Marvel's 'Avengers' Success: What Can DC Comics Learn From It?

[matthunter]

The problem with the Supes movies is that - apart from Superman II and IV (but IV was crap for other reasons) - they've not really given Supes a chance to get into a brawl. Supes is hard to hurt, kryptonite excepted, but they never really put him up against foes who could challenge him without it... bring in Warworld and have him go to bat against Mongul as Earth's champion. Sure, you can explore the character and have Luthor as a nemesis, but you don't put someone with all of Supes' cool powers in a movie if you're not gonna challenge him to use them in spectacular ways. Even the Matrix films did a better job of showing what someone like Supes should be capable of in a fight than the Supes movies themselves have.

And for Pete's sake, put some humour back in the films... OK, Batman is supposed to be dark, brooding and angsty... but Superman? He's meant to be the eternal optimist. Marvel films are FUN. That's the biggest difference IMO.

 

[sojourner]

Someone mentioned up thread that Aquaman is needed for a JLA movie? seriously? That's pretty damn funny. He doesn't even get much use in the comic these days. He's definitely not needed as part of the core team in a JLA movie. Maybe treat him more like Hawkeye was in the Marvel movies. A few guest appearances and second rung in the actual team movie.

The thing that a JLA movie has going for it is that the core 3 heroes are already better known to the public. So for the movie all you really need to do is about what they did with avengers, give good intros that reveal something of the characters and run with it with the more minor heroes getting a bit more intro screen time like Black Widow's.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think they should revive George Miller's Justice League project. There's no need to spend years setting up films for each of the characters first. Everybody is familiar with Superman and Batman and now Green Lantern. The Wonder Woman tv show is still well known, so there's no need to reintroduce her to the public. Any of the other characters can be introduced within the context of the movie itself.

Why ramp up to a JL film when the general public is familiar with the main characters?

The Wonder Woman TV show was made nearly 30 years ago and is hardly an accurate depiction of what Wonder Woman is in this day and age (or really even at all.) It's not about "introducing the character to public" but establishing them and building a universe which is what Marvel did so well here in the MCU. It wasn't all about introducing characters to audiences less familiar with them it was about building a world..

On other hand, you can argue that generations of cartoons and animated movies have already done a lot of the groundwork. Most of today's audience probably grew up watching JLA cartoons of some sort . . . . .

 

[sojourner]

Yeah, if you had walked up to a typical person (before avengers came out) and asked them who Black Widow is and then who Wonderwoman is the response would be pretty obvious.

 

[Harvey]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

Probably, but the studio might want four or five standalone pics to build up the audience for a big, expensive ensemble piece like The Avengers.

 

[BillJ]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

This.

I want a Justice League movie now.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'd want one now too but I'd also want one done right and what Marvel did leading up to The Avengers was damn-near perfect and I'd love to see the same done with a JLA movie, I don't want one just cranked out for the sake of it.

 

[Peacemaker]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

That's just silly talk. We all know that Luke, Han, Leia,Yoda, Obi Wan, Lando, the Droids, and Vader had to have their own movies before Star Wars.

The obsession people have with the necessity of "building universes" for characters today is just ridiculous. Do it like Dr. Who when RTD rebooted it. Here's the Doctor and the TARDIS and a companion, explain it as you go. The existing audience for the characters will form the core; the general public will watch it if the story and the presentation are fun and well executed. You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

 

[Trekker4747]

You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

And yet, we have what Marvel did over the last 4 years and see how it turned out?

 

[RoJoHen]

You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

And yet, we have what Marvel did over the last 4 years and see how it turned out?

Yes, it turned out very well. That doesn't mean you have to do it that way.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

That's just silly talk. We all know that Luke, Han, Leia,Yoda, Obi Wan, Lando, the Droids, and Vader had to have their own movies before Star Wars.

The obsession people have with the necessity of "building universes" for characters today is just ridiculous. Do it like Dr. Who when RTD rebooted it. Here's the Doctor and the TARDIS and a companion, explain it as you go. The existing audience for the characters will form the core; the general public will watch it if the story and the presentation are fun and well executed. You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

Except Doctor Who is a TV series which has several episodes to do this, while we're talking about a Justice League film which only gets about two hours.

 

[hyzmarca]

DC's big problem is that their characters aren't interesting. There, I said it. Their characters are boring as hell.

Superman, Batman, and Wonder woman are able to drive interesting plots, but as characters they're cardboard cutouts and as people they're totally lame.

You could not pay me money to hang out with Superman. If I had to hang out with him for some reason, I would try to pay someone else to take up the duty, he's just that boring. DC characters are paragons, not people. They're mythic archetypes that lack personality.

But a day with Tony Stark, that would be wonderful. Hookers and blow all around.

I can enjoy watching Robert Downy Junior chew the scenery as Tony Stark. He's awesome. He's arrogant. He's a jackass. And he's better than everyone else. And he loves the hookers and blow.

The Iron Man movies didn't need any armor. They didn't need any villains. They just needed two hours of RDJ acting like a kind in a nose-candy store. Tony Stark is interesting on his own, even in the absence of conflict.

The same can be said for Thor. Chris Hemsworth doesn't have the same force of personality that RDJ does (few actors do), but Thor is a larger-than-life Norse God and that, more than anything, really drives the movie. You could make a two hour film about Thor driving to the post office to buy a book of stamps and it would still be interesting, because he's Thor. He'd arrive at that post office with some heavy metal (KISS's God of Thunder seems aproperiate) playing in the background and kick that stamp dispenser's ass.

Even Captain America, the closest thing Marvel has to a boy-scout archetype, is a three-dimensional human being who can be interesting to watch in the absence of conflict. .

You don't have that with the DC characters. Take conflict away and you've got boredom. Do you want to spend two hours watching Bruce Wayne file his tax return? I certainly don't. But I could enjoy two hours watching Tony Stark filing his tax return, I know it would be absolutely entertaining.

You can't cast a filppant scenery-chewer as Superman, or as Batman, or as Wonder Woman. It just doesn't work. Their personalities are not suited to such grandiouse acting. They're subdued and serious archetypes. About the only major DC character who can support that sort of on-screen personality is Wally West, and who the hell is Wally West. He certainly can support an entire Justice League movie.

The real draw of the Avengers (and any crossover, really) is all of these interesting characters interacting with each other. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman interacting with each other is just three times as boring.

 

[BillJ]

Characters are as interesting as actors and writers make them. As far as Robert Downey Jr. goes, the shtick he's using as Iron Man is really starting to get old and I found him to be the weak link in The Avengers. Smarmy and smart-aleck only carries you so far.

 

[JoeZhang]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

That's just silly talk. We all know that Luke, Han, Leia,Yoda, Obi Wan, Lando, the Droids, and Vader had to have their own movies before Star Wars.

The obsession people have with the necessity of "building universes" for characters today is just ridiculous. Do it like Dr. Who when RTD rebooted it. Here's the Doctor and the TARDIS and a companion, explain it as you go. The existing audience for the characters will form the core; the general public will watch it if the story and the presentation are fun and well executed. You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

Except Doctor Who is a TV series which has several episodes to do this, while we're talking about a Justice League film which only gets about two hours.

My other-half hasn't seen any of the other films and could follow it perfectly well. it's not like the avengers was made by Tarkovsky or featured particularly complex character or motivations (as well made and as well acted as it was).

 

[Peacemaker]

Nonsense. You can absolutely make a good ensemble piece without making four or five standalone flicks to set it up.

That's just silly talk. We all know that Luke, Han, Leia,Yoda, Obi Wan, Lando, the Droids, and Vader had to have their own movies before Star Wars.

The obsession people have with the necessity of "building universes" for characters today is just ridiculous. Do it like Dr. Who when RTD rebooted it. Here's the Doctor and the TARDIS and a companion, explain it as you go. The existing audience for the characters will form the core; the general public will watch it if the story and the presentation are fun and well executed. You don't need to "build a universe" for a JLA flick or any other to work and do well.

Except Doctor Who is a TV series which has several episodes to do this, while we're talking about a Justice League film which only gets about two hours.

Actually, it did in two episodes - 90 minutes...Doctor, Rose, TARDIS, time travel, space travel, Doctor: last of his species. Two episodes. So, no, you don't need to build a universe and discuss the origin of a bunch of iconic characters in JLA.

Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman - these three are so well known they don't need explanation. We just had a Green Lantern movie. Any others could just be "there" with as much explanation as Hawkeye and Black Widow in Avengers. Heck, I grew up with the Avengers lineup of Hawkeye, Iron Man, Capt.A, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, Vision, and the Pyms. I really didn't know a thing about Black Widow and I could care less about Hawkeye's back story. All I went into this movie with was a childhood memory of The Avengers and having watched Capt. America and Thor. Of those, I think having a knowledge of the Thor film was necessary for this film. So, no, I don't think a JLA film would require all the buildup that The Avengers has had.

 

[JD]

I think one of the biggest advantages to doing what Marvel did with their MCU was the fact that since they got all of the character intros out of the way in their individual movies we were able to get right to the plot in Avengers and we already cared about the characters, we didn't have to spend the first hour introducing everybody and developing an emotional attachment to them, it would already be there. And I really think in order to do give us a JLA movie that really lives up to the potential of the concept it would be better if they did the same thing. Sure you could do a standalone JLA movie, but you'd have to spend most of the movie setting up this version of the characters, and even though everyone knows the basic concept of who Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash are you'd still have to take your time and set up who this particular version of the characters are. Now if we did individual movies first, we could take our time with the intros and give us a chance to really get to know and get attached to the characters before you through them into the metaphorical ring with Darkseid or Vandal Savage or whoever.

 

[Trekker4747]

Some of the best moments in "The Avengers" came with the character (re-)introductions. We meet Black Widow on a mission in Russia kicking ass, we meet Banner working "off the grid" as a doctor in a third-world country living in fear of his darker side, we meet Tony being a brilliant jackass, we meet CA being a solider out-of-time and then there's Thor's great introduction as the Thunder God with family issues.

 

[BillJ]

I think one of the biggest advantages to doing what Marvel did with their MCU was the fact that since they got all of the character intros out of the way in their individual movies we were able to get right to the plot in Avengers and we already cared about the characters, we didn't have to spend the first hour introducing everybody and developing an emotional attachment to them, it would already be there. And I really think in order to do give us a JLA movie that really lives up to the potential of the concept it would be better if they did the same thing. Sure you could do a standalone JLA movie, but you'd have to spend most of the movie setting up this version of the characters, and even though everyone knows the basic concept of who Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash are you'd still have to take your time and set up who this particular version of the characters are. Now if we did individual movies first, we could take our time with the intros and give us a chance to really get to know and get attached to the characters before you through them into the metaphorical ring with Darkseid or Vandal Savage or whoever.

I disagree.

I had not seen Thor, either of the Hulk movies or Iron Man 2. I had no idea who Black Widow was and only had a passing familiarity with Hawkeye because I had a friend who was a Marvel Comics fan as a kid 25 years ago.

I enjoyed The Avengers just fine.

The DC Comics characters are better known and would require less introductory work than their Marvel counterparts.

 

[Captain Craig]

edit: Crud, wrong thread.

DC needs to learn to focus more on telling good stories instead of just casting hotties and tossing a script at them thinking it'll work. Looking at you Halle Berry and Ryan Reynolds.

 

[DWF]

DC doesn't have to make seperate movies for their heroes then bring them together for one big movie. But the advantage that Marvel had in doing so was that it created a franchise and somewhat of a built in audience for The Avengers.