I have a bad feeling the whole DC vs Marvel thing is destined to become politcial.

What "contemporary" themes has the MCU embraced?
Marvel's history goes back to 1939 with the first appearances of The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Mystery Comics #1.
Have you read any comics since the 80s? DC's Vertigo line pretty much blew what Marvel was doing out of the water. They also gave us The Dark Knight Returns,Sandman and Watchmen which pretty much changed the comics landscape forever. The recent Watchmen series on HBO and Titans and Doom Patrol on DC Universe blows most of Marvel's offering on the small and large screen away. All are much more "radical" than Marvel's output. Legion is about the only radical thing "Marvel" has done on TV and that was under the Fox banner.

 

I don't know about "political" (except in the broad sense that everything can be made "political") but I do feel confident this thread will eventually (strong signs already) become a "Synderverse vs MCU 'debate'" where many posters will extremely oversimplify (usually in a negative fashion) the "side" they don't like. Have I missed anything? (I think not.)

 

I'm not talking so much in terms of the quality of the movies and the stories. More about how the online narrative will form over them in the next few years. I do think DC will be slightly more traditional but still liberal oriented but that is so they in away can serve as what you call alternative programing only with this it will be with movies. If you like your Superheroes not deconstructed and your stories told in a single movie instead of a big ongoing storyline then DC might be the one you like best, provided the movies are good. I think they are counting on their being a big audience out their who still prefer the Nolan and then later Snyder level of grit and edginess and DC will offer more of that. Granted this shouldn't be seen as something political but I also know the internet and they will try and make it so because they already tried it with Joker and the Snyder cut and it's only going to get worst especially when you see more youtubers winning about the woman and diversity in the upcoming MCU stuff. I can already see the battles lines starting to form and my headache coming.


Jason

 

By contemporary I mean heroes that don't fit in the traditional mode. Tony Stark has snark and in his first movie and comes clean about being Iron Man. The tons of witty humor in the movies. The connecting threads that led to Avengers movies which was not only a comic book movie first but maybe a movie first. You got movies about Ant Man and Guardians and Dr Strange and Captain Marvel which would have never been done in the past because nobody would even know who they are except comic book fans. Even the casting of Robert Downey Jr in the first movie was questioned because they have seeked out actors they like and it doesn't have to always be the big square jaw muscle man for the roles or a A-list action hero.


Jason

 

I’m not sure I agree with the title of the thread. Certainly, there is something of a perception that the MCU is liberal - Evans & Ruffalo in particular are outspoken on twitter, as are the likes of James Gunn. But I have seen arguments dissecting films like Civil War from each side of the political debate and Marvel has been criticised for not having more female leads and coming late in the day with its first black superhero solo title. Black Panther is probably Marvel’s most political film but it’s still not quite Malcolm X.

Snyder is usually viewed as a Rand-supporting conservative but OTOH, he did cast a Jewish woman, a gay man and a half-native-Hawaiian man in BvS/JL as well as Affleck, who is very liberal in his politics. He also race-swapped Perry White and have Superman a love interest who was older than him.

Joker has been variously described as pro-incel and an attack on austerity. Its director seemed to adopt a conservative “you can’t say anything now because of political correctness”-type approach in interviews but Joaquin Phoenix’s acceptance speech was pretty liberal in outlook.

As has been said, the tv DCEU seems fairly unswervingly liberal in its politics, though I’ve sort of dropped out of watching the Berlantiverse.

I think that like a lot of mainstream entertainment, people will read what they want into both sets of films. I imagine that, broadly speaking, the politics of most of the filmmakers involved are relatively centrist and liberal but the films will be neither Oliver Stone nor John Milius in their approach.

 

What? Really? Honestly never got that impression.

 

He’s supposed to be doing a film of her novel The Fountainhead, which is part of why people say so. A lot of people seized on this and pointed to Jonathan Kent’s “these people don’t owe you anything” line, to link the two. But as this interview shows, his attitude to her isn’t all that straightforward https://theplaylist.net/the-fountainhead-zack-snyder-20190521/

 

I don't know this feels like working real hard to make this idea happen. First we have to look at only the movies and then, you know, only some of the movies.

What can I say? DC likes to fuck

 

Shows have been and will still be diverse - why some people believe that is somehow a problem, I do not know.

Also, actors can only go so far in lifting what's on paper and it also depends on how much an actor is allowed to craft it of their own accord.

Many franchises are delving into more politically charged statements and it's not always anti-right wing. There might be twists people aren't recognizing, though someone in the PICARD forum pointed out something along these lines. And even then it might not be for the same reasons. Assuming there is any twist and often there is none and people read into things way too much - that can be easy and fun. It's also true these shows and movies are aimed at other countries, where a lot of issues also happen to be a lot worse as these stories and movies do get edited once licensed.

In the end, it's still storytelling, in their own fictional universes.

 

Jayson, you don't need to look so hard for things to get worried about.

Myself, I don't care for most of the Marvel movies - but no matter which company you look at, an entire film genre consisting primarily of childhood power fantasies is not going to wash out a particularly progressive if you scratch it more than a quarter of an inch deep.

 

The contagion has spread from the Neutral Zone to Sci-Fi & Fantasy. May Crom have mercy on our souls.

 

Just as it should be. Soon all the Mods will have headaches. Me personally even though if this comes true in terms of internet headache I also kind of appreciate the idea of their actually being something that separate the MCU from DC even though DC has embraced some of the MCU humor. It's like how I want my Star Trek and Star Wars to have their own separate identity. If the stuff is good I will watch anything but it would nice if you did have a different kind of experience watching a DC movie than when you watch a MCU movie and vice versa.


Jason

 

Yep.
Jayson, you've been around a while so this is no dig at you and I don't think it's your intention at all but when I see thread titles like this I think the poster is out to create "a thing" rather than to raise an issue about "a thing". If you were a new member posting this I would have thought you just wanted to make trouble rather than discuss something that was of concern or interest to you.

I am interested in the diversity in the comics themselves and the characters they created which are representative of people of different backgrounds. I was just thinking about this as I walked home and I can think of more diverse characters from Marvel comics than I could with DC. I don't have an in dept knowledge but that's just my opinion and I think that opinion was largely swayed by the X-Men.

 

The only motivation behind anything the studios do is money. End of story.

If they feel casting more women into superhero roles will make them money, they will. Transgender characters? Done. People of color? Make it so. Gay characters? We got a plenty. It's not political to them, it's about what attracts crowds.

The audience makes it political. They will make anything into a statement if they want to. It's as basic as that.

 

To me I am thinking less about the movies and more about the sort of surface level aspects that people on social media can run with and make it into clickbait. To me the response to Joker and the Snyder recut and the early fighting over Captain Marvel are sort of like the opening rounds of something that might get worst. I hope everyone is right and it won't be a big deal but then those things also felt like no big deal also.

Jason

 

How is "snark" a theme?
Marvel has always had "non-traditional" heroes, going all the way back to the Sub-Mariner. It's hardly new and groundbreaking. Neither is humor in a Superhero film. The shared universe idea was pretty groundbreaking, though the Universal Monsters did that in the 40's but not quite to Marvel's scale.

And DC has done movies based on Aquaman, Shazam and Suicide Squad. None of which are exactly one's first thoughts when thinking "let's make a movie based on a comic".

Michael Keaton was cast as Batman, way back in the 80's. He's even further from "big square jaw muscle man" than Downey. Both companies have been varied in their casting choices. Momoa and perhaps Affleck are "big square jaw muscle men", but then again so are Hemsworth and Evans. Zachary Levi is probably not the first name that comes to mind when thinking "superhero", but he was perfect for Shazam.

 

Right. Marvel and DC as political tools/positions is not a thing. No one has to worry about politicizing this.

 

It's the Arrowverse, not the Berlantiverse. You can't really call it the Berlantiverse since he's also involved with the DCU and HBO Max shows which will be more or less separate from the Arrowverse, or at least very, very, very, very, very loosely connected to it.

 

Bermultiverse.

 

First off, no it's not getting political. Marvel started off with somehow more deconstructive types of stories in the 60s and more socially relevant stuff but DC started doing the same starting in the 80s. They're both pretty damn liberal/progressive, or at least that's what they're aiming for even if they don't exactly hit the mark. To claim DC is more Conservative and Marvel more Liberal, no go.

Beh, Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen led to the Dark Age of comics in the 90s. That's not much of a positive legacy.

Banal.

Mildly inventive, but that's about it.

Eh, Winter Soldier, Civil War, the sheer concept of the Avengers, the Netflix shows...