mountain out of a molehill over the Nuke issue, the WSC thought they were saving the rest of the world.

Constant quips robs an allegedly serious scene of its teeth, as if the event is just some random act of no consequence.

The WSC incident was major, and it being swept aside illustrates how disconnected many of the MCU's internal plots--the significant plots--are from each other.

 

[fireproof78]

People don't quip in serious situations?

 

[JD]

I'm going to have to call bull here. Spider-Man does have one of the best rogues galleries in the business, but Spider-Man has always been defined by Peter Parker (hence why non Peter Spider-Men, like Miles Morales, Ben Reily, and the aforementioned Doc Ock, do not work).

Are you saying this just as your opinion or as commonly accepted fact? Because from what I've seen online most people seem to really like Miles Morales and Doc Ock Spidey.

FYI, Superior Spider-Man was a stupid idea through and through.

Really? Most of the reaction I saw to it was pretty positive.

 

[WebLurker]

Moreover, the fact, a film like The Winter Solider was produced in the MCU (its creative / political bridge built in The First Avenger) means your ridiculous notion that it tried to avoid being more grounded is more of your Marvel-defensive noise. The MCU serves two masters--one (the kiddie, Power Rangers one) is stronger than the other (the Winter Soldier one), which leans in the creatively natural direction of the grounded and serious.

Winter Soldier also included a man who put his mind in a '70s computer, so it was pretty happy to embrace the "kiddie" stuff.

For this reason, the MCU will never appear to be a cohesive fictional universe, as its individual parts are so disparate in intent and tone, that some "chapters" may as well occupy the same place as old titles such as What If?--where the events are mere speculation, not an official part of the MCU.

First of all, the different tones makes the MCU a pretty faithful translation of the Marvel world to the big screen. Secondly, events are pretty well tied into each other, so there's cause and effect (for example, the attack in The Avengers leads to Project Insight, which is scuttled when Black Widow uploads the S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA database online, which gives Zemo the tools he needs to tear down the Avengers in Civil War, as revenge for what happened in Age of Ultron.) So, the MUC is one of the more coherent multimedia continuities out there.

Constant quips robs an allegedly serious scene of its teeth, as if the event is just some random act of no consequence.

Maybe that's why some of the MCU fights, likeThe Winter Soldier (taking down Project Insight), Civil War (Iron Man Vs. Captain America and Winter Solider) have little to no jokes, to mark them as different from the ones where they're meant to be "fun" (like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man)? Different kinds of scenes need different numbers of teeth.

The WSC incident was major, and it being swept aside illustrates how disconnected many of the MCU's internal plots--the significant plots--are from each other.[/QUOTE]

The WSC incident with the nuke was dealt with in The Avengers; S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers stopped it. Also worth noting, it's unclear how secret the World Security Council is; they US seems to regard S.H.I.E.L.D. as their own agency, so it could be possible that that the WSC's existence is classified beyond higher ups. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. establishes that after Winter Soldier, S.H.I.E.L.D. was seen as an unmasked terrorist group that had been running with no accountability, which might preclude the WSC being a public entity.

If the WSC was secret and the nuke never struck the city, how could there be aftereffects, assuming the public even realized what happened?

However, even if the filmmakers dropped the ball on the nuke, there was still plenty of examples to prove you wrong about the MUC installments being disconnected from each other -- and that's not even going into the TV shows, One-Shots, and canonical comic books, which further reinforce how unified everything is.

Are you saying this just as your opinion or as commonly accepted fact? Because from what I've seen online most people seem to really like Miles Morales and Doc Ock Spidey.

Sorry, my opinion. I don't think that Spider-Man can be a legacy superhero, given that the persona is so interconnected with Peter Parker and his own life experiences and there is no line of succession (the way Robin can inherit the Batman mantle, unless you count stuff like Spider-Girl, where Peter's daughter follows in his footsteps). So, IMHO, you can't have a non-Peter Parker Spider-Man, since it defeats the point of the Spider-Man character. That's how I see it, at any rate, hence why Miles and the rest don't work.

I've tried reading the Miles stuff, and the character is really bland, IMHO, so I have no clue why it became a hit. My theory is that it's just the novelty and that they didn't replace the "main" Spider-Man. Had they pulled the stunt in the 616 comics, I am positive that Miles would be a long forgotten oddity in the annuals of comic history.

Really? Most of the reaction I saw to it was pretty positive.

Hey, if people liked it, fair enough. I tried to read it and hated the very premise, much less what I was able to read before I quit for my blood pressure's sake. Most of everything that I love about the franchise has been stripped from the post-"One More Day" comics, but that series tore the last few bits out. It's stuff like this that make me wish that author Dan Slott would move onto something else; his entire run has been a series of stunts that have nothing to do with Spider-Man and make the character even more unrecognizable.

In all honesty, the only thing he wrote that I like is the Renew Your Vows miniseries. Those versions of the characters are the ones I know and love. The fact that the story actually dealt with the themes of the franchise and had a point was the icing on the cake. (Really glad it's getting its own series this fall.)

(In all fairness, I read/watch Spider-Man books/movies/TV shows/whatever for the Peter Parker character, so if he's not there, I stop caring, so I was never in the Superior Spider-Man's target audience in the first place.)

So, in conclusion, the Spider-Man comments are my opinions, but I do have reasons for holding them.

 

[JD]

Ok, I just wasn't sure because some people don't seem to know the difference between their opinion and the majority one.

 

[fireproof78]

I'm always so tempted to put in my signature that the above is just my opinion, based upon personal experiences and research. It should not be seen as an attempt to speak for the majority. All copyrights and trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

 

[Anwar]

MoS is dark by necessity and in-story circumstance, but his full character would grow into accepting his status in the world, but the tone and message from Nolan's films have nothing to do with this

It has everything to do with it.

^ A mountain of BS. The MCU were not under "attack."

It is. Thanks to Nolan and Singer, movie audiences were under the impression it's okay to be ashamed of CBMs that embrace their comic-bookiness. So the MCU's been under attack due to that from day one. Detractors were PO'ed that they wore costumes, PO'ed they weren't all "grounded" and bothered having superpowers, were PO'ed at the idea of the Asgardians, etc.

Moreover, the fact, a film like The Winter Solider was produced in the MCU (its creative / political bridge built in The First Avenger) means your ridiculous notion that it tried to avoid being more grounded is more of your Marvel-defensive noise.

Winter Soldier had plenty of comic-bookiness to it.

For this reason, the MCU will never appear to be a cohesive fictional universe, as its individual parts are so disparate in intent and tone, that some "chapters" may as well occupy the same place as old titles such as What If?--where the events are mere speculation, not an official part of the MCU.

Nonsense. You just can't accept the fantastical co-existing with your banal views of what a CBM should be.

More nonsense proving you have not read any Batman comics

Sure I have, and for the most part the stories were more about everyone BUT him.

Translation: you want comic films to march to the tune of--

Something unashamed of itself.

The relevant plotlines were covered and influence the following film

Crappily.

Constant

quips robs an allegedly serious scene of its teeth, as if the event is just some random act of no consequence.

Levity it a part of life, deal with it.

The WSC incident was major, and it being swept aside illustrates how disconnected many of the MCU's internal plots--the significant plots--are from each other.

This was covered.

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

Quite a few, an awful lot of them were still more about the villains than him. Hell, his life as Bruce Wayne didn't get much focus until a decade well after his intro (if even that).

The origin of Killer Moth.

That's it? From "awful lot" golden, silver and bronze age Batman comics you've claimed to have read, that's your example? The Origin of Killer Moth? A comic from 1951 which is about the origin of the villain? Well, duh! It's the origin of Killer Moth! It's supposed to show, oh I don't know, the origin of Killer Moth maybe? You based your whole thesis on Batman comics focusing on the villains only on that 65 year old comic? That's a joke right? You must be joking!

An archetype is meant to be the bare character, like "The Wise Mentor" or "Scoundrel" but they have little beyond that basic set. Batman really was little more than the usual "Rich Socialite who acts like a fop but is really a crusader" popularized by the Scarlet Pimpernel or Zorro (though he borrows a lot from the Shadow and Green Hornet too). By the 70s and mainly the 80s the writers finally got the Marvel Memo that they should do more with Bruce Wayne than just have him be "the guy Batman pretends to be a fop as."

So according to you Iron Man is a "bare character" because he is the "rich socialite fighting crime" archetype. Captain America is a "bare character" because he is the "patriotic superhero" archetype. Spider-Man is a "bare character" because he is the "angsty teen fighting crime" archetype. According to you that fact alone makes them "just the basic character type with no unique personality traits that make them different".

That there is a difference between a literary character and an archetypal character.

First you've said to us that Batman is an archetypical character like Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel and now you're claiming that there's a difference between a literary character (Zorro) and an archetypal character (again Zorro)! That literally doesn't make any sense at all! Either you don't know the definitions of the words or you just make up random things as you go along! Or perhaps you were clueless that Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel are literary characters!

 

[dahj]

Levity it a part of life, deal with it.

If only there was some way to infuse it into these arguments...

 

[fireproof78]

If only there was some way to infuse it into these arguments...

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

It has everything to do with it.

No, it does not. Nolan's films are not the reason for the steady evolution of Superman from film to film, and humankind's perception of him as time moved forward. Your fallback to hating the Nolan movies stems from the fact they are superior to almost every Marvel film ever produced, no matter the studio.

It is. Thanks to Nolan and Singer, movie audiences were under the impression it's okay to be ashamed of CBMs that embrace their comic-bookiness

Once again, you push your gross misunderstanding of what comics are--and its not the silly, WWE-type of material you're obsessed with.

So the MCU's been under attack due to that from day one.

There was no attack, and you have not demonstrated that your fantasy attack ever existed. The only one feeling they were treated that way is you--who defends all things Marvel, no matter poor the output.

Winter Soldier had plenty of comic-bookiness to it.

Yes--like attempted or successful assassinations, characters n the run, torturous mind control sessions, corruption in government...all serious subjects the superior heroic comics have dealt with for decades.

Sure I have, and for the most part the stories were more about everyone BUT him.

Not buying it; if you were truly familiar with Batman stories, the first you would refer to would not be Killer Moth, but the endless, well-developed stories relevant to this discussion.

Levity it a part of life, deal with it.

Yeah, by your criteria for life, we can be sure people were making jokes as they were in the World Trade Center on 9/11, right? Wrong. Serious situations are not peppered with jokes and cutesy remarks, and even in the world of heroic fantasy, its greatest output mirrors the reality of life in that regard. It is no wonder many of the Marvel films are so instantly disposable as film.

This was covered.

Point to any necessarily in-depth scenes of the WSC's nuclear missile launch being covered in every post-Avengers film, and no, Ross' blame for the NY destruction does not count..

That's it? From "awful lot" golden, silver and bronze age Batman comics you've claimed to have read, that's your example? The Origin of Killer Moth? A comic from 1951 which is about the origin of the villain? Well, duh! It's the origin of Killer Moth! It's supposed to show, oh I don't know, the origin of Killer Moth maybe? You based your whole thesis on Batman comics focusing on the villains only on that 65 year old comic? That's a joke right? You must be joking!

He's not.

So according to you Iron Man is a "bare character" because he is the "rich socialite fighting crime" archetype. Captain America is a "bare character" because he is the "patriotic superhero" archetype. Spider-Man is a "bare character" because he is the "angsty teen fighting crime" archetype. According to you that fact alone makes them "just the basic character type with no unique personality traits that make them different".

Probably.He seems to argue in favor of "Go, Go Powe---Marvel Heroes!" as his one and only template for comic stories and characters.

First you've said to us that Batman is an archetypical character like Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel and now you're claiming that there's a difference between a literary character (Zorro) and an archetypal character (again Zorro)! That literally doesn't make any sense at all! Either you don't know the definitions of the words or you just make up random things as you go along! Or perhaps you were clueless that Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel are literary characters!

He's forced to change his positions because--as I pointed out earlier--he's never read the original stories of the Scarlet Pimpernel & Zorro, as no one is going to take their origins and developing stories and force connect it all that Batman was from the start and going forward.

 

[Anwar]

That's it? From "awful lot" golden, silver and bronze age Batman comics you've claimed to have read, that's your example? The Origin of Killer Moth? A comic from 1951 which is about the origin of the villain? Well, duh! It's the origin of Killer Moth! It's supposed to show, oh I don't know, the origin of Killer Moth maybe? You based your whole thesis on Batman comics focusing on the villains only on that 65 year old comic? That's a joke right? You must be joking!

No, it's just one example. Batman is practically a non-entity when a villain origin story could still have involved him plenty as a character.

So according to you Iron Man is a "bare character" because he is the "rich socialite fighting crime" archetype. Captain America is a "bare character" because he is the "patriotic superhero" archetype. Spider-Man is a "bare character" because he is the "angsty teen fighting crime" archetype.

They all went beyond the bare-bones archetypal image by having lives outside of being Superheroes. That's what made Marvel stand out and why DC copied them.

First you've said to us that Batman is an archetypical character like Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel and now you're claiming that there's a difference between a literary character (Zorro) and an archetypal character (again Zorro)!

Actual characters have more to them beyond being archetypes.

No, it does not.

It does. He's the reason DC decided to try and go for this whole bankrupt "grounded" approach to begin with. And I always found Nolan's stuff to be pretentious, for the record. Most people who like the Dark Knight stuff dislike the fantastical to begin with.

Once again, you push your gross misunderstanding of what comics are--and its not the silly, WWE-type of material you're obsessed with.

I appreciate something unashamed of the fantastical. Sorry you don't.

There was no attack, and you have not demonstrated that your fantasy attack ever existed.

Everyone who says the MCU should be more "grounded".

Yes--like attempted or successful assassinations, characters n the run, torturous mind control sessions, corruption in government...

And then you go and say you hate the rest of it for being fantastical (the Helicarriers, Zola the CPU, etc).

Not buying it; if you were truly familiar with Batman stories, the first you would refer to would not be Killer Moth, but the endless, well-developed stories relevant to this discussion

Most of which came out after they decided to stop making the stories be about everyone but him. Which didn't start happening until around 30 years ago.

Yeah, by your criteria for life, we can be sure people were making jokes as they were in the World Trade Center on 9/11, right?

WWI soldiers made jokes while getting shelled, because that's just how life is. The people in 9/11 probably barely had time to think about what was happening. If you can't accept that, you can't accept life.

Point to any necessarily in-depth scenes of the WSC's nuclear missile launch being covered in every post-Avengers film, and no, Ross' blame for the NY destruction does not count.

Why do you need to be spoonfed? The public didn't know what was going on, and the Avengers would've accepted the decision given how badly things were going until they used the Nuke to stop the portal. It's not this game-changer you think it is, and there's no reason every single story needs to be dedicated to them figuring out why the Government fired a Nuke because they thought it was the only way to stop an Alien Invasion...especially since the main reason they WON was thanks to the nuke!

He's not.

It's one example, yes.

Probably.He seems to argue in favor of "Go, Go Powe---Marvel Heroes!" as his one and only template for comic stories and characters.

Better than DC's ashamed approach.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I like the Nolan films, but you're fooling yourself if you don't think their success is a major influence on the direction of the current DC films. Those films were praised for being grounded and gritty. The difference is that Nolan is a talented director and Snyder is a hack, he's Michael Bay if he deluded himself into thinking he was an artist. He's obsessed with creating iconic scenes, but doesn't put in the work to earn it. It's just a lot of slow motion and an increasing amount of dream sequences.

The reason the Dark Knights work and the current DC films don't is that tone fit the material. They're all essentially crime dramas that just happen to be about a guy in a bat suit. Man of Steel is finding your destiny story that turns into an alien invasion about half way through. It doesn't help that we don't really get to know Superman as a character. The Dark Knight films actually focus a lot on Bruce Wayne as a person. We know his beliefs, his goals and understand his motivations. He actually works a bit better in these films than in any other version. He at least has an end goal. Either rid Gotham of crime or inspire the people of Gotham to do so themselves. Then he can go have a normal life with Rachael. What's Superman's goal? We don't really see him saving people that much. He's pretty much just flying around until an action scenes starts. At least the Donner films had him doing everything from getting cats down from trees to saving California. He even has an arc where he rejects the warnings of Jor-El to save the woman he loves showing that he's more human than Kryptonian. I think that's why the first Superman still works and is the only movie to get him right. Superman was born on Krypton but he was raised on Earth and only remembers growing up with humans. He has powers but he's still going to act like a normal person. He's not some bland loner roaming the earth because he doesn't fit in with humans.

I actually like the character of Superman and would like to actually like him in the movies. The new one is kind of an asshole. I had sort of liked MoS, it has its moments. But BvS in retrospect has made me hate it. It's some shitty character they slapped in a Superman suit because the filmmakers aren't creative enough to make the character work. I get that it's hard to make him work. But it's hard to make Captain America work, just look at what Marvel Comics is doing with him. But the movies managed to pull it off and it's really close to how Superman should work. They're really less of a character and more of a symbol of what America wishes that it was but knows that we aren't. We say we're for freedom and what not, but we've done some pretty awful things since the beginning that go in stark contrast to that image we want to present. In the movies, Cap is the living embodiment of the greatest generation scrubbed of any awful reality. He only wants to help people, respects women, isn't racist, pretty open minded and willing to die to save lives. They took that character and put him in political thrillers dealing with actual real world issues like the government spying on citizens. Actually taking the extreme of saying the entire surveillance state is due to the actions of actual Nazis and only Cap can save us. He's sort of a perfect character, but it works because he appeals to something we want to believe in. That can be done with Superman and it could work in a realistic and grounded world.

 

[WebLurker]

No, it does not. Nolan's films are not the reason for the steady evolution of Superman from film to film, and humankind's perception of him as time moved forward. Your fallback to hating the Nolan movies stems from the fact they are superior to almost every Marvel film ever produced, no matter the studio.

I haven't seen the entirety of Nolan's Batman movies, so I can't say whether it's better or worse than other movies. I did see the first part of Batman Begins (been meaning to see the rest of it), so basically the origin story part of it. It wasn't bad (Alfred was great), but it felt really generic, like a standard superhero origin that could have names and detials swapped to repurpose for any other movie.

As far as the origins parts of superhero movies (let's ignore the rest of the movies here), I think the original Spider-Man, Iron Man, and maybe Ant-Man did a superior job of introducing the characters, showing their personalities and showing how they became the superhero in question. By the end of it, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who Peter Parker, Tony Stark, and Scott Lang were. I didn't feel that I ever got a handle on who Bruce Wayne was by the time that he was dressing up in tights.

Once again, you push your gross misunderstanding of what comics are--and its not the silly, WWE-type of material you're obsessed with.

Comics can tell a variety of stories. Batman, in fact, has often been one of the cheesiest comics ever written, and that's as legitimate a version as the darker takes have been (in fact, if I recall correctly, the former is actually the way he was originally written). So, there is more than enough room for both the more serious and the more light-hearted. In fact, with DC apparently committing to the darker, grittier approach, it's just as well that Marvel is keeping things more upbeat. It've gives viewers a wider variety of stories and experiences.

Yes--like attempted or successful assassinations, characters n the run, torturous mind control sessions, corruption in government...all serious subjects the superior heroic comics have dealt with for decades.

And people who uploaded their brains into computers and got superpowers through experiments and use sci-fi gadgets and flying ships. Winter Soldier has got a bit of both the realism and the fantastic, and one of the reasons it works is because of how well it presents both.

(The main reason, IMHO, is that the directors brought their A game. Listen to the BluRay's audio commentary sometime. They approached it as a serious movie and thought carefully about how to best structure the movie, to develop the characters, the best way to film, how to make standard action scenes fresh again. And, for what its worth, a lot of the other movies in the Marvel franchise show similar levels of care.)

Yeah, by your criteria for life, we can be sure people were making jokes as they were in the World Trade Center on 9/11, right? Wrong. Serious situations are not peppered with jokes and cutesy remarks, and even in the world of heroic fantasy, its greatest output mirrors the reality of life in that regard. It is no wonder many of the Marvel films are so instantly disposable as film.

There's a fine line between reality and fiction. Also, I wouldn't say that the Marvel movies are disposable just because of their adding humor to action scenes (Star Wars is very much in tone with Marvel in this regard and is regarded highly in movie history). A lot of the Marvel movies are pretty character-centric and should be judged on their merits as such.

Point to any necessarily in-depth scenes of the WSC's nuclear missile launch being covered in every post-Avengers film, and no, Ross' blame for the NY destruction does not count.

Did the general public even know the nuke had been launched? Probably not. So, what's there to build off of (esp. with the WCS essentially gutted in Winter Solider, and taking into account that the movies between Avenger and Winter Soldier -- Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World -- were not focusing on events that the WSC, much less the nuke, would've been involved in)? You're making a mountain out of a molehill, at best.

And heck yeah Ross's blaming them for NY counts! That's exactly the kind of stuff you were saying that the MCU failed at. Sorry to break to you, but that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as consequences and repercussions in the MCU go, there's a lot of them. (If you want to stay ahead in this discussion, you need to keep both eyes open.)

 

[fireproof78]

I like the Nolan films, but you're fooling yourself if you don't think their success is a major influence on the direction of the current DC films. Those films were praised for being grounded and gritty. The difference is that Nolan is a talented director and Snyder is a hack, he's Michael Bay if he deluded himself into thinking he was an artist. He's obsessed with creating iconic scenes, but doesn't put in the work to earn it. It's just a lot of slow motion and an increasing amount of dream sequences.

The reason the Dark Knights work and the current DC films don't is that tone fit the material. They're all essentially crime dramas that just happen to be about a guy in a bat suit. Man of Steel is finding your destiny story that turns into an alien invasion about half way through. It doesn't help that we don't really get to know Superman as a character. The Dark Knight films actually focus a lot on Bruce Wayne as a person. We know his beliefs, his goals and understand his motivations. He actually works a bit better in these films than in any other version. He at least has an end goal. Either rid Gotham of crime or inspire the people of Gotham to do so themselves. Then he can go have a normal life with Rachael. What's Superman's goal? We don't really see him saving people that much. He's pretty much just flying around until an action scenes starts. At least the Donner films had him doing everything from getting cats down from trees to saving California. He even has an arc where he rejects the warnings of Jor-El to save the woman he loves showing that he's more human than Kryptonian. I think that's why the first Superman still works and is the only movie to get him right. Superman was born on Krypton but he was raised on Earth and only remembers growing up with humans. He has powers but he's still going to act like a normal person. He's not some bland loner roaming the earth because he doesn't fit in with humans.

I actually like the character of Superman and would like to actually like him in the movies. The new one is kind of an asshole. I had sort of liked MoS, it has its moments. But BvS in retrospect has made me hate it. It's some shitty character they slapped in a Superman suit because the filmmakers aren't creative enough to make the character work. I get that it's hard to make him work. But it's hard to make Captain America work, just look at what Marvel Comics is doing with him. But the movies managed to pull it off and it's really close to how Superman should work. They're really less of a character and more of a symbol of what America wishes that it was but knows that we aren't. We say we're for freedom and what not, but we've done some pretty awful things since the beginning that go in stark contrast to that image we want to present. In the movies, Cap is the living embodiment of the greatest generation scrubbed of any awful reality. He only wants to help people, respects women, isn't racist, pretty open minded and willing to die to save lives. They took that character and put him in political thrillers dealing with actual real world issues like the government spying on citizens. Actually taking the extreme of saying the entire surveillance state is due to the actions of actual Nazis and only Cap can save us. He's sort of a perfect character, but it works because he appeals to something we want to believe in. That can be done with Superman and it could work in a realistic and grounded world.

This is a point that I largely agree with. I was trying to figure out why I liked a lot of the MCU (not all, thank you very much) and a lot of the DCU is hit or miss for me. And, that is the characters, as described above. What do we know about Superman? What does he want? Same thing with Batman. And, not to mention the fact that Wonder Woman and Aqua Man barely get any explanation. The DCU is trading on the fact that these characters are known, and therefore, they don't need to be given any more character development.

The DCU also doesn't earn any of it's big "comic book" moments. I see them, but because there is little character development to be emotionally invested in, it's hard to feel like that moment matters. If someone dies, we all know they are coming back and it gets a weird sort of "You know what's going to happen" treatment.

So, as entertaining as the DCU can be, I don't feel like they earn the moments they present.

 

[dahj]

The DCU is trading on the fact that these characters are known, and therefore, they don't need to be given any more character development.

I disagree.
If anything the characters being "known" is more of a problem, because some people are evidently unwilling to accept anything other than their version of the characters.

 

[fireproof78]

I disagree.
If anything the characters being "known" is more of a problem, because some people are evidently unwilling to accept anything other than their version of the characters.

Having read and seen multiple versions of Batman, I can tell you that "my" version of the character depends on what is presented.

But, you may be on to something, but I still think the characterization is lacking to make Batman or Superman distinct or unique in their presentation.

 

[LJones41]

So, as entertaining as the DCU can be, I don't feel like they earn the moments they present.

I disagree. I feel that neither the DCU or the MCU have to earn anything. They're just providing the public with movies about comic book characters. That's it. So far, I've been satisfied with most of the movies both companies have provided. I've said it once and I'll say it again with different words - I think this whole DCU v. MCU feud is a joke and a waste of time.

 

[WebLurker]

I disagree.
If anything the characters being "known" is more of a problem, because some people are evidently unwilling to accept anything other than their version of the characters.

How does that work, since Batman doesn't have a set characterization? It all depends on the story.