Who has made the better movies, Marvel or DC?

[ProjectX2]

I don't know, the triple blow of Spider-Man 3, One More Day and USM being consistently terrible killed my interest in Spider-Man for a while.

 

[ourchair]

My biggest problem with Marvel movies is that they feel compelled to tell origin stories when origin stories are the least interesting aspect of their heroes.

Marvel heroes are by and large, the same people they were before they got their powers. The Fantastic Four were a bickering quartet before and after they went into space, and Spider-Man was a woe-is-me everyteen before and after he became Amazing. To that end, telling their origin in excruciating does not serve a purpose. Just start in media res, and make the necessary exposition for their origin as minimal and unintrusive as possible.

DC heroes, I think, can and should tell origins mostly because their biggest characters -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Batman -- are about people who are so Extraordinarily Awesome and understanding why they are so matters.

Superman is a Space Messiah who hides his colorful extraterrestrial ethnicity under a mundane guise. Wonder Woman is a Stranger from Paradise who embarks on a great journey into the soiled world we live in. Batman is the Self-Made Man who transcends his crude humanity due to leading a Purpose-Driven Life.

The context from which their Awesomeness comes from actually informs the character very well. So the origins can do something for their film story.

 

[DIrishB]

yeah, Marvel has used their less well known Superheroes more than DC has. But that's not what I meant. DC has skipped all of their B-List heroes (or whatever you want to call the Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern up until recently, etc), but instead, they've put out movies based on Vertigo, Wildstorm, and Paradox.

the average person may not have known much about Thor or Iron Man going into the movies, but they probably at least knew they were watching a Marvel film, but I doubt most people knew that a History of Violence, Constantine, RED, The Losers, Stardust, etc were DC movies at all.

Agreed.

I also have to point out, with Marvel Studios making these movies, there's a better and more reliable chance the characters and concepts will be better translated to screen as opposed to DC's practice of utilizing out of house directors, writers, studios to make their films. There's always something lost in that translation, and I think Marvel keeping it as in-house as possible, helps keep the finalized movie closer to the source material.

 

[The Overlord]

My biggest problem with Marvel movies is that they feel compelled to tell origin stories when origin stories are the least interesting aspect of their heroes.

Marvel heroes are by and large, the same people they were before they got their powers. The Fantastic Four were a bickering quartet before and after they went into space, and Spider-Man was a woe-is-me everyteen before and after he became Amazing. To that end, telling their origin in excruciating does not serve a purpose. Just start in media res, and make the necessary exposition for their origin as minimal and unintrusive as possible.

DC heroes, I think, can and should tell origins mostly because their biggest characters -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Batman -- are about people who are so Extraordinarily Awesome and understanding why they are so matters.

Superman is a Space Messiah who hides his colorful extraterrestrial ethnicity under a mundane guise. Wonder Woman is a Stranger from Paradise who embarks on a great journey into the soiled world we live in. Batman is the Self-Made Man who transcends his crude humanity due to leading a Purpose-Driven Life.

The context from which their Awesomeness comes from actually informs the character very well. So the origins can do something for their film story.

I would disagree with that, considering Thor and Tony Stark had a whole character arc in their first movies, where they were unsympathetic, arrogant jerks who didn't care about the consequences about their actions to more heroic figures. Tony Stark went to not really caring where the weapons he made went, letting other people handle that, to obsessively hunting down his technology that was being used for evil purposes.

Plus I don't see how becoming Superman really changed Clark Kent as a character, he was a well meaning boy scout who became a well meaning boy scout in tights, there is nothing wrong with that, but him becoming a hero didn't really change his personality.

 

[ourchair]

I kept Thor and Tony Stark in mind as exceptions but then I forgot to mention them because the herbed pork I was cooking in my oven went DING!

But yeah, they are exceptions because they men possessed of remarkable hubris who need a wake up call.

Plus I don't see how becoming Superman really changed Clark Kent as a character, he was a well meaning boy scout who became a well meaning boy scout in tights, there is nothing wrong with that, but him becoming a hero didn't really change his personality.

I didn't say that Kal-El experienced a transformation in becoming Superman/Clark, but I get why you may have thought I did since I did say the opposite about Marvel characters.

DC heroes aren't necessarily 'different' after they adopt their super identities, but their origins -- the planet/island they came from or where they got their gifts -- do inform the character's nuances in a way that Marvel origins generally DON'T.