Comics Are DC characters too old? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

TheThan

2014-02-22, 03:07 AM

BWR

2014-02-22, 03:28 AM

I don't really think that age is the problem. So what if some DC characters have 30 years on Marvel, manyof the Marvel characters are plenty old enough to have too much baggage for a casual reader to follow.

I think it's just that Marvel was more willing to take chances and sell movie rights to their characters (and boy have we gotten some stinkers before the MCAU came along).

Gnoman

2014-02-22, 03:31 AM

What do Batman (1989), Batman Begins, Superman: The Movie, and Smallville all have in common?

They're origin stories, setting up starkly different continuities of the characters and settings. The decades of continuity aren't an obstacle, particularly since, up until the 90s, there was no such thing as continuity except in the loosest sense of the character being the same basic background (and even that was fairly loose, with both Superbaby (Clark Kent developing powers and fighting crime as a toddler) and Classic Superman (Clark Kent becoming a hero only after moving to Metropolis) existing at the exact same time.

The real reason why so few DC characters have made a success on the big screen is the exact oppoiste. Despite having generally stronger, "purer" (as in, each character is the distilled essence of a concept) characters than Marvel does (the sort of thing that translates well to the superhero film genre, as there isn't enough running time to really complexify a character anyway), DC has always been weak -very weak- in building a relateable, believable world as opposed to Marvel, and most of the DCU's "second string" doesn't have the appeal needed to get by on character alone.

People watch Superman because they want to believe, if only for two hours, that such an incorruptible, idealistic, shining beacon of light as Superman can exist, that simple altruism and compassion really are powerful enough to hold back the evils of the world. Batman is popular because he proves that you don't have to dirty yourself completely even when you are forced to reach into the muck of society, that you can fight monsters without becoming a monster. The other DC characters can't compete with that. Many versions of Green Lantern could, but those adaptations mostly flopped. John Henry Irons could, but he's pretty much a Tony Stark ripoff, and is fairly obscure.

Aside from that, who would you really use? Wonder Woman remains a second-wave feminist in an age when the values she promotes and personifies are accepted without question by society as a whole. The Flash is little more than a powerset, with no inherent character to him. Aquaman is commonly accepted as lame. Blue Beetle? J'onn J'ozz? Nobody's really heard of them, so they have no draw. Marvel can handle these problems by using the well-grounded, coherent shared universe to introduce the more obscure characters or to flesh out the flatter ones with solid characterization. DC's continutiy isn't strong enough to support that.

Ichneumon

2014-02-22, 03:47 AM

I do not think that the problem with DC movies is that their characters are too old and have too much backstory.

I agree that is somewhat of a problem with the comic books though: The Batman family has grown to a ridiculous size (a large number of robins, Batman Inc. etc.), which can be very intimidating. Compare that to for example a comic book like Amazing Spider-man, which hasn't changed that dramatically. Sure, there are events in Peters life and it changes, but the amount of different characters that play quite large roles isn't that big.

In the movies and animated series, this doesn't play such a large role, since they can go back to the 'essence' of the character and largely ignore much of the source material, only taking what they like. I also don't think that movie goers think they need to know a lot about the character, other than maybe having seen earlier movies. For most superhero movies, the basic formula is the same anyway: a guy gets motivated to safe the world because of a tragic event, he gets super powers or training, he takes on a superhero identity.

I think the main different between Marvel and DC is the tone. DC characters and comics are much more serious. The same is true for the movies based on these characters. That's one reason why Nolan's 'realistic' batman movies worked so well. Man of Steel didn't have to follow in its footsteps in realism, but all DC Characters and Justice League characters don't fundamentally differ in style and mood. Sure, Batman is more grim than the Flash, but you don't have the large differences as say between Iron Man, Captain America or Deadpool.

What Marvel is really doing right now is continuously re-inventing their own movies, which makes them really diverse. They are working on Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and Dr Strange movies. This is the diversity that DC simply doesn't have in their universe, or doesn't know how to use. The fact that Marvel is able to produce 2 movies a year (they are aiming at 3 movies, I head) and DC can only do 1 every 2-3 years, also greatly impacts this. This means Marvel has the room to give characters movie screen time, whereas DC really doesn't. If you can only make so few movies, you will want to use your flag ship characters, like Batman and Superman, who are proven successes.

Jayngfet

2014-02-22, 04:04 AM

I'd say it's just the opposite.

Why did Green Lantern suck? It only used material written less than five or so years before the movie came out. It totally ignored most of the ground breaking, award winning material in favor of just rehashing the origin Geoff Johns wrote.

Why was Man of Steel so questionable? The same recent self consciousness and bizarre aesthetic choices one finds in the New 52. I didn't catch much of Bryne's work, let alone anything later.

Why was Nolan's batman so great? Well most of the groundwork was laid for the characters and plotlines decades ago and all they did was condense it into something concise and taking the best bits from O'Neil and Millar's takes on the character and bringing it to life. Aside from obvious issues(cough*robin*cough) there's no real shame in the idea of Batman and it's done by people who love the character in all forms almost unconditionally.

If you could find me a director who loves O'Neils Green Lantern as much as the others loved O'Neils Batman or O'Neils Iron Man, I'd be on board in a heartbeat. Heck, I've always firmly believed that the 70's through the early 90's could reasonably be cleaned up and cleaned up into a nice, groundbreaking, emotionally resonant trilogy with plenty of room for a creative teams personal stamp on it.

This is arguably why Arrow has been getting so consistently good and catching as much praise as it has. In the days of the first episodes Stephen Amell spent his days smack-talking the comics to sound cool and Oliver hung around with some flat original characters. Then once the second half of the season was written and he began interacting with people from the actual books more the show became more popular. Now we're getting the material being given the attention it deserves and the show is more popular than ever.

I hate to keep bringing up the same guy, but it's a good rule of thumb for me. If your adaptation has at least a little bit taken from an O'Neil run it's generally a good sign. The only possible exception is maybe Wonder Woman, but even then you gotta recognize that that particular run had a major effect on the character for years after.

Pronounceable

2014-02-22, 06:10 AM

There have been so few DC comic book movies made outside of Superman and Batman.
...
I’m wondering why?

But Warner Bro as a movie studio has not really put forth any real effort behind anything other than Batman and Superman because the simply don’t know where to start and where to take these characters.
I believe you already answered your own question there.
...
Even simple translation of a work of art causes a whole bunch of changes and the very idea of attempting to switch mediums with %100 accuracy is dumb beyond belief (protip: a large fraction of comicbook nerds are dumb beyond belief). Adapting something into a completely different medium is very hard work if you're not just halfassing it for a couple of quick bucks.

Manga Shoggoth

2014-02-22, 06:39 AM

There have been so few DC comic book movies made outside of Superman and Batman. According to Wikipedia, Swamp Thing, Supergirl, Steel, Catwoman, Watchmen, Jonah hex and Green Lantern are the only DC characters to get a movie outside of superman and batman (and even then 2 or 3 if you count Steel, are related to them). I’m purposefully not counting imprints and animated films here.

I’m wondering why?

It really comes down to cost/benefit. Making a movie of a comic book character is expensive (heck - making movies is expensive), and you have to be able to draw lots of people in with the title you are using. That's why the best-known titles get the preferential treatment. The punters (beyond the comic fans) are less likely to turn up for complete unknowns.

There are exceptions, however, to the best of my knowledge, most of all of them bombed as films. I was amazed when they made Men in Black (a successful example), which was a comic I'd never even heard of. Elektra I'd only heard of in passing, and Howard the Duck was a fine (if surreal) comic that was... well, there is a reason for suppressing memories...

Then, there's the Incredibles, which solved the question of "which comic" by going for "All of them".

Soras Teva Gee

2014-02-22, 08:12 AM

There's nothing's wrong with DC characters that kicking the comics into an incinerator and ignoring the fandom utterly wouldn't fix. You in many ways do that anyways... and should quite often too.

You just need to make you know the proverbial "good movie" and DC/Warner largely hasn't with someone not SuperBat. By which I mean a strong commerical success not a qualitative one, their distinguish competition has been laughing all the way to the bank on some rather undistinguished faire. DC actually has only made Bats work, Supes is rather lackluster so far.

There are exceptions, however, to the best of my knowledge, most of all of them bombed as films. I was amazed when they made Men in Black (a successful example), which was a comic I'd never even heard of. Elektra I'd only heard of in passing, and Howard the Duck was a fine (if surreal) comic that was... well, there is a reason for suppressing memories...

Men in Black isn't (meaningfully) a comic book movie. The comics are simply irrelevant there. They worked because it was a decent action movie with a major star charisma anchoring it. Will Smith at the height of his powers.

I might argue that Iron Man is the same exception. It worked mostly on the back of some of the best marketing and Downey Jr just being so damn entertaining to watch. And without him the whole MCU thing might have never gotten off the ground.

And let's be honest... if Iron Man was A tier character then its only because Spidey and X-men were S tier above it. He was not a rich well outside the Avenger for stories, you maybe heard of Iron Man but like hell if you've heard of say his villains. Heck you still haven't.

The whole Avengers thing might be said to have come about because Marvel had already sold its SuperBat pair and still can't use them in movies. Its why we didn't have Wanda and Pietro, they're (in theory) part of the X-franchise.

Man on Fire

2014-02-22, 09:45 AM

Ok so an interesting idea I came up with. Thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer I’ve been thinking a lot about comic book movies. Well ok, thinking about them more than usual.

There have been so few DC comic book movies made outside of Superman and Batman. According to Wikipedia, Swamp Thing, Supergirl, Steel, Catwoman, Watchmen, Jonah hex and Green Lantern are the only DC characters to get a movie outside of superman and batman (and even then 2 or 3 if you count Steel, are related to them). I’m purposefully not counting imprints and animated films here.

I’m wondering why?

One theory I came up with is that these characters have grown too old, some of them have been around since the beginning of comic books. Maybe there’s too much back-story for writers to be able to write a good story in film form.

Captain America has been around since 1939. Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye and Black Widow were all created in the 60s. Hell, Star Lord debuted in 1976, Groot in 1960, Drax the Destroyer in 1973 (as well as Thanos), Gamora in 1975 and Rocket Racoon in 1976. Hell ,the name Guardians of the Galaxy is from 1969. The youngest members of Guardians in comics - Phyla-Vell from 2003 and Cosmo from 2007 didn't made it to the silver screen.
Maybe how old character is has nothing to do with it?

I know when I got into comics I purposefully avoided DC, not because of any sort of dislike, but because I was intimidated by them, superman has been around since 1938, he’s 76 years old. (Ok when I got into super heroes he was like 50 or so, so but still). Superman already had fifty years of stories written about him and I was afraid of being drowned in back-story. The same thing went for The Flash, Wonder Woman, Aqua Man and all the others.

You do realize you don't have to read ALL of their history to get the character, right? Especially with DC, where they several times did the reboots that specifingly ERASED everything that was before? When you started it would be around 1988, two years after all 50s of Superman's history ceased to matter. He had only two years worth of history for you to catch up and most of it was John Byrne's run, still placed as one of the best jumping points on the character.

That’s a long time to stay in print and a ton of history and background to have stacked onto your character. That sounds like a tremendous resource if you’re studying up on the subject. But that’s also a lot to study. So if you’re tasked with writing a Superman script, you’re going to have to read up on him, but that takes time you don’t have, deadlines being what they are. So you use what you know, that’s the Superman movies and your basic knowledge you acquired as a kid. That results in Superman Returns and Man of Steel. Both of which are remakes of the first two Superman movies.
Or, you ask comics geeks for recommendations and you stick to the best of said character's stories. Nobody wants any of the dumb things on silver screen. You don't need to make a story about Superman splitting into two people, Doctor Strange becoming traditional superhero or Wonder Woman being replaced by Artemist who went to fight such "iconic" villains as this guy
http://i.imgur.com/CtbczRe.jpg
Nobody wants to see that on the silver screen. On the other hand, chances we are going to see Thor saying "Ultron. We would have words with thee (http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/avengers-v-ultron.jpg)" in Avengers 2 is pretty high, because that's an iconic moment from well-loved story.
See how in Iron Man Tony Stark is injured in Afganistan in an ambush and needs arc reactor to keep him alive. While in original story he was injured in Vietnam when he stepped on a landmine and needed to wear his suit at all time to survive.

Batman has a worse problem since most people remember him from the Adam West TV series and the Batman films kicked out back in the 90s. So now a writer only falls back on those memories for inspiration.

See? That's what I'm talking about. You use what works for the character and disregard everything that don't. Similiarly, when Heath Ledger was preparing to play Joker, you know how many comics he had to read with one of Batman's oldest and most iconic enemies? Two. Alan Moore's Killing Joke and Brian Azzarello's Joker, because continuity and history doesn't matter there - what matters was to get the right interpretation of the character. And Dark Knight's Joker is exactly that - combination of Joker's traits in those two stories. Deranged, amoral psychopath who is the only one to find his sick sense of humor anything but horryfing, which is how Azzarello potrayed him (his story was pretty much an intentional middle finger to anyone who finds Joker cool and entertaining) and a nihilistic nutjob who belives society is a sick joke and people are deeply rooten inside and in right predicatments are bound tol snap, in line with Moore's interpretation. Nobody needed Clown Prince of Crime from the 60s to write a good Joker.

Think about, six of DC’s big seven (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter), were created and put into print before 1950, that’s a lot of stories for each superhero.

Now I know that these characters are still being written about, so clearly there’s still more to tell. But Warner Bro as a movie studio has not really put forth any real effort behind anything other than Batman and Superman because the simply don’t know where to start and where to take these characters.

Meanwhile Green Arrow has his own tv show that doesn't give two third of dead dog's you know what about his long history.
Wanan make good Flash story? Pick up some well-liked Flash comics (4chan has great recommendations list), ignore what people hated, write. Same with Aquaman (who actually has loads of good comics and cartoon apperances) or Wonder Woman.
And yeah, Martian Manhunter sure is in big seven, is there character they use less? He haven't had an ongoing since what, 80s? 90s?

Manga Shoggoth

2014-02-22, 09:49 AM

Men in Black isn't (meaningfully) a comic book movie. The comics are simply irrelevant there. They worked because it was a decent action movie with a major star charisma anchoring it. Will Smith at the height of his powers.

I might argue that Iron Man is the same exception. It worked mostly on the back of some of the best marketing and Downey Jr just being so damn entertaining to watch. And without him the whole MCU thing might have never gotten off the ground.

Oh yes.

I've not seen the Iron Man films so I can't comment on the rights and wrongs there, but I do remember reading that Men I Black was, shall we say, something of a loose adaptation. I suspect that if I was a fan of the comic I would have hated it.

And this is all part of the problem - when you adapt a title (be it a book, comic, TV series) you have to deal with a whole load of baggage from the original source material. This is what makes any form of adaptation so difficult.

The best you can hope for is to either get the feel of the original through, or to create a new thing from the ground up. It is a very rare adaptation that gets the original all the way through.

Tengu_temp

2014-02-22, 10:53 AM

jedipotter

2014-02-22, 12:09 PM

One theory I came up with is that these characters have grown too old, some of them have been around since the beginning of comic books. Maybe there’s too much back-story for writers to be able to write a good story in film form.

Like anyone in Hollywood cares about history? Like a writer would start to write a super hero movie and say ''oh wait I must be true to the character''. So we would never get utterly stupid things like ''Oh Superman was a deep sea fisherman like on the deadliest catch, wow wicked cool! An he can be a depressed like twentysomething, wow awesome!" But oh, wait they did that....

If anyone makes a super hero movie, the first thing they do is forget about the history. They cheery pick like three iconic things, and make up the rest.

The real reason you did not see super hero movies is they are a joke in Hollywood. Remember that most of Hollywood wants to make ''Amazing stories that change the world'', and that is real life drama. Super heroes, like sci-fi is ''dumb kids stuff''. To play a character that has super powers is dumb, but if you sit around on a sofa and cry it is amazing.

Lord Raziere

2014-02-22, 12:17 PM

TheThan

2014-02-22, 02:26 PM

Yes I know a film adaptation is not the same as the source material.

You’re looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s already into comic books. Movie writers don't know Grant Morrison’s, Frank Millar’s, Jack Kirby’s or even Stan Lee’s work. If your lucky they’ll be familiar with a name or two. They can’t just say “let’s adapt Frank Millar’s Daredevil to a movie.” because they don’t know about it, they’re ignorant. Bryan Singer initially though X-men was unintelligent literature until someone gave him some comics to read and he changed his mind. He didn’t know how good the X-men could be as a story. The Avengers came out so good because Joss Whedon (a comic book writer) wrote and directed it; they got a guy who already knew comics to do it.

How does someone ignorant of any super hero really, supposed to know what their good or best or iconic or whatever adjective you want to use are supposed to be. He’s got to do at least some research, if this fictitious writer asks a hundred comic book nerds, he’s going to get a hundred different answers because not everyone agrees on the same thing.

At best they do a few minutes of research, maybe track down a graphic novel or something and try to write an adaptation. So what we end up with is people cherry picking those three iconic things they already know about that character. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But nothing else, they can’t really look into characters enough to write a good story for film.

That’s why all superman movies are mostly the same, and most batman movies are filled with silly over the top camp. Because that’s what the writers know.

Man on Fire

2014-02-22, 03:44 PM

ya. I don't even know where to start if I actually wanted to read about the characters I like.

that and there are so much, I doubt I could keep up with them all.

I mean in total, I have like what, two deadpool graphic novels, two or three ultimate spiderman, two ultimate avengers, and like, three ultimate x-men? oh and one annihilation and one civil war. and I barely know whats going on.

Here is the thing.
Pick up a single comics from the shelf that interests you
If you don't get what's going on it means one thing
Writers FAILED to make it acessible.
Nothing else.

And seriously through, continuity isn't so hard, especially when Marvel is bending backwards to have many comics acessible to new readers. Right now they have entire initiative of launching gazilion new series from #1, and last year they did the same. Say what's your drug and I'll give you recommendations.

Also, go here (http://comraderecs.tumblr.com/) and pick up a comics recommended about characters that interest you. Don't bother with continuity between them, it doesn't matter. As they say in begginer's guide (http://comraderecs.tumblr.com/post/44050513610/beginners-comic-guide-for-total-comic-noobs):

If you’re looking into what to read for long-running series or really popular characters, you may find that there’s a plethora of things under their name. Don’t worry, this happens. There are two approaches to take with this: read everything involving the character/series from the beginning, or read whatever is recommended in a list online. Most times, the best approach is the latter one.
Comics are really different from other media when it comes to continuity, since many writers and artists work on a character or series throughout the history of the series/character. What typically ends up happening is subplots or character development used by one writer will be ignored by future writers or only brought up sporadically, as the new writers will have their own ideas for the character/series. Sometimes, old things will be retconned out in order to better fit a plot of a new writer. This is all OK; rather than worrying about the entire history of a character that’s 50+ years old, you can simply choose to read the good stories involving that character. If you should decide you want to read more, you’re always able to go back and read whatever you missed.

Bolded by me

Ravens_cry

2014-02-22, 05:54 PM

No, I do not think they are too old. It'd be nice to branch away from the iconics, but Batman is an impressively versatile character. Silver Age silliness and Nolan-verse's grounded style all fit the character.
I'd like to see a female superhero movies. Besides Wonder Woman, Power Girl could be fun if done right, as a light hearted yet strong and competent hero that is more than a pair o' boobs in a white leotard. Not sure if it's the right time for it, but done right . . .
Blue Beetle could be fun.

Coidzor

2014-02-22, 08:42 PM

It's less the characters and more the competence of those who would put them to screen and the culture surrounding them.

Clearly Marvel has figured out how to get people who don't suck to handle it and hasn't had a toxic atmosphere whereas DC either just has a ****ty bullpen or can't get a good environment for making the films or both.

The Glyphstone

2014-02-22, 08:57 PM

The Men In Black comic came first? Huh. I always assumed it was a derivative spinoff of the movie franchise, the same way the Cartoon series was.

The Giant

2014-02-22, 09:14 PM

Ravens_cry

2014-02-22, 09:29 PM

DCAU was superior to pretty much anything from the animated Marvel series of the same period.

GolemsVoice

2014-02-22, 09:40 PM

As others said, I don't think the amount of backstory is a problem here.

Most superhero movies, at least the ones I know, are origin stories anyway, especially if there are sequels. So movies may emphasize one form of the many, say, Batman version out there, but they essentially create a new character anyway.

Most superheroes have a few distinctive characteristics anyway, the rest is just bonues. Batmans, for example, has his gadgets, has lost his parents which set him on the path of the Bat, doesn't kill and isn't exactly the most mentally stable person. That's the core of Batman that you have to bring into a movie for your audience to recognize Batman.
And since movies have a much broader audience than comic books, you'll have a lot of people who'll only have the faintest idea of these heroes anyway, so it really doesn't matter if Superman fought Mxrlszr in issue #315 back in '66.

Manly Man

2014-02-22, 10:22 PM

LokeyITP

2014-02-22, 10:34 PM

Most Marvel characters are bogged down in decades of backstory as well as having rogues' galleries that make even Green Lantern's look good (especially Iron Man). Both companies have hit the reset button often enough anyway, and lots of stuff is alternate timeline/imaginary too.

Hulk movies weren't so hot (Hulk's essentially a werewolf story, which is a tricky thing to do since you can't solve the main problem)...while most of Hulk's comic run hasn't been baby-talking angry Green Hulk, don't think it's come up much in the movies (except unexplained in Avengers).

And as above, do we really need to see Supes and Batman's origins for the fifth or sixth time each?

The real difference between Marvel and DC properties is in handling I guess. Certainly helps that they powered down the Avengers a bit, so you don't run into the what can Batman do that Superman can't problem. It probably also helps that the mutants aren't in the "main" marvel universe because that continuity is a mess.

Men in Black isn't (meaningfully) a comic book movie. The comics are simply irrelevant there. They worked because it was a decent action movie with a major star charisma anchoring it. Will Smith at the height of his powers.
I guess those thousands of Blossom fans saw the film a thousand times each? Wikipedia entry says filming started before Independence Day was released after all :) Actually looking over Smith's cv ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000226/?ref_=tt_cl_t2 ), Hollywood conventional wisdom that he's a bankable star looks even worse to me.

It was a fun, coherently plotted film that didn't take itself too seriously. Genre + budget too, luckily even Hollywood couldn't screw up marketing that. Often pointed to for saving scifi :)

Ravens_cry

2014-02-22, 10:44 PM

I'd love to see a well-done She-Hulk movie myself. <3
Ooh, me too! She's my other favourite superhero.:smallbiggrin:

Tengu_temp

2014-02-23, 01:24 AM

"The Problem" (http://comicsalliance.com/dc-comics-marvel-golden-age-silver-age-comics-history/)

That was an interesting read. Certainly sheds some light on some aspects of both DC and Marvel (especially the less glorious ones).

turkishproverb

2014-02-23, 01:52 AM

Kitten Champion

2014-02-23, 03:04 AM

Taking a brief look through some of my comics, every character can be summarized pretty accurately in less than a paragraph. I don't think continuity is that much of an issue seeing as every movie is assumed to begin with none whatsoever. The reasons they can't adapt Superhero comics well (or won't in many cases), are the same for any other IP. I don't think comics are special in this regard.

I was briefly tempted to write a long post about why DC movies are always going to be chasing Marvel movies until there's a substantial change in leadership at Warner Brothers, until I remembered that Chris Sims wrote the exact same essay, only about the comics. But everything he says applies equally to the movies: "The Problem" (http://comicsalliance.com/dc-comics-marvel-golden-age-silver-age-comics-history/).

I'm pretty new to comics, started actually buying them about 2 years ago, even I could tell the New 52 was seriously aimed at imitating Marvel from a few years before. Then Marvel went off to do its own thing, and DC's drowned in uncertainty.

Anyways,

I seriously thought, after leaving Thor: The Dark World, that this could easily be a DC Universe movie. Put Wonder Woman in Thor's place and switch some of the proper nouns, splat the DC logo before the opening credits, and it would work fine. But apparently I don't get DC, since it's all serious business all the time.

Man on Fire

2014-02-23, 04:27 AM

This reminds me that when DC executives said they don't think audience will find movie with female protagonist like Wonder Woman belivable, people from Marvel went to twitter to remind everybody their new blockbuster stars talking three and a racoon with a gun.

Ravian

2014-02-23, 04:30 AM

Marvel's always seemed very comfortable with what it does with comics. It's changed plenty sure (sometimes better, sometimes worse) but it never really needed to reinvent itself after it hit its stride in the 60's. Meanwhile DC always seems to want to be different. It has interesting characters sure (though more as icons than people, which leaves lots of room for writers to work with) but it keeps wanting to use those characters in some different way. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since change can lead to great new things. But when you keep wanting to be something else, it's hard to realize that what you are is pretty good already.

As an example I doubt that if people were asked to cast Wolverine or Spider-man their first question would be: Which version of Wolverine or Spider-man? Meanwhile if you're asked to cast Batman you immediately have to know whether you're doing a grim gritty Batman or a lighthearted camp batman or anything in between. Sure people will have disagreements on the casting but with most Marvel settings, the characters are stable enough that you can depend on their personality to stay (mostly) the same throughout.

The movies are similar. Though marvel also took some time to find its groove. Many of the early superhero movies of the millennium (which has basically been the most successful era for superhero movies in history) ran into the problem of wanting to sell themselves as action movies. That's why we had a lot of "edgy" characters like Blade, Electra and Daredevil (which were all mediocre to awful). Marvel also shelled out a couple of their more complete franchises like Spider-man and X-men, but those had a very iconic feel to them (Every kid knows about Wolverine and Spider-man after all) and were more contained.

Then around the same time, Marvel made Iron Man and DC got into the Nolanverse Batman. Both were very lucrative and popular. The problem for the DC though was that Marvel was able to find its stride there, they had a stable but incredibly open universe (Avengers are arguably the baseline setting for Marvel since their membership is the least tied down by number or special requirements) From there they could basically stick in any title they wanted and had the rights to, and now they have an invincible snowball of movies. Meanwhile the Dark Knight Trilogy was more closed because of the whole iconic interpretation. The Nolanverse couldn't really stick in superpowers without losing the feel to it, and by the time it finished and they could move onto other projects (aside from the travesty of Green Lantern) Marvel was unstoppable. Now once again they're trying to play catch-up, but they're never really comfortable with what they've got and have to keep changing the mood of things.

Aotrs Commander

2014-02-23, 10:20 AM

I was briefly tempted to write a long post about why DC movies are always going to be chasing Marvel movies until there's a substantial change in leadership at Warner Brothers, until I remembered that Chris Sims wrote the exact same essay, only about the comics. But everything he says applies equally to the movies: "The Problem" (http://comicsalliance.com/dc-comics-marvel-golden-age-silver-age-comics-history/).

That was a fascinating read, and I think I'm inclined to agree with the conclusion.

Though to be fair to DC, their animated series - the DCAU and Young Justice (and BatB, once you realised what it was trying to be) were really good. I think 1990 X-Men (which was single-handedy responsible for getting into superheroes stuff, period) held up quite well in comparison (at had ended by the time the DCAU really hit it's stride with Justice League), though it was held back by a few things (not being allowed to say "dead" at all robbed it of a bit of maturity, for one).

Marvel hasn't managed to quite hit the same level not or any length of time anyway - though they must have been laughing when DC killed YJ.

masamune1

2014-02-23, 10:20 AM

It has nothing to do with age.

It has nothing to do with them being origin stories or not.

It has everything to do with lack of planning and how these movies were handled.

Don't try and imagine that DC has failed because of something inherently wrong with their franchises, or that Marvel has succeeded because of something inherently right with their own (and I should take time to say that many people aren't especially happy with some Marvel movies either). The problem is that they just don't know what they are doing.

Green Lantern failed because they had a messy script; Superman Returns failed because it was just a rehash of the old 70's / 80's movies and, worse, not a full reboot. They have little faith in other heroes like Flash or Wonder Woman or all their other heroes.

The Nolan films have been a problem, because Christopher Nolan didn't want to make them part of a bigger franchise; he wanted them to be a stand-alone trilogy. That was a bad thing, because it necessitated a reboot in the near future. But the studio could have overridden him. Also they have taken bad lessons from it such as that all their heroes should be gritty and realist.

Fact is, the success of Marvel has everything to do with the fact that they are building a franchise and everyone knows that. Their movies only have to be decent, because they are part of a bigger whole. DC has failed to rival Marvel because they never attempted to create such a thing, or if they did their attempts have been clunky. In part this is because the Marvel movies are more specialised- Sony specialises in Spiderman and Fox in X-Men because that is their only franchises; Marvel Studios specialises in its superhero movies because they are all part of a shared universe and Marvel Studios only makes comic book movies based on characters that it owns- and since its a new studio, it has much less to lose and much mer to gain.

DC Comics is owned by Warner Bros. and its Warner Bros. that make these movies. They have the rights to every single DC character and they keep falling back on the two they know will make them money (Batman and Superman) because they are afraid to take risks; at the same time, they are impatient and weren't inclined to slowly build up a shared universe over several years. Now that Marvel has done just that and is being much more successful with it, they are rushing in by making MoS 2 a set-up movie for a JL film that will follow it up immediately.

Yes, there are differences between the two franchises and a DC shared movie verse would present different challenges to a Marvel one, but the truth is they just haven't tried. They waited to see if Avengers succeeded or bombed and now they are playing catch-up. They don't know how to handle their own characters and they've have years to do something with them. And that is why DC is not doing as well as Marvel.

jedipotter

2014-02-23, 12:51 PM

Congratulations, you discovered the biggest problem with DC comics, and Marvel comics, and most western superhero comics in general - decades and decades of amassed continuity create a brick wall that's extremely hard to penetrate for new fans, creating one of the most insular and newbie-unfriendly hobbies in the world. And when they try to fix this problem by resetting the continuity, they almost always do it in the clumsiest way possible that creates as many problems as it solves at best.

This is not true. Other then the handfull of die hard fans, most 'avarage' fans only know and care about five years or so of continuity and history. And worse the average writer only cares about a year or two. And even worse so writers only care about thier own personal continuity and history(So if they start writing on #302, they don't care what happened in 1-301 as they don't exist in thier mind).

So when you pick up #302, it does not matter if in #50 X happened, or #130 Y happened, or even in #298 K happened.....almost no one else cares or remembers. Us die hard fans pick up #302 and it has a story that does not fit with the story in#250, and it is not a reimage or whatever....it is just a writer that either does not know the story from #250, or simply does not care.

Soras Teva Gee

2014-02-23, 01:40 PM

This is not true. Other then the handfull of die hard fans, most 'avarage' fans only know and care about five years or so of continuity and history. And worse the average writer only cares about a year or two. And even worse so writers only care about thier own personal continuity and history(So if they start writing on #302, they don't care what happened in 1-301 as they don't exist in thier mind).

So when you pick up #302, it does not matter if in #50 X happened, or #130 Y happened, or even in #298 K happened.....almost no one else cares or remembers. Us die hard fans pick up #302 and it has a story that does not fit with the story in#250, and it is not a reimage or whatever....it is just a writer that either does not know the story from #250, or simply does not care.

If we grant your points at face value I will further point out they make a highly compelling argument for doing away with the entire system outright.

Because its a lie. Nobody actually tries to put together 50+ years of publishing and make it all matter... but somehow people pretend otherwise.

Of course what they are really doing is simply selecting a personal fanon of what they know and therefore consider to count most, while quietly disregarding (emotionally if not intellectually) the rest. Of course since no one else is going to share an exact fanon with anyone else... well its just a mess because you have various people all absolutely sure they are the One True Canon giving rise to the sort of general agreement it exists... but with no real detail.

And when someone outside looks in it no wonder the mess looks confusing.

Of course the sort of illusion of canon (we are far from the days of the No-Prize) still warps and distorts the actual source material because the lunatics run the asylum.

The details may not matter but there's still the persistent assumption that the reader knows everything/everyone. Along with a drive to keep recycling the old standbys everyone loves, not do new things. Because you're still writing for the guy that's been at this for years and can actually be bothered to collect the two-to-whatever back issues that drive not just the arc but say the entire writer's run over several years.

When I first got into comics I spent six months or so being fairly confused and combing around things like the trades of Morrison's X-men run to actually get such basic things as why Scott Summers was with Emma Frost now not Jean Grey. Nevermind I entered (predictably) in the middle of an arc that wasn't all that related but felt like it was before I was able to track down all the material to understand that the Xorneto clusterfrag means there wasn't a clear A-B-C...-Z progression.

And that's not bad luck it replayed in miniature every time I picked up a new book unless I grabbed something big showy and obvious like a #1. I loved say Brubaker's Cap to death... but I needed to track down a couple of trades because I didn't jump in at the begining and that was vital to understanding the on-going Winter Soldier arc and Cap's own book following his death.

Comics are big damned mess to pick up.

And its not that there aren't others the same way (manga, webcomics, some tv shows, etc) but they are far far more accessible with instantly clear progressions because they are all one tightly confined progression of events. Comics require you to follow the entire company's publishing line or you have completely random people show up regularly with minimal to any explanation.

SeeDarkly_X

2014-02-24, 12:32 AM

Are DC characters too old?
No. That's not the problem.

DC characters are simply being mismanaged by a company that is working a marketing and money game instead of focusing on creating believable/relatable stories and trusting the creative teams with the outcome.

In the last few years they've got it in their heads that in order to make money they have to make the best marketing choices... so casting, story, aesthetics, designs, everything gets filtered through that lens and often it's measured by immediate popular trends or news.

For instance... when Marvel announced that, as part of a long running storyline involving Northstar and his boyfriend in Astonishing X-Men, they would present their first same-sex marriage, DC immediately fabricated news that one of their main characters would be rewritten as gay in the New 52.
Whatever one may think about the positive nature of that generally... it wasn't done as a way that had a positive message about that issue, and it wasn't done in any organic manner with a story being told. It was done to gouge the press Marvel was getting in order highlight themselves as if they offered something superior. And when it turned out to be the Alan Scott Green Lantern? The greater audience didn't even know who they were talking about (most assumed Hal Jordan thanks to that awful movie,) which created a ton of confusion and didn't really deliver on the expectation DC set up with their own announcement about that "major character" being gay. It got them press, but it didn't improve anything they were doing creatively. (It may have actually caused more outrage among fans who thought Batwoman should get married to her girlfriend and, IIRC, the writer for the title even quit because DC wouldn't let that story go forward.)

It's a singular example, but it speaks to the core of what they keep doing wrong. Making decisions based less on creative integrity and more on marketing strategies.

Other thoughts:
*Young Justice (possibly their best written original TV series in years)... shut down because they had the "wrong audience" watching for the toys they "wanted to sell." Paul Dini confirmed this fact (http://smodcast.com/episodes/paul-dini-shadow-of-the-shadow-of-the-bat/).

(Just pause there a moment... recognize that they KNEW they HAD a STRONG audience... and cancelled anyway for marketing reasons!)

*Films other than Bat/Super Man... Never forget they had Joss Whedon to write/produce Wonder Woman. We'll never know how good that would've been, but we definitely know what he's capable of and what fools DC are for passing on that opportunity.

*Man of Steel was NEVER supposed to franchise out to Justice League originally. Go back to find when that idea first surfaced and I guarantee you'll find it was reactionary to Avengers news. (I don't recall specifically, but I do have the vague memory that it happened after or during first weekend box-office returns, but I could be wrong on that point.)

*For the record, of things DC puts out currently, the only thing I am enjoying is Arrow... but even that has some flaws that I see are inherent to the same thing they are doing wrong with everything else.
Yeah they make money. Yeah they make us talk. But no... we don't love them the way we once did and they keep disappointing us.

TL;DR version? (Because damn it, someone got me ranting again...sigh...)
Make Mine Marvel. 'Nuff said.

Avilan the Grey

2014-02-24, 03:11 AM

Backstory is good. Canon is good. The difference between Marvel (in house) and DC / Warner is that Marvel knows how to pick and choose, and even use Alternative Universe canon when it makes a better movie (and also keeps a heck of a better in-house continuity, let's face it the Cap / Thor / Iron Man / Avengers universe IS a whole new alternative universe.).

DC on the other hand... They (as pointed out above) only used brand new material (and badly) in Green Lantern, keeps rebooting Bats (not bad movies as such, but if you keep doing that you can't build a movie universe) and the quality of his films have been all over the place, and seems determined to make Supes "Darker and Edgier". Oh and keeps Epic-Failing Wonder Woman in general.
But then DC Comics are the Kings Of Reboots. Since these days their entire line of comics reboots every 24 - 36 months, it is not very strange that they can't cobble together a coherent movie universe. Also, they seem determined to bring the worst of the 90ies back, with Sexing Up their females, give out Big Guns and Darker And Edgier all over the place.

Anyway, yes. The more backstory you have, the more you can pick and choose what you want, and the fans are going "ooh they are going with THAT bit". If you know what you are doing, at least.

Talya

2014-02-26, 04:50 PM

Several execs at Warner Brothers got a rude awakening in the last couple years.

You see, Warner Brothers had hired some fringe-unknown with cult status among a loyal fan following to write and direct a Wonder Woman movie that would begin their tie-ins to other DC material. This little known writer/director had a lot of comic book experience (writing marvel and dark horse comics for several years) and was known for being able to write kickass female leads. However, due to creative differences, the man left and DC put the project on indefinite hold.

Shortly afterward, he wrote and/or directed three critically acclaimed movies (one of which he also produced and funded), one of them being Disney's Avengers, which is now the third highest grossing film of all time.

It's probably a good thing for Joss Whedon's career that he bailed on Warner Brothers rather than cave in and make the movie their way.

It's a very bad thing for Warner Brothers that they forced him to make that choice.

Zmeoaice

2014-02-26, 07:22 PM

Marvel hasn't managed to quite hit the same level not or any length of time anyway - though they must have been laughing when DC killed YJ.

Well, considering they killed Spectacular Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men, and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and replaced them with complete and utter garbage, they're not ones to laugh.

TheThan

2014-02-26, 07:53 PM

That’s the sad thing, Warner Bros already had someone who knew the source material and was probably dedicated enough to put out a really good movie. Joss Whedon already has enough writing and directing credentials that they really should have just let him do his work and reap the rewards.

Man on Fire

2014-02-27, 05:27 PM

Well, considering they killed Spectacular Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men, and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and replaced them with complete and utter garbage, they're not ones to laugh.

They haven't killed Spectacular Spider-Man, Sony had to terminate it to keep Spider-Man movie rights. As for Avengers:EMH and garbage that are USM, Assemble, Agents of S.M.A.S.H. and second half of EMH season 2, blame Jeph Loeb. Marvel's cartoon division started sucking once he got in charge and people, like Paul Dini, complained he stops them from writing serious episodes.

Aotrs Commander

2014-02-27, 06:16 PM

To be fair to USM... It's not as bad as everyone says. Yes, it's definitely in the "camp" version, but I actually don't object to that in principle. (I'd actually rather have silly and camp over Darkserious if you have to have one extreme of the other).

I think what started to distinguish it from the other Spider-Man cartoons is that they actually started to make Spidey the LEADER of his little group. And he starts actually learning about that sort of stuff and *gasp* taking responcibility, something 616 Spider-Man has never really done.

There's little things like in one episode, they have to get some sort of doody magic weapons to go fight Loki or something, but Spidey doesn't get one because he's the leader and has more important thing to be doing, i.e. leading.

Or the fact he has the steel spider armour and other gadgets and actually gets to USE them - but only at the appropriate junctures. Hell, it's just nice to see Spidey actually getting properly supported, for once.

If you can get past the camp and the "trying just a touch too hard to be cool" tone (which I suspect most people can't) and also the rage against it's essentially replacing Spectacular (I never saw enough of that to get invested enough it to be angry at that specifically), it's actually got an interesting dynamic.

Yes, it's not quite overall up to the standard of the earlier stuff like 1990s Spidey (or reputedly Spectacular), but it's not also objectively completely awful when taken on it's own merits.

Zmeoaice

2014-02-27, 08:19 PM

They haven't killed Spectacular Spider-Man, Sony had to terminate it to keep Spider-Man movie rights.

They didn't need to kill it, they could have bought the show and produced new episodes, or allowed Sony to keep television rights to Spider-Man.

To be fair to USM... It's not as bad as everyone says.

Yes it is. It fails as a comedy, and fails as an action series.

If you can get past the camp and the "trying just a touch too hard to be cool" tone (which I suspect most people can't) and also the rage against it's essentially replacing Spectacular (I never saw enough of that to get invested enough it to be angry at that specifically), it's actually got an interesting dynamic.

You should totally watch Spectacular Spider-Man, it's the best adaptation of Spidey outside the comics. All episodes are free on the Votrexx website.

http://myvortexx.com/shows/the-spectacular-spider-man

Also, most people who enjoyed Spectacular Spider-Man were looking forward to Ultimate Spider-Man because they were a fan of the Ultimate Comics. So the rage has less to do with replacing Spectacular as it does with ruining Spider-Man's character.

JBPuffin

2014-02-27, 08:27 PM

Oh yes.

I've not seen the Iron Man films so I can't comment on the rights and wrongs there, but I do remember reading that Men I Black was, shall we say, something of a loose adaptation. I suspect that if I was a fan of the comic I would have hated it.

And this is all part of the problem - when you adapt a title (be it a book, comic, TV series) you have to deal with a whole load of baggage from the original source material. This is what makes any form of adaptation so difficult.

The best you can hope for is to either get the feel of the original through, or to create a new thing from the ground up. It is a very rare adaptation that gets the original all the way through.

...might I suggest the Hobbit?

I mean, yeah, it's fantasy and a classic series of novels, but the films were an incredibly fit combination of "follow the material" with "creative license". That should be the standard: keep to your books, but skip the five-hour chase scene and flesh out a few details. In the end, you can even go to Stephanie Miller levels of get-feedback-from-the-author (we've all heard people talk about that little "dream scene" fiasco, correct?), but as long as you pick a decent series or two, do the research with that, and take INSPIRATION, not DIRECTION from them, you'll be fine.

Aotrs Commander

2014-02-28, 05:15 AM

Yes it is. It fails as a comedy, and fails as an action series.

And yet, still better Spider-Man than the comics.

(I personally also find it not to be devoid of humour, even if misaimed sometimes.)

Also, most people who enjoyed Spectacular Spider-Man were looking forward to Ultimate Spider-Man because they were a fan of the Ultimate Comics. So the rage has less to do with replacing Spectacular as it does with ruining Spider-Man's character.

Considering how I consider the Ultimate unverse in it's entirely to be a festering canker on the face of Marvel and largely if not singularly responsible for the dire state of Marvel's comic quality currently and in the recent past, I cannot see how USM not being like it could possibly be a bad thing. (In fact, I didn't watch it at first because I feared it would be.)

That possible link also doesn't sell me very well on Spectacular, either: if it's truly like anything like anything from the Ulimate comics universe, I wouldn't give it houseroom if you paid me.

Zmeoaice

2014-02-28, 01:31 PM

And yet, still better Spider-Man than the comics.

Are you talking about Spider man in the 1960-90s, or the more recent ones like One More Day and Superior Spider-Man?

Considering how I consider the Ultimate universe in it's entirely to be a festering canker on the face of Marvel and largely if not singularly responsible for the dire state of Marvel's comic quality currently and in the recent past, I cannot see how USM not being like it could possibly be a bad thing. (In fact, I didn't watch it at first because I feared it would be.)

Except we're talking about Ultimate Spider-Man, pre-Miles not the Ultimate Universe as a whole.

That possible link also doesn't sell me very well on Spectacular, either: if it's truly like anything like anything from the Ulimate comics universe, I wouldn't give it houseroom if you paid me.

Spectacular is based primarily on 616, although there are some elements from Ultimate Spider-Man. It's definitely not a grimdark series.

Coidzor

2014-02-28, 02:38 PM

Are you talking about Spider man in the 1960-90s, or the more recent ones like One More Day and Superior Spider-Man?

Well, One More Day did set the bar pretty low. XD

Except we're talking about Ultimate Spider-Man, pre-Miles not the Ultimate Universe as a whole.

Is Ultimate Spider-Man even all that connected to the Ultimate universe?

Ravian

2014-02-28, 02:54 PM

Is Ultimate Spider-Man even all that connected to the Ultimate universe?

He's interacted with various characters, though I don't think he's ever joined the Ultimates if that's what you're asking. (he's a minor anyway, they'd never let him join, especially since they don't use secret identities anyway)

Aotrs Commander

2014-02-28, 03:00 PM

Are you talking about Spider man in the 1960-90s, or the more recent ones like One More Day and Superior Spider-Man?

Sorry, I do apologise... I didn't qualify that statement, did I? Yes, I did mean "recent" comics, the aforementioned in particular.

Metahuman1

2014-02-28, 04:05 PM

Ultimate Spiderman, like the rest of the Ultimate Universe, didn't really have any meaningful problems and was very well done prior to Ultimates Volume 3 bringing in a negative chance in universe tone, and being shortly followed up with Ultimatum, which destroyed the Ultimate universe as a whole.

And even after Ultimatum, Ultimate Spiderman remained the one readable title prior to Miles coming in. (Parker was the only person you genuinely sympathized with and liked left in that universe that wasn't dead, and then they killed him.)

Yes, the New 52 has bad stuff in it, and yes, there having a hellish time thanks to incompetence in editorial, management and marketing, but there are still gems. And at least after doing crap like Amazon's Attack, Countdown to Final Crisis, Identity Crisis and Cry for Justice they had the Decency to ATTEMPT to reboot and fix it. Marvel STILL hasn't invalidated Civil War and One More Day, Avengers Vs. X-men and Avengers Arena as being no longer Canon, as I pointed out in another thread that it's still canon that Xavier took a new form of sentient life he discovered and enslaved it for decades under his teams noses and repeated Mind Raped numerous team members to make them speak and behave as he wanted them too.

Meanwhile DC tried to fix it with a mixed bag reboot that at least had good points like Aquaman, Earth 2, Supergirl, Batgirl/Batwoman and Animal Man. They also gave us the absolute Gem we know called Kingdom Come, the book that is widely regarded to have Ended the Iron Age of Comics.

Say, Lichy, ya don't know anyone who'd be willing to take a soul in exchange for Complete executive control of Disney and Warner Bros for all eternity, do you?

Zmeoaice

2014-03-03, 01:23 PM

Sorry, I do apologise... I didn't qualify that statement, did I? Yes, I did mean "recent" comics, the aforementioned in particular.

If anything that means the Spider-Man cartoon should be really, really, good instead of sub par- or garbage which it is, to make up for the bad comics.

So now we have poor comics, a horrid TV show, and a mediocre film series. Spidey's future isn't looking that good.

Coidzor

2014-03-03, 02:31 PM

He's interacted with various characters, though I don't think he's ever joined the Ultimates if that's what you're asking. (he's a minor anyway, they'd never let him join, especially since they don't use secret identities anyway)

And even after Ultimatum, Ultimate Spiderman remained the one readable title prior to Miles coming in. (Parker was the only person you genuinely sympathized with and liked left in that universe that wasn't dead, and then they killed him.)

That's what I was alluding to. My recollection of the Ultimate Universe was that it's the Universe Marvel made where everyone but Peter Parker is an unlikeable **** or ***** for their stories where it's just a bunch of jerks being jerks to one another for catharsis. Well, that and that's where they stuck the Samuel L. Jackson version of Nick Fury in the comics.

Metahuman1

2014-03-03, 02:44 PM

In fairness, Ultimate Nick Fury existed before that problem happened. But yes, as a rule, by the end of Ultimatum, everyone in Ultimate Marvel was either dead, or an unlikeable jerk you wouldn't want a thing to do with if you met them in real life, with or with out there powers.

The sole Exception was Peter Parker, who, despite getting tortured as bad or worse then his 616 counter part, managed to remain a likeable person, and at the end, at least had the decency to be given a proper hero's death, sacrificing himself to save the lives of the entirety of New York City. If you must kill a hero, that's the way to do it. Not that you should be killing heros unless it really needs to happen.

Man on Fire

2014-03-03, 04:42 PM

sktarq

2014-03-03, 08:01 PM

And that's not bad luck it replayed in miniature every time I picked up a new book unless I grabbed something big showy and obvious like a #1....
Comics are big damned mess to pick up.

And its not that there aren't others the same way (manga, webcomics, some tv shows, etc) but they are far far more accessible with instantly clear progressions because they are all one tightly confined progression of events. Comics require you to follow the entire company's publishing line or you have completely random people show up regularly with minimal to any explanation.

I could say the same for much of this thread actually.
I'm one of those guys who had tons of friends into various comics but never even read them. My experience was basically limited to the 90's X-Men cartoons, Batman the Animated Series (and some Adam West reruns) and medley of other cartoons and movies from the point where superman equates with altering the rotational dynamic of earth with traveling through time.
That said I was familiar enough with all the major characters and villians that I haven't yet run into much about the various movies that I hadn't heard of before-except in DC[ universe, and as for translating them into movies I never got into most of the DC movies....mostly because most of the DC movies seemed to spend more time on the special effects or a female characters physical assets than story. And really that's what it comes down to. It isn't about making superhero movies per se as making movies. About creating characters that most people care about, or find cathartic, or can make us laugh. For a long time I always figured it was that the DC people had ideas of what the characters had to be based on the comics and tossed a few too many highlights from favored issues up on the screen and forgot to tie them together but discussions with people who spend their days reading about these people have convinced me otherwise. Yes both get updated but with the dramatic exception of the Nolan batman trilogy (which honestly felt wierdly curtailed to me) the DC universe stuff felt weak on the things that make a good movie. Story arcs that were not trite or shallow, actors that could at least somewhat cominicate an emotion...and visually that did make me feel that I was being treated like a man child. I do like the more serious aspect that has come over comic book films to a large extent, largly because I found what existed before was well about Sesame st levels of mental stimulation (Action without a a why or consequence doesn't stimulate me). I would leave movies feeling as though I had just been treated as if I was every cliche of a comic book nerd, so it didn't surprize me that my non-comic book reading friends thought the movies (and thus comics in general) were pretty childish and bad and worth the stereotypes. Now that isn't to say that being deadly serious is a good thing but a degree was very necessary. A swing back to Tim Burton levels of comic/action/seriousness is enough. Hell I consider Indiana Jones to basically be an Adventure Comic Film that happened to be an original character instead of an adaptation. Now I think that Marvel captured that swing better. I think that DC has struggled to get a story story that captures me and gets me to both suspend my disbelief and care.
From what I've read both here and elsewhere DC does seem to have a looser characterization of it Title characters allowing for bigger changes through time and that I think has come through in the movies as the characters not really being well ....characterized. I don't know if it was a fear to commit to a certain version or what but It has come up in conversations after the movies a few times now.
So no I don't think it is the age of the characters but an issue of poor screenwriting basically.

Raimun

2014-03-03, 09:06 PM

I'd say Marvel has more interesting characters overall. Sure, DC has Batman and Superman but what else? I mean, are other big DC characters really that big outside of hardcore DC-fans? Do Martian Manhunter or Flash really resonate well with people?

I dunno, I've always found most DC-heroes to be a bit generic. Except Batman.

Of course, one big reason is that DC/Warner has not been as liberal with movie releases.

Metahuman1

2014-03-03, 09:15 PM

I jsut wanted to point out, that Miles is actually good, decent person. His whole reason to be a superhero was, that after getting superpowers he hide it, because hsi dad hated superheroes and mutants. And once Peter Parker died, Miles blamed himself, thinking that if he became a hero, he could have saved him. So upon hsi death Peter became Uncle Ben to new Spider-Man.
Also, they are launchign now All-New Ultimates series. Which is starring Miles and some of the most decent and nicer superheroes of Ultiamte Universe - Spider-Woman (now Black Widow), Kitty Pryde, Cloak & Dagger and Kate Bishop (also, team without any white guys)

The same Kitty Pryde who, not long after Ultimatum attacked Peter's Neighbor hood and declared Magneto was right?

When I said everyone turned into either a dead person or an ass in that universe, it was not Hyperbole. So, unless this a total from scratch reboot of the ultimate universe, count me out.

Also, a Super Team that's advertising itself as a "team with out any white guys."? That just sounds like were trying desperately to bend over backwards to be politically correct.

Edit: DC has there fun characters, watch Young Justice or the original Teen Titans for proof of that.

Wonder Woman, post crisis on earths flash, all the green lanterns EXCEPT Hal Jordon, Powergirl, Dr. Fate, the list goes on.

TheThan

2014-03-03, 09:40 PM

True, but they aren’t house hold names or have some sort of qualifier before it.
That’s also a problem. There are a lot of different versions of the same character. Look how many different versions of batman there are. Picking just one version or deciding which the definitive version of any given character is nearly an impossible task.

Especially since much of what goes into a character is subjective. I could easily say that the Adam West version of Batman is the definitive version of the character (and probably even produce evidence to support my claim), while someone else could claim the Frank Millar version of Batman is the definitive version of that character (and probably produce evidence to support his claim as well). so there really is no accounting for taste.

also about Ultimate Kitty Pride: WTF?

Metahuman1

2014-03-03, 09:51 PM

also about Ultimate Kitty Pride: WTF?

This pretty much sums up everyone who didn't die by the end of Ultimatum in that universe who wasn't Peter Parker.

turkishproverb

2014-03-03, 09:52 PM

Metahuman1

2014-03-04, 12:12 AM

Yes, we killed that universes one Sympathetic character just to make room for a replacement sympathetic character, which means the only change is that someone died with out it being necessary.

Cause there are other things that could have motivated Miles to finally don the costume, it didn't have to be Peter dieing.

Again, the only good thing I really saw about that death was at least it as a true hero's death. Fallen in Battle saving millions of lives from your greatest foe, knowing the almost certain out come of not simply walking away and standing your ground anyway cause it was the right thing to do.

Man on Fire

2014-03-04, 09:29 AM

The same Kitty Pryde who, not long after Ultimatum attacked Peter's Neighbor hood and declared Magneto was right?

When I said everyone turned into either a dead person or an ass in that universe, it was not Hyperbole. So, unless this a total from scratch reboot of the ultimate universe, count me out.

Also, a Super Team that's advertising itself as a "team with out any white guys."? That just sounds like were trying desperately to bend over backwards to be politically correct.

I'll start from the last one.
Don't use term "politicall correctness", it's a buzzword privileged people (that is, white, straight men) use to complain whenever media are reaching for any audience that is not them. All-New Ultimates, alongside Mighty Avengers, is a step in positive direction for diversity and comics evolving away from pandering only to white men.
Second, no, team isn't adversizing itself that way. But it is team without white guys and it haven't escaped people's attention. Plus, so far it looks like it's going to be fun, light-hearted series.

Your impression of Ultimate Universe seems to be based solely on comics by Mark Millar, who did wrote everyone as jerks, and Jeph Loeb (who just sucked). But there are good things there too. For example, simple comparision.
Armor Wars in Marvel Universe is a sad tale of Tony Stark spiralling slowly into self-destructive madness out of guilt. Armor Wars in Ultimate is a lighthearted comedy in which Tony beats up Doctor Willy and Master Chief. There are taks on characters that don't reduce them just to jerks (for example, in Ultimate Nightmare we have Captain America giving speech to honor Russian soldiers who fought against Nazis on WWII and condemn their country for betraying them).

Nice for you to ignore everybody aside Kitty, that I mentioned and focus only on the one character you could actually complain about. This sure proves your point that nobody except Peter Parker is good in this universe.

Yes, we killed that universes one Sympathetic character just to make room for a replacement sympathetic character, which means the only change is that someone died with out it being necessary.

Cause there are other things that could have motivated Miles to finally don the costume, it didn't have to be Peter dieing.

Again, the only good thing I really saw about that death was at least it as a true hero's death. Fallen in Battle saving millions of lives from your greatest foe, knowing the almost certain out come of not simply walking away and standing your ground anyway cause it was the right thing to do.

You should realize, that with Peter around, Miles would be reduced to secondary character, another black sidekick, another black knock-off. It would be saying, as many comics have in the past, that black man cannot be real hero, just a cheap knockoff. Meanwhile Miles IS SPider-Man, he is hero everybody recognizes and love.. And quite frankly, he is damn good at it, on the same level as Ultimate Peter and much better than mainstream Spider-Man.

Ravens_cry

2014-03-04, 10:07 AM

I think Justice League Unlimited was helped a lot by the fact that it didn't focus just on the iconics. It also incorporated lesser known characters, giving them a chance to shine. Part of this was because they were basically forced to for licensing reasons, but it still worked very well. Also, it was animated, so they weren't afraid of letting the characters use awesome powers that'd make a special effects budget weep. It also had a very tender moment that is beautiful in its simplicity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyWJR6XHKsY&feature=player_detailpage#t=201).
No, I don't think the DC characters are too old, but I would like to see something more than Batman and Superman.

Kitten Champion

2014-03-04, 03:33 PM

Nice for you to ignore everybody aside Kitty, that I mentioned and focus only on the one character you could actually complain about. This sure proves your point that nobody except Peter Parker is good in this universe.

See, I barely remember what Metahuman's talking about. I know the much longer arc where Kitty leads the the mutant liberation of concentration camps, the war on genocidal sentinels, the creation of a mutant homeland in the middle of a poisoned desert while resisting both the pernicious American government and despotic Mutant nation of Tian through relatively bloodless means, and represented the best of the ideology of the X-Men oeuvre as a whole -- as a 16 year old girl.

A blip of bad writing out of context doesn't ruin a character or make her unsympathetic. She did the best she could with the best of intentions, and achieved more than jerkass characters did over the body of Ultimate Universe.

Metahuman1

2014-03-04, 04:10 PM

I'll start from the last one.
Don't use term "politicall correctness", it's a buzzword privileged people (that is, white, straight men) use to complain whenever media are reaching for any audience that is not them. All-New Ultimates, alongside Mighty Avengers, is a step in positive direction for diversity and comics evolving away from pandering only to white men.
Second, no, team isn't adversizing itself that way. But it is team without white guys and it haven't escaped people's attention. Plus, so far it looks like it's going to be fun, light-hearted series.

Your impression of Ultimate Universe seems to be based solely on comics by Mark Millar, who did wrote everyone as jerks, and Jeph Loeb (who just sucked). But there are good things there too. For example, simple comparision.
Armor Wars in Marvel Universe is a sad tale of Tony Stark spiralling slowly into self-destructive madness out of guilt. Armor Wars in Ultimate is a lighthearted comedy in which Tony beats up Doctor Willy and Master Chief. There are taks on characters that don't reduce them just to jerks (for example, in Ultimate Nightmare we have Captain America giving speech to honor Russian soldiers who fought against Nazis on WWII and condemn their country for betraying them).

Nice for you to ignore everybody aside Kitty, that I mentioned and focus only on the one character you could actually complain about. This sure proves your point that nobody except Peter Parker is good in this universe.

You should realize, that with Peter around, Miles would be reduced to secondary character, another black sidekick, another black knock-off. It would be saying, as many comics have in the past, that black man cannot be real hero, just a cheap knockoff. Meanwhile Miles IS SPider-Man, he is hero everybody recognizes and love.. And quite frankly, he is damn good at it, on the same level as Ultimate Peter and much better than mainstream Spider-Man.

That's your opinion on the phrase, your entitled too it. I'll leave it there so the thread doesn't get locked. That said, I had the qualifier that they were advertising this new team as "super team with out white guys." cause your phrasing made it sound like that's what they were doing, and it's exactly the sort of stunt I'd expect of the big two these days.

If they want to have a team that doesn't happen to have any white guys, fine and dandy, making that a selling point however, I take some issue with.

And my impression of the Ultimate universe was that it was good for the first 5 or so years on the whole. Ultimate's three was a warning sign but an ignorable one cause while it was bad and killed characters needlessly for shock value and didn't make much sense, it didn't effect the broader universe much, it just effected the Ultimate Universe Avengers. And the, Ultimatum happened, and it just went to seed after that and never properly recovered, and not real long after ultimatum I stopped giving a crap because if you weren't dead yet you either would be soon or you were a jerk I'd want nothing to do with. Which was not an environment I wanted to read about when I could be reading other, better, material. Spiderman was an exception, and yes, for while they had him teamed up in his book with Kitty, Bobby Drake and Johnny Storm, and that team up rapidly started falling apart during the incident I described, Kitty, Unveiling that she could now make herself denser to get super strength and durability along with going intangible to pass through solid objects, attacks peter's neighborhood and declares Magneto was right just after Magento killed dozens of X-men including Wolverine and Xavier in Ultimatum, and millions of none supers and none mutants. The only reason I know ANY of those things happened with Kitty was that it happened in Ultimate Spiderman, which I was still willing to tolerate cause of Peter being the main character.

And saying miles can't be a real hero in his own right with out Peter Dieing, that if Peter Hadn't Died Miles would just be a cheap knock off, does not inspire confidence in the idea that he's a strong, solidly written likeable character. Indeed, it undermines it. If he was as good as you say, and I don't have any particular beef with miles other then peter was killed off just to make room for him to be spider man instead of giving him a different name and costume, maybe if they were so concerned about him being his own man tweak his powers a bit more so that there more uniqe from Peter's, he shouldn't need to be Spider-man Specifically. They should have been able to just go "Ok, for the first time, the Ultimate Universe is gonna get a unique character that's a hero who doesn't exist in 616 verse.". Or, failing that, introduce him, Have him build a relation ship with Peter for a couple of years, and let Peter Decide he's had enough of the BS that comes to his life form being Spider-man and get out of it.

Unless your gonna tell me that legacy characters can't be good characters too?

Zmeoaice

2014-03-04, 06:57 PM

I'd say Marvel has more interesting characters overall. Sure, DC has Batman and Superman but what else? I mean, are other big DC characters really that big outside of hardcore DC-fans? Do Martian Manhunter or Flash really resonate well with people?

Yeah, but were Thor and Captain America, and even Iron Man, all that popular as well when their movies were released?

LokeyITP

2014-03-04, 10:51 PM

At time of first Cap movie: http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-07.html

But I'd probably look around 2 or 3 years prior to this, movie release probably bumped up their numbers :) http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

Coidzor

2014-03-04, 11:38 PM

Yeah, but were Thor and Captain America, and even Iron Man, all that popular as well when their movies were released?

Cap and Iron Man both had not-insignificant name recognition outside of the comic-buying population, of the three I'd say Thor was the least widely known as a figure from comics, though he's also the only one with any kind of existence outside of the IP created by Marvel as well.

Metahuman1

2014-03-05, 01:16 AM

Jayngfet

2014-03-05, 01:37 AM

Hulk and Captain America Did, Iron Man a little bit, Thor, maybe barely.

As for DC, if they really wanted to get off the ground, start doing Origin story's for some of you B-Listers. Do Aquaman, do Captain Marvel, do Power Girl, Do the third Blue Beetle. Hey, here's a great idea, do Static so that when Marvel has to do Black Panther, THEY look like Copy Cats.

It always troubles me that people just want the third blue beetle.

I mean why would you jump past people with decades of engaging stories, to focus on one guy who's mostly so-so?

I mean Jamie had his chance, and it was terribly done and didn't even make it to television. Just like Aquaman had his chance, and it was terribly done and didn't even make it to television. Or Wonder Woman, who was given two chances, both terrible, neither to television.

Oliver Queen made it, because it wasn't a friggin origin story. You got five minutes about who he was, then he went on to just shoot dudes as an Assassins's Creed knockoff. Barry Allen's actual show won't have the origin story, because that's already been covered.

Hell, I'm dreading a Captain Marvel movie that has to fit into the same style and tone of Man of Steel.

Avilan the Grey

2014-03-05, 02:22 AM

I'd say Marvel has more interesting characters overall. Sure, DC has Batman and Superman but what else?

Over the 15 years I collected DC comics I almost exclusively picked characters other than those two.

Wonder Woman, although she is officially "one of the big three" is always the black cheep, since she is far less popular (despite being just as iconic, oddly enough).

For some reason I ended up collecting almost only female heroes:
WW, Birds Of Prey (very good series the last 5 years before New 52), Batgirl (Stephanie), Power Girl (my favorite comic of all time I think).

Manga Shoggoth

2014-03-05, 02:37 PM

Wonder Woman, although she is officially "one of the big three" is always the black cheep, since she is far less popular (despite being just as iconic, oddly enough).

It's interesting that you should say that. Wonder Woman was the subject of at least two fairly successful TV series (and I think at least two films, one of which may have been made for TV or the pilot) back in the '70s.

The original film wasn't well regarded (I liked it, but what do I know...), but the TV series itself was good enough to survive three seasons. It was one of the delights of my youth.

Paradoxically, nearly all of the superhero things I saw back then were DC - just about the only non-DC thing I can remember was The Incredible Hulk (Film followed by TV series). On the other hand, DC had Batman, Superman The Flash, Wonder Woman... Not to mention the old film serials...

TheThan

2014-03-05, 02:55 PM

Since when was Aquaman a B lister?
He’s very well known, even if it’s just “that guy that talks to fish”.

An Aquaman movie would be easy to do. I imagine it being very similar to the plot of the first Thor movie. Aquaman, prince of atlantis gets in trouble for something, is banished to the surface, learns a lesion, goes back to Atlantis and saves the day.

I’d LOVE to see The Question get a movie. I imagine it as a black and white film noir detective story.

Ever since I saw the Matrix, I’ve wanted a Flash movie. That was 15 years ago! I remember walking out of the theater thinking “Now I want to see The Flash on the big screen”.

Ravian

2014-03-05, 03:16 PM

It's interesting that you should say that. Wonder Woman was the subject of at least two fairly successful TV series (and I think at least two films, one of which may have been made for TV or the pilot) back in the '70s.

The original film wasn't well regarded (I liked it, but what do I know...), but the TV series itself was good enough to survive three seasons. It was one of the delights of my youth.

Paradoxically, nearly all of the superhero things I saw back then were DC - just about the only non-DC thing I can remember was The Incredible Hulk (Film followed by TV series). On the other hand, DC had Batman, Superman The Flash, Wonder Woman... Not to mention the old film serials...

Yeah there's no doubt that DC used to have much more prominence than Marvel. Even in my childhood (which was around the start of the millenium) I could only name a few marvel characters (Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America, Wolverine and a few other X-men ) I doubt I even knew who the Avengers were until I really started getting into comics. But I read every Batman comic I could find, (Nightwing's still one of my favorites) and I could name every member of the Justice League (at least from the cartoon series). Same with my folks, my Dad still loves the Christopher Reeves Superman movies and my Mom told me stories of playing Catwoman when the neighborhood kids played Batman and Robin. (from the Adam West series)

I think that while DC characters aren't exactly old, the mood of comics have evolved significantly. Marvel was able to weather that change better than DC, and DC is now stuck trying to be gritty and serious all the time to reinvent their image. Meanwhile Marvel has found it's sweetspot and is just riding on a wave of its own success. (in movies if not in the current comic storylines)

Metahuman1

2014-03-05, 04:04 PM

It always troubles me that people just want the third blue beetle.

I mean why would you jump past people with decades of engaging stories, to focus on one guy who's mostly so-so?

I mean Jamie had his chance, and it was terribly done and didn't even make it to television. Just like Aquaman had his chance, and it was terribly done and didn't even make it to television. Or Wonder Woman, who was given two chances, both terrible, neither to television.

Oliver Queen made it, because it wasn't a friggin origin story. You got five minutes about who he was, then he went on to just shoot dudes as an Assassins's Creed knockoff. Barry Allen's actual show won't have the origin story, because that's already been covered.

Hell, I'm dreading a Captain Marvel movie that has to fit into the same style and tone of Man of Steel.

Um, when precisely did they do a TV show for Jamie?

And the point of a Captain Marvel Movie would be that it doesn't work unless you lighten the tone and go for the crazy. Make it more Thor or Guardians of the Galaxy and less Man of Steel.

and my exposure to Ted Kord was call backs in Young Justice and Batman The Brave and the Bold, and before young Justice I didn't even know there WAS a Blue Beetle before Ted Kord.

Zmeoaice

2014-03-05, 05:55 PM

Hey, here's a great idea, do Static so that when Marvel has to do Black Panther, THEY look like Copy Cats.

People will think Black Panther is a ripoff of Static... because they're both black?

Really, I don't see the similarities, one is a King of a fictional country, the other is a ground level teenage superhero.

Metahuman1

2014-03-05, 06:00 PM

Well, yes and no.

They will think that DC did a character who happens to be black, and then shortly there after Marvel did a character who happens to be black, it will look like they were trying to mimic DC. Yes, this assumes people don't actually look closely at the actual content, but people have a bad habit of doing that anyway with lots of things. And since DC get's a lot of flack for trying to chase marvel, with the assumption that marvel, by default, is ahead, that would invert that for at least a short period of time, and maybe give them something to play off of.

If they really wanna stress it though, do Aquaman as Badass super powered king of super powerful fictional kingdom who battles Lovecraftian Horror's, and at the same time do Static, and then it looks like Marvel tried to combine the two to save time copying them.

Zmeoaice

2014-03-05, 08:09 PM

They will think that DC did a character who happens to be black, and then shortly there after Marvel did a character who happens to be black, it will look like they were trying to mimic DC. Yes, this assumes people don't actually look closely at the actual content, but people have a bad habit of doing that anyway with lots of things. And since DC get's a lot of flack for trying to chase marvel, with the assumption that marvel, by default, is ahead, that would invert that for at least a short period of time, and maybe give them something to play off of.

Well, the Fantastic 4 movie is going to make Human Torch black, and Falcoln is going to be a major character in Captain America 2. So if anything, people will accuse DC of ripping off Marvel.

But I honestly doubt audiences will be that shallow.

The Glyphstone

2014-03-05, 08:15 PM

Tiki Snakes

2014-03-05, 08:20 PM

Comic companies have been ripping each other off forever. Because you have to have something to do when you aren't ripping off yourself.

All that matters is who does the thing better.

Vanitas

2014-03-05, 08:29 PM

The whole Avengers thing might be said to have come about because Marvel had already sold its SuperBat pair and still can't use them in movies. Its why we didn't have Wanda and Pietro, they're (in theory) part of the X-franchise.

You realize they are in Avengers 2, right?

Aotrs Commander

2014-03-05, 08:36 PM

Well, the Fantastic 4 movie is going to make Human Torch black

Oooo...kay...? Are they making Sue Storm black too or what? (I mean, fair play if they are, I guess...) Or one o'f 'em adopted or step-siblings or something? Or just completely ignoring one of the corner stones of the F4 mythos...?

Metahuman1

2014-03-05, 08:54 PM

Well, the Fantastic 4 movie is going to make Human Torch black, and Falcoln is going to be a major character in Captain America 2. So if anything, people will accuse DC of ripping off Marvel.

But I honestly doubt audiences will be that shallow.

Forgot about Falcon for a moment there, but he;s not the lead expected to pull the whole movie with his name on the title, Cap is.

And regaurding this FF thing, what? The Hell?!!

Kitten Champion

2014-03-05, 09:06 PM

All that matters is who does the thing better.

Yeah.

I mean DC already had two Black superheroes, one of which was a woman, There's a reason people seem to have forgotten about them and certainly aren't touting them.

Marvel has done characters who happen to be Black, if that's all it takes to unlock some kind of diversity achievement then it's already in their trophy list. What people want, or at least many people want, is for a bigger place for women and non-whites in the current MCU -- at least among the supers -- because it's really the hottest line of movies out there in the present and for the foreseeable future and others want more of a share of the limelight while it last. Not simply to have movies, but to have a part of those movies which are popular and well-liked generally.

Zmeoaice

2014-03-05, 09:06 PM

Forgot about Falcon for a moment there, but he;s not the lead expected to pull the whole movie with his name on the title, Cap is.

True, but is people are shallow to say a black superhero is a ripoff, they might notice Falcon first.

Oooo...kay...? Are they making Sue Storm black too or what? (I mean, fair play if they are, I guess...) Or one o'f 'em adopted or step-siblings or something? Or just completely ignoring one of the corner stones of the F4 mythos...?

Sue is white (played by Kate Mara), so I'm guessing one of them is adopted, or they're step-siblings.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't make them siblings.

Coidzor

2014-03-05, 09:19 PM

Sue is white (played by Kate Mara), so I'm guessing one of them is adopted, or they're step-siblings.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't make them siblings.

I'm hoping for fraternal twins with different fathers myself, just for something really different.

TheThan

2014-03-05, 09:20 PM

Raimun

2014-03-05, 10:52 PM

Changing comic book characters for superhero movies has always been a bad idea. It has never really worked.

When the first Spider-man-film was released, I was a bit upset because Spidey had organic webshooters and Willem Dafoe didn't have the Norman Osborn-hair.

Ravens_cry

2014-03-06, 01:32 AM

I can see why they made the change. First movie Peter Parker was a smart, geeky, but not terribly unusual high school student. Having him go invent the webshooters would be a little too Tom Swift. Besides, it's not like an iteration of Spider-man has never had organic web shooters. While not Peter Parker, Spider Man 2099 had them. There is also the matter of time. They'd have to have separate incidents where he both gets the majority of his spider powers AND invents the web-shooters.
Given how varied the characters can be in their own comics, I don't see a problem with condensing things down a little. What *was* silly when they had the whole arc where Spider Man . . . gives birth to himself . . . so he gets organic web-shooters like the movie. That, that was a silly and unneeded change.

Avilan the Grey

2014-03-06, 02:17 AM

It's interesting that you should say that. Wonder Woman was the subject of at least two fairly successful TV series (and I think at least two films, one of which may have been made for TV or the pilot) back in the '70s.

The original film wasn't well regarded (I liked it, but what do I know...), but the TV series itself was good enough to survive three seasons. It was one of the delights of my youth.

Paradoxically, nearly all of the superhero things I saw back then were DC - just about the only non-DC thing I can remember was The Incredible Hulk (Film followed by TV series). On the other hand, DC had Batman, Superman The Flash, Wonder Woman... Not to mention the old film serials...

Here in Sweden DC had... a dwindling presence. When I first got old enough to read anything but child comics (about 1980) DC had Superman, Batman and Legion of Super-Heroes, and Marvel was just starting to get published (I remember being very interested when buying my monthly Superman, I saw an issue of something called "Fantastic Four" on the newsstand one day). Then things happened fairly quickly. Five years later Legion of Super-Heroes was cancelled, Batman too, and Superman lived a dwindling life. But we had Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men.
By that time everybody was reading Marvel comics and MAYBE Superman.

I miss those days because back then not only were all the comics translated (and well), but they were collected. X-men, who already back then had several books in the states, had one magazine here that was bundled together and all issues in it sorted correctly, which means that once a month you had a magazine with all relevant X-men stories in it that had no ads, and was between 64 and 128 pages thick depending on month and story.

Unfortunately that is not profitable anymore, so these days we just sell the American issues, as is.

TheThan

2014-03-06, 03:05 AM

The organic web shooters were the least of those movie’s faults.

The biggest being the disservice they did to Mary Jane Watson.

In the comic books she’s a beautiful fiery redhead that’s confident, talented, and popular. She knows what she wants and is not afraid to go out and get it. She works on peter’s confidence, calling him “tiger” and whatnot to build up his confidence. Clearly she sees something in him most people don’t. She goes through a bit a character arch and drops the superficial face she wore for a long time. She even figures out who Spiderman is without having that revealed to her (granted it’s not that hard, considering how often she gets rescued by him).

This is a stark contrast to the character we see in the spider man films. In these films MJ is much like Peter Parker, she just mopes about and whines that nobody applauded loudly for her in the one play she’s been in (hardly a reason to mope about, she’s just starting a career). She jumps between three people and can’t decide who she loves even going so far as to nearly marrying one of them (leaving him at the altar). These two have no real chemistry, they’re romance is awkward and we don’t see what she sees in Peter or why she’s even with him other than that the story dictates it. We know that she is in love with Spiderman because he rescues her all the time, but she’s in love with peter parker…because what? I’ve got nothing.

I remember being really on the fence when the first one was release, on one hand the action and special effects and most of the cast were top notch (I swear they pulled J. Jonah Jameson right out of the comics), but they really butchered Peter Parker and MJ, the two main characters. The second one was even better for those same reasons (doc Ock being the highlight of that film), But we get more melodramatic idiocy from two characters that I can't stand and certainly aren't invested in. The less we say about the third movie the better.

banjo1985

2014-03-06, 03:47 AM

I've never been able to stand any of the Spiderman films, they just feel so unlike the comics in every way. The trailer for the new one looks decent though, but then again, trailers always do.

As for the DC characters thing, I do think there's something in DC being a bit more protective of their IP and less willing to take risks. They seem to be a bit more into the TV series approach, what with Arrow and Human Target doing the rounds. For what it's worth, I think DC have the best superhero movies, in the Dark Knight and Watchmen, but they have some stinkers too. Catwoman, anyone?

BWR

2014-03-06, 03:57 AM

I miss those days because back then not only were all the comics translated (and well), .

On the bright side, having most of the fun stuff in English means we Scandinavians as a whole are pretty damn good at speaking and writing English.

Aotrs Commander

2014-03-06, 04:51 AM

I REALLY don’t like the idea of changing a character’s race simply to change a character’s race.

Me neither, and ditto for gender. I was equally annoyed at them white-washing the Avatar cast (or white Goku...), Jubilee suddenly being caucasian in the abortive Generation X pilot1, Starbuck being a woman in new BSG (and Boomer being an asian woman instead of a black chap). (The fact that such changes do not have equal weight and there's a bias to one direction I find most offensive of all.)

Samual L Fury I'll give them, but ONLY because it's SLJ (and they did it in the comics first) - in the same way I'd be more forgiving about re-casting Jubilee as BRIAN BLESSED because it'd be hilarious or something.

(Note Hollywood: do not actually do this.)

1In hindsight, there was a reason that never made it. But at the time, I was just too excited about the possbility of Gen x... Okay, let's be honest... Jubilee in a live-action series, I was more forgiving than I probably shold have been. About the only character they actually got right was Banshee...

Avilan the Grey

2014-03-06, 04:53 AM

On the bright side, having most of the fun stuff in English means we Scandinavians as a whole are pretty damn good at speaking and writing English.

Oh yes, but more importantly is that anything for kids 12+ or so is undubbed, with subtitles. That makes a heck of a difference, and made me dare to read LOTR untranslated at 13 or 14.

(For those who don't know, the old Swedish translation of LOTR borderlinde Blind Idiot Translation, and unfortunately was sold for what? 35 or 40 45 - 50 years before a new translation finally came out, because of the films).

Anyway, yes the Spider Man movies ranged from Better Than Expected to Average. It doesn't mean they didn't get a lot of things right; their Dr Octopus was great, for example. The choice of Organic web shooters I will never understand though.

Soras Teva Gee

2014-03-06, 10:25 AM

I REALLY don’t like the idea of changing a character’s race simply to change a character’s race.
It stinks of the company attempting to cash in on progressiveness; it actually makes them come off as racist because now they’re changing a character’s race in order to make money off of people of said race. It’s no different than Luke Cage and Misty Knight being a product of the blacksploitation craze in the 70s.

If you want to unlock that diversity achievement, you don’t draw attention to the fact that character X is of a certain race. X-men did it right, they didn’t make it a point that Storm was a black woman being played by a black woman. It was never a thing, even in the comic.

Do you think the All New All Different X-men somehow weren't being consciously progressive by shuffling off the traditional band of white folk for an international and multi-racial mix? I even hear the original idea was so it could be marketed outside the states better. And since then X-men has often been a very deliberate exercise in social commentary subtext anyways.

Sorry but I don't think you could have picked a worse example there to attempt to illustrate your point. Because you are citing one of the most successful examples of doing what your nominally objecting to.

Now moving back to the underlying point which of these scenarios do you prefer:

1) Have a really high number of white males via legacy of a bygone age.
2) Introduce brand new characters out of whole cloth or from obscurity.
3) Change an existing character to reflect modern sensibilities.

Now before you say option 2 consider that this has been done, and keeps being done all the time.

The "problem" such as it is that in comics you have very very very few examples of new characters being able to break into the top tier of popularity. Oh they might hang around for awhile sure... but then they drop into oblivion for years at time. How many characters hold down say their own single title that haven't been running since the 60s? And have done it for say ten years and managed to support multiple titles like Bats, Spidey, and Supes have forever. Wolverine is the only case I'm aware of having only happened in recent years, and he was a favorite on X-men for a looong time before that. Has someone else managed it since?

Now really its just that comics are a calcified intransient medium where meaningful change starts at nigh impossible... but in light of that option 3 starts to rather look more appealing don't you think? If you can't replace the existing status quo outright, then modifying it starts to seem more appealing.

Course not that that even nessecarily works.

So option 1 is still largely the de facto state of affairs.

jedipotter

2014-03-06, 11:01 AM

Now moving back to the underlying point which of these scenarios do you prefer:

1) Have a really high number of white males via legacy of a bygone age.
2) Introduce brand new characters out of whole cloth or from obscurity.
3) Change an existing character to reflect modern sensibilities.

The "problem" such as it is that in comics you have very very very few examples of new characters being able to break into the top tier of popularity.

I don't like where they take a white or male character and make them ''something else'' just to try and be politically correct.

For number one, it is not really anyone's fault that there were few non white American fictional heroes. And even if you want to believe in a conspiracy, that should not effect things today.

Two can work, it just needs work to do so. Deadpool is an example of a new popular character. So is Gambit or....Bishop.

I just don't like three. Making Nick Fury black was ok, but that is as far as I'd want to go.

Devonix

2014-03-06, 11:40 AM

Soras Teva Gee

2014-03-06, 02:08 PM

I don't like where they take a white or male character and make them ''something else'' just to try and be politically correct.

For number one, it is not really anyone's fault that there were few non white American fictional heroes. And even if you want to believe in a conspiracy, that should not effect things today.

Yet that still leaves avoids the heart of the matter unaddressed namely (however the situation came about) should it actually continue?

That ultimately comes to a yes/no dichotomy though which side can have a variety of reasons.

Two can work, it just needs work to do so. Deadpool is an example of a new popular character. So is Gambit or....Bishop.

Define "popular" here.

Yeah people particularly children of the 90s hope to see Gambit or Deadpool make it onscreen for an X-movie. We however expect to see say Cyclops or Jean or Professor X. And no Wolverine... simply inconceivable. And let's not forget how many characters never even get that far or fade with time.

Jubilee was big in the 90s sure even had that Gen X thing and fought Robin in the Marvel vs DC event... but how many people were really missing her in the movies? What was she doing in comics before she was turned into a vampire, did you have to look it up? What books was she regularly in as a full time member.

Even reasonably iconic characters in X-men can be gone for years at a time... who's Wolverine popular enough to avert that and by buyable every single month year after year?

Who's Batman or Spidey popular and supports entire families of regularly published titles.

And its not like trying new characters is new either, they've been at it for decades. That would seem to speak against the notion that there's just some magic new character waiting to be discovered.

And in light of that switching an existing character starts to make a certain amount of sense.

Course it doesn't nessecarily work out well either. Ultimate was popular for awhile and got us Samuel L Fury, but its star was faded by the time the Avengers actually got onscreen. And they were closer to 616 what with being the Avengers not the Ultimates, Thor being clearly an Asgardian from the get go, and Cap not asking anyone what the A stands for.

Comics are essentially static entities at this point. Which has little if any connection to the racial make-up except for preventing the very idea of change to it.

TheThan

2014-03-06, 03:23 PM

Do you think the All New All Different X-men somehow weren't being consciously progressive by shuffling off the traditional band of white folk for an international and multi-racial mix? I even hear the original idea was so it could be marketed outside the states better. And since then X-men has often been a very deliberate exercise in social commentary subtext anyways.

Sorry but I don't think you could have picked a worse example there to attempt to illustrate your point. Because you are citing one of the most successful examples of doing what your nominally objecting to.

Now moving back to the underlying point which of these scenarios do you prefer:

1) Have a really high number of white males via legacy of a bygone age.
2) Introduce brand new characters out of whole cloth or from obscurity.
3) Change an existing character to reflect modern sensibilities.

Now before you say option 2 consider that this has been done, and keeps being done all the time.

The "problem" such as it is that in comics you have very very very few examples of new characters being able to break into the top tier of popularity. Oh they might hang around for awhile sure... but then they drop into oblivion for years at time. How many characters hold down say their own single title that haven't been running since the 60s? And have done it for say ten years and managed to support multiple titles like Bats, Spidey, and Supes have forever. Wolverine is the only case I'm aware of having only happened in recent years, and he was a favorite on X-men for a looong time before that. Has someone else managed it since?

Now really its just that comics are a calcified intransient medium where meaningful change starts at nigh impossible... but in light of that option 3 starts to rather look more appealing don't you think? If you can't replace the existing status quo outright, then modifying it starts to seem more appealing.

Course not that that even nessecarily works.

So option 1 is still largely the de facto state of affairs.

Oh I completely understand they were. But they did it well by not making it what they were about. They didn’t make those new characters about their racial, ethnic or national heritage. Sure it was part of their makeup, but when Colossus got homesick and went back to mother Russia for an issue or so, it typically made sense, he was homesick, he missed his family. His entire shtick wasn’t “I’m from the Soviet Union”. Sure he called his friends comrade, that was stereotyping the character, but if you’ve never met a Russian, you probably wouldn’t know that, particularly back in the 70s when Russia was the west’s enemy.

What I’m saying is that if you’re going to try unlock the diversity achievement (ok so I really like that phrase), make it less than blatantly obvious. When I first saw storm, it was “here’s Storm, she can control the weather!”, when I discovered Misty Knight, it was “here’s Misty Knight, she’s a black woman from Harlem with an attitude!”. Which one is more blatant?

Soras Teva Gee

2014-03-06, 08:34 PM

Oh I completely understand they were. But they did it well by not making it what they were about. They didn’t make those new characters about their racial, ethnic or national heritage. Sure it was part of their makeup, but when Colossus got homesick and went back to mother Russia for an issue or so, it typically made sense, he was homesick, he missed his family. His entire shtick wasn’t “I’m from the Soviet Union”. Sure he called his friends comrade, that was stereotyping the character, but if you’ve never met a Russian, you probably wouldn’t know that, particularly back in the 70s when Russia was the west’s enemy.

What I’m saying is that if you’re going to try unlock the diversity achievement (ok so I really like that phrase), make it less than blatantly obvious. When I first saw storm, it was “here’s Storm, she can control the weather!”, when I discovered Misty Knight, it was “here’s Misty Knight, she’s a black woman from Harlem with an attitude!”. Which one is more blatant?

Well there's also being the big burly guy and being a literal steel man. Even as a kid I though "ah-hah like Stalin I get it" but maybe that was just me. Did dress in red too. And was the collective farm thing just the cartoon or was it comics too?

And Storm well there's the whole "was a goddess because tribe doesn't know what a mutant is" whole thing and what country or ethnicity was she from again?

I've seen angry righteous rants based around less. Actually I've seen them change very little, if at all, when based in outright error. Makes me rather question the entire underlying mindset and whether the ostensibly content is actually important at all.

Then of course there's the a certain personal myopia. You use "blatant" like my definition and opinion on things that are blatant is identical to yours. I might find Storm or Colossus rather blatant. Even if I agree that another example is even more blatant, there will still be dissonance when you are not willing to go as far back in my direction. Nevermind the even more silent agreement that "blatant" is a negative appellation.

What happens when I question those basic premises entirely. What makes something "blatant" (or any number of other terms) that we can create a clear and absolute test for?

I've yet to see many opinions satisfy this sort of analysis.

Ravian

2014-03-06, 08:51 PM

And Storm well there's the whole "was a goddess because tribe doesn't know what a mutant is" whole thing and what country or ethnicity was she from again?

I believe that the tribe she was worshiped in was in Kenya but I'm not sure what specific ethnicity Storm was. I know that a lot of her childhood was spent wandering with her mother, and alone after she died in a tomb in Egypt (where Storm developed claustrophobia).

Now that I think about it she might have had some sort of fictional tribe. I vaguely recall that her hair was actually natural rather than from her mutation, which implies some sort of fictional ethnicity.

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong though)

TheOldCrow

2014-03-06, 08:59 PM

I believe that the tribe she was worshiped in was in Kenya but I'm not sure what specific ethnicity Storm was. I know that a lot of her childhood was spent wandering with her mother, and alone after she died in a tomb in Egypt (where Storm developed claustrophobia).

Now that I think about it she might have had some sort of fictional tribe. I vaguely recall that her hair was actually natural rather than from her mutation, which implies some sort of fictional ethnicity.

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong though)

I thought Ororo Munroe was American, and her parents died while on a trip to Africa with her when she was a child. That was a long time ago so I might be remembering it wrong.

Kitten Champion

2014-03-06, 09:32 PM

According to the wiki, she's the descendant of a line of priestesses from a fictitious tribe in Kenya who could actually use magic and carried her lighter features. Funny, I always thought her unusual hair colour was an aspect of her mutation.

Anyways, her mother married an American, and she was born in Manhattan (obviously) but they moved to Egypt where... of course, her parents died in a plane crash.

On another note...looking through this wiki, dear god, the number of orphans.

Ravian

2014-03-06, 09:43 PM

TheThan

2014-03-07, 03:44 PM

The collective farm thing was in the comics as well I believe.

Apparently Ororo’s mom is African, her dad is American. They died in a botched air strike during the Suez Crisis. She was buried under the ruble which caused her claustrophobia. She grew up on the streets of Cairo after their death and became a thief for the shadow king before Xavier stopped him.

Later she was being worshiped by some tribe as a goddess.
Anyway as to the blatant thing, maybe I should have said obvious. It’s far less obvious that she was chosen to cash in on the civil rights movement of the 60s-70s. A woman from Africa, of course she’s black.

When I first learned of storm, I thought she was a really cool character; it didn’t even occur to me that she was black. I mean, I saw it in the pages of the comics and on the TV, but it didn’t jump out at me immediately because it wasn’t what storm was about.

That’s what I’m talking about, it’s a bit more subtle and feels less like a cash in than saying "here's a new character, and surprise! he's Latino!" or "we're putting a black man in the spider man costume!, or this character's coming out of the closet! aren't we progressive!".

if you're going to do it, then do it without making it a big deal, and i think you'll get a lot more mileage out of it.

Petrocorus

2014-03-09, 02:27 PM

I don't really think that age is the problem. So what if some DC characters have 30 years on Marvel, manyof the Marvel characters are plenty old enough to have too much baggage for a casual reader to follow.

When you look at the X-Men and all the related series and spin-off, they probably have more backstory than many older DC characters. Not counting the reset of the different Crisis.

There are exceptions, however, to the best of my knowledge, most of all of them bombed as films. I was amazed when they made Men in Black (a successful example), which was a comic I'd never even heard of. Elektra I'd only heard of in passing, and Howard the Duck was a fine (if surreal) comic that was... well, there is a reason for suppressing memories...

Men in Black isn't (meaningfully) a comic book movie. The comics are simply irrelevant there. They worked because it was a decent action movie with a major star charisma anchoring it. Will Smith at the height of his powers.

Will Smith was actually at the beginning of his movie career. Independence Day was less than a year old (and not really good) and before this Will Smith was only known (albeit well known) for the Prince of Bel-Air.
Tommy Lee Jones was probably more known and considered more bankable that Smith at the time.

What make this movies is not only the charisma of the two stars, but the fact that it was a good movie altogether. And more seen as an action comedy than as a straight action movie. It was well directed, with a rather good and dynamic screenplay and also a good music. That what makes a movie work. Howard the Duck is a bit the same.

I might argue that Iron Man is the same exception. It worked mostly on the back of some of the best marketing and Downey Jr just being so damn entertaining to watch. And without him the whole MCU thing might have never gotten off the ground.
Like MIB, Iron Man was well directed and had a good albeit simple and dynamic screenplay. The charisma of RDJ certainly help a lot, but would not have been enough to make the movie on its own, IMHO.

And let's be honest... if Iron Man was A tier character then its only because Spidey and X-men were S tier above it. He was not a rich well outside the Avenger for stories, you maybe heard of Iron Man but like hell if you've heard of say his villains. Heck you still haven't.

The whole Avengers thing might be said to have come about because Marvel had already sold its SuperBat pair and still can't use them in movies. Its why we didn't have Wanda and Pietro, they're (in theory) part of the X-franchise.

Agree on all this, and we can easily compare the MCU with the X-franchise movies, some people know what they do, some don't.

Wonder Woman being replaced by Artemist who went to fight such "iconic" villains as this guy http://i.imgur.com/CtbczRe.jpg
Nobody wants to see that on the silver screen.
Oh myyy...OH MYYYY!!!!
This smell bad writing so much from so far away!!

Honestly, i think that another problem of the DC heroes is that they are too powerful. Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman have god-like powers, even if Aquaman's ones are not relevant most of the times. Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are not far away. How do you challenge them? Superman has sometimes been called the most boring superhero ever, because 99,9% of what superheroes usually do is not a challenge at all for him. In the JLA animated movies, Green Lantern is challenged only because he doesn't actually use his power correctly and carry the idiot ball.
In TV shows, there was the same problem with Peter Petrelli in Heroes. Over-powerful heroes always end up being boring or impossible to relate to.
The most famous and liked members of the JLA is the less powerful after all.

Marvel heroes are also more realistic psychologically or socially. Spidey and X-Men were created in the 60', yet Peter Parker had and has real life problems, a real questioning about duty and responsibility and is not as perfect as Supes. X-Men was and is dealing with real life social problems, notably racism. People can relate to them more easily and that is a great way to gather and keep your audience.

Man on Fire

2014-03-09, 03:09 PM

Honestly, i think that another problem of the DC heroes is that they are too powerful. Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman have god-like powers, even if Aquaman's ones are not relevant most of the times. Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are not far away. How do you challenge them? Superman has sometimes been called the most boring superhero ever, because 99,9% of what superheroes usually do is not a challenge at all for him. In the JLA animated movies, Green Lantern is challenged only because he doesn't actually use his power correctly and carry the idiot ball.
In TV shows, there was the same problem with Peter Petrelli in Heroes. Over-powerful heroes always end up being boring or impossible to relate to.
The most famous and liked members of the JLA is the less powerful after all.

Meanwhile Marvel is making a movie about Doctor Strange, guy who could easily outclass all of DC heroes you mentioned COMBINED.
And you know how you challenge somebody ultra-powerfull? By bringing in somebody strongr. Doctor Strange can casually blow a planet. You challenge him by enemy who rules entire Universe, Evil God of Magic, Satan and galactic-sized Cthulhu on path of multiversal conquest. Doctor Strange, in a good story, defeats his opponents by combination of cunning and exploitation of their personality flaws (Dread Dormammu for example is horribly proud and overconfident).
No matter how strong you are, writer can always bring in somebody stronger.

Petrocorus

2014-03-09, 04:01 PM

I'm hoping for fraternal twins with different fathers myself, just for something really different.
Fraternal twins with different father! Oh the implications...
I'm not sure that will pass well with the audience.

The organic web shooters were the least of those movie’s faults.

The biggest being the disservice they did to Mary Jane Watson.

In the comic books she’s a beautiful fiery redhead that’s confident, ~~
snip~~, on one hand the action and special effects and most of the cast were top notch (I swear they pulled J. Jonah Jameson right out of the comics), but they really butchered Peter Parker and MJ, the two main characters. The second one was even better for those same reasons (doc Ock being the highlight of that film), But we get more melodramatic idiocy from two characters that I can't stand and certainly aren't invested in. The less we say about the third movie the better.
I really liked the two first Spider-Man, but i agree with your analysis.
That's one of the reason the third one was so bad. Peter and MJ relationship was the core of the movie, and it was a bado core, added to the fact they tried to put way too much stuff into a single movie.
Oh yes, but more importantly is that anything for kids 12+ or so is undubbed, with subtitles. That makes a heck of a difference, and made me dare to read LOTR untranslated at 13 or 14.

(For those who don't know, the old Swedish translation of LOTR borderlinde Blind Idiot Translation, and unfortunately was sold for what? 35 or 40 45 - 50 years before a new translation finally came out, because of the films).

Bite me, the French translation are bad and made by people who didn't care for fantasy nor for Tolkien's interest in languages. Not to mention that cut half of the appendix and this is still the versions sold today.

Anyway, yes the Spider Man movies ranged from Better Than Expected to Average. It doesn't mean they didn't get a lot of things right; their Dr Octopus was great, for example. The choice of Organic web shooters I will never understand though.
Probably just to make it easy and not to have to address their creation.

Meanwhile Marvel is making a movie about Doctor Strange, guy who could easily outclass all of DC heroes you mentioned COMBINED.
And you know how you challenge somebody ultra-powerfull? By bringing in somebody strongr. Doctor Strange can casually blow a planet. You challenge him by enemy who rules entire Universe, Evil God of Magic, Satan and galactic-sized Cthulhu on path of multiversal conquest. Doctor Strange, in a good story, defeats his opponents by combination of cunning and exploitation of their personality flaws (Dread Dormammu for example is horribly proud and overconfident).
No matter how strong you are, writer can always bring in somebody stronger.

Indeed, this is the only way to challenge very powerful character. This is what they did with Man of Steel. But full destruction of whole cities tend to push into darker and edgier territories. And over-powerful battle is not, IMHO, the best way to get the audience interested. I compare with The Authority, in which the heroes where also using their god-like power to address real life problem, and have a real graps at international politic.
Because this is the king of thing that god-like people would actually do.

Kitten Champion

2014-03-09, 05:15 PM

The typical solution to overpowered superheroes is for the movies simply to tone down their powers. Man of Steel Superman is pretty disempowered, Nolan's Batman is a joke compared to batgod, and every Marvel hero to one degree or another has been pushed towards mediocrity. Even the DCAU did this, the Superman I'm familiar with from his animated series isn't nearly as powerful as he's inevitably described in the versus threads.

Green Lantern is interesting as a movie which didn't seem to consider this at all. Presumably the big villain at the end, who had in previous scenes defeated scores of Green Lanterns, should provide a meaningful challenge to just one of their number regardless -- but time restraints and lazy writing leads to cheap and easy victories every time.

Clertar

2014-03-09, 05:34 PM

Here I'm hoping that the toned-down power levels from films will eventually percolate to the comics.

endoperez

2014-03-09, 05:36 PM

Bite me, the French translation are bad and made by people who didn't care for fantasy nor for Tolkien's interest in languages. Not to mention that cut half of the appendix and this is still the versions sold today.

Meanwhile, the Finnish translation was extremely well done, the poems flow better than in original English, and the Finnish word for "elf" is now "haltia" instead of "haltija" in the fantasy literature, mirroring the dwarves - dwarfs dichotomy Tolkien created in English.

Man on Fire

2014-03-09, 07:03 PM

Bite me, the French translation are bad and made by people who didn't care for fantasy nor for Tolkien's interest in languages.

Poland had several different translations of Lord of the Rings. In one of them they change every character's name to sound Polish. Bilbo Baggins became Bilbo Bagosz and it only went downhill from there.

Indeed, this is the only way to challenge very powerful character. This is what they did with Man of Steel. But full destruction of whole cities tend to push into darker and edgier territories. And over-powerful battle is not, IMHO, the best way to get the audience interested. I compare with The Authority, in which the heroes where also using their god-like power to address real life problem, and have a real graps at international politic.
Because this is the king of thing that god-like people would actually do.

First, you don't need to destroy entire cities to show bad guy is more powerful. Strange was facing opponents stronger than him without such thing happening since his creation, similiarly to other powerful characters, such as Legion. And it should be other things that draw people to the character, like their personality or character development. For example, in X-Men: Legacy vol.2 in the finale (issue 21 out of 24) we have fight between Legion, one of most powerful mutants in existence, and big bad, who actually overpowers him. But what is important is David's character development and emotional growth and how he reaches another step towards maturity, which pays back in next issue.

PhantomDennis

2014-03-09, 07:41 PM

Ok so an interesting idea I came up with. Thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer I’ve been thinking a lot about comic book movies. Well ok, thinking about them more than usual.

There have been so few DC comic book movies made outside of Superman and Batman. According to Wikipedia, Swamp Thing, Supergirl, Steel, Catwoman, Watchmen, Jonah hex and Green Lantern are the only DC characters to get a movie outside of superman and batman (and even then 2 or 3 if you count Steel, are related to them). I’m purposefully not counting imprints and animated films here.

I’m wondering why?

One theory I came up with is that these characters have grown too old, some of them have been around since the beginning of comic books. Maybe there’s too much back-story for writers to be able to write a good story in film form.

I know when I got into comics I purposefully avoided DC, not because of any sort of dislike, but because I was intimidated by them, superman has been around since 1938, he’s 76 years old. (Ok when I got into super heroes he was like 50 or so, so but still). Superman already had fifty years of stories written about him and I was afraid of being drowned in back-story. The same thing went for The Flash, Wonder Woman, Aqua Man and all the others.

That’s a long time to stay in print and a ton of history and background to have stacked onto your character. That sounds like a tremendous resource if you’re studying up on the subject. But that’s also a lot to study. So if you’re tasked with writing a Superman script, you’re going to have to read up on him, but that takes time you don’t have, deadlines being what they are. So you use what you know, that’s the Superman movies and your basic knowledge you acquired as a kid. That results in Superman Returns and Man of Steel. Both of which are remakes of the first two Superman movies.

Batman has a worse problem since most people remember him from the Adam West TV series and the Batman films kicked out back in the 90s. So now a writer only falls back on those memories for inspiration.

Think about, six of DC’s big seven (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter), were created and put into print before 1950, that’s a lot of stories for each superhero.

Now I know that these characters are still being written about, so clearly there’s still more to tell. But Warner Bro as a movie studio has not really put forth any real effort behind anything other than Batman and Superman because the simply don’t know where to start and where to take these characters.

The Silver Age incarnations of Flash and Green Lantern which are the ones most fans are familiar with DO NOT predate 1950. Their ties to their Golden Age predecessor have generally been rather loose. Although the decision to put them in the same timeline meant some streamlining. But officially Hal Jordan's and Barry Allen' story begin in the mid-50s, Roughly only a half a decade before the Introduction of most the popular heroes associated with Marvel.

It has taken a long time for Marvel to catch up with DC. For years the only really successful live-action adapation of Marvel was the Incredible Hulk TV-Series. Many people at the time took the Conan movies for a Marvel Adaptation because the Barbarian appeared in a popular comic series that did much to popularize the Robert E. Howard creation. The next successeful Marvel adapation would be the Blade series in the 1990s. Marvel's success at the movies is largely a 21st centuty phnomenon.

"Superman Returns" was essentially a homage to the Donner version of Superman so any similarity was intentional. 'Man of Steel" is not a remake of "Superman 2" in any way really. The only similarity is that the villain is named Zod. In truth Comic movies often copy each other even if it's a different set of characters. For example in the First X-Men movie, Magneto's scheme is similar in many respects to Deacon Frost's scheme in Blade. The seqence in Fantastic Four when the corporate executive version of Victor VonDoom is forced out by his board of Directors is almost identical to similar scenes with Noman Osborn in Spiderman. I kept wanting to say "Now, Don't go to any Macy Gray concerts."

So far except for Blade and Wolverine, the successful Marvel Movies have all been of characters that have been around since the 60s (and Captain America actually dates back to the 40s!) The X-Men features a mix of Characters from the Silver and Bronze Ages.

One thing I do notice about DC is that they have trouble introducing New characters of Staying Power. Firestorm was very popular for a while in the 80s, Deathstroke was the inspiration for Deadpool and he had is own book for a number of years, but he was downgraded to a one-note villian using amnesia to regress all of his characer development. Mike W. Barr will probably mention that Batman and the Outsiders at one time outsold all the regular batman books at least twice an interview. These GeoForce, Katana, Looker, and Halo are pretty much on the outside hoping for the next revival. Gaurdians of the Galaxy will be the first marvel movie to feature characters who don't have a fanbase built up over decades. Them being largely '70s characters who had languished in obscurity for years. The best known being characters from Jim Starlin's Thanos mythos. We'll see how well the MCU branding helps sell the movie.

The fact that they keep doing Supernan and Batman disproves your point. These heroes both have a great deal of staying power as well as versatility. Suoerman can sustain a RomCom (Lois & Clark) or a coming of age story (Smallville). While Batman can sustain wildly different tonal shifts. Lately, we've seen Green Arrow emerge sort of as Batman substitute, although one with a great deal less restraints on killing.

I suspect one of the things that has held up a Wonder Woman movie is that it essentially put Feminists and Fanboys on a collision course as they both consider Wonder Woman theirs and DC/WB has not wanted to get caught up in that crossfire. :eek:

TheThan

2014-03-09, 11:44 PM

Avilan the Grey

2014-03-10, 03:03 AM

I’m not doubting their staying power.
That’s almost the problem, they’re staying power is strong enough that they’ve lasted so long that no one knows what else to do with them on the big screen. After they introduce a character, they don’t know where to take it from there. So we get rehashes (or a homage if you will) and reboots of two franchises, superman and batman. Nothing else.

It’s like the failure of the green lantern shocked them into becoming so afraid of financial failure that they refuse to put something other than what they already know is going to make money (superman, batman) on the big screen. Yet if they knew where to go with these characters, then we would very easily be seeing something else from them.

It DOES seem like Marvel is braver. They gamble more, but on the other hand they have had very very few failures that was produced in-house. Daredevil, Electra, FF 1 and 2 all were bad movies, but they were the responsibility of someone else. AFAIR only Ang Lee's Hulk is a true failure for the Marvel studios?

On the other hand DC's characters and their status as "gods" do cause problems, as you say because you can't really cut loose. Marvel did well, I think, by starting their victory run with Iron Man, a character who is a B-lister (when it comes to popularity), still have strong stories to take ideas from AND is quite easily done on screen (a shining armor is far easier to do well with CGI, if needed, than a person).
But who would DC have picked then instead of Bats or Supes? It seems to me that the gap between A and B listers in the DC universe is far larger than in Marvel. In DC you have the Trinity, you have Aquaman, you have Martian Manhunter, Flash... But what do you have as the next level down? Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna? Green Lantern is howering somewhere in between and has already caused the company bad press.

Man on Fire

2014-03-10, 04:45 AM

One thing I do notice about DC is that they have trouble introducing New characters of Staying Power. Firestorm was very popular for a while in the 80s, Deathstroke was the inspiration for Deadpool and he had is own book for a number of years, but he was downgraded to a one-note villian using amnesia to regress all of his characer development. Mike W. Barr will probably mention that Batman and the Outsiders at one time outsold all the regular batman books at least twice an interview. These GeoForce, Katana, Looker, and Halo are pretty much on the outside hoping for the next revival.

Also, the Authority, which at one point were outselling Superman comics so much Joe Kelly dedicated entire issue of Action Comics to whine how everybody who likes Authority is a prick.
These days comics fans barerly know who they are nd they were reduced to a bunch of losers in books so bad like New 52 Stormwatch.

On the other hand DC's characters and their status as "gods" do cause problems, as you say because you can't really cut loose. Marvel did well, I think, by starting their victory run with Iron Man, a character who is a B-lister (when it comes to popularity), still have strong stories to take ideas from AND is quite easily done on screen (a shining armor is far easier to do well with CGI, if needed, than a person).
But who would DC have picked then instead of Bats or Supes? It seems to me that the gap between A and B listers in the DC universe is far larger than in Marvel. In DC you have the Trinity, you have Aquaman, you have Martian Manhunter, Flash... But what do you have as the next level down? Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna? Green Lantern is howering somewhere in between and has already caused the company bad press.

Again, I still don't see a problem with having too powerful characters, except that it would cost more on CGI. But considering we have movies like Transformers, Pacific Rim or upcoming Godzilla, I don't think studios cannot conjure a budget for that kind of thing.

Generally, I feel that DC's problem is too much of an obsession with being "realistic". DC and Warner don't want to make Wonder Woman movie, because they feel story about amazon from isolated utopia in invisible jet wouldn't be realistic. Meanwhile Marvel is like "Our next movie is about Racoon with guns and talking tree!". DC is, according yto you, struggiling with the fact their characters are too powerful. Meanwhile Marvel is like "lets make a movie about guy who can casually blow up a planet". Stop with this "we have to be realistic", okay? If people can eat @#$% like talking snowman, they'll swallow superheroes beating gods easily.

And as for whom to pick up - Wonder Woman is actually an obvious choice. Like Iron Man, she is coutned among the biggest icons of the company, but dosn't really sell that well as them.

Kitten Champion

2014-03-10, 05:40 AM

It DOES seem like Marvel is braver. They gamble more, but on the other hand they have had very very few failures that was produced in-house. Daredevil, Electra, FF 1 and 2 all were bad movies, but they were the responsibility of someone else. AFAIR only Ang Lee's Hulk is a true failure for the Marvel studios?

I think that was mostly Universal Studios, and technically it did make considerably more than its cost. It would be more of a perceived failure.

On the other hand DC's characters and their status as "gods" do cause problems, as you say because you can't really cut loose. Marvel did well, I think, by starting their victory run with Iron Man, a character who is a B-lister (when it comes to popularity), still have strong stories to take ideas from AND is quite easily done on screen (a shining armor is far easier to do well with CGI, if needed, than a person).
But who would DC have picked then instead of Bats or Supes? It seems to me that the gap between A and B listers in the DC universe is far larger than in Marvel. In DC you have the Trinity, you have Aquaman, you have Martian Manhunter, Flash... But what do you have as the next level down? Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna? Green Lantern is howering somewhere in between and has already caused the company bad press.

I've been thinking about this. The issue isn't that they're afraid to put out films with different characters. This is the same company that released Catwoman and Jonah Hex, presumably on a dare. The issue is that they deeply want a franchise, and really need to get their foot in the door to start one.

Their first grand attempt at pulling a Marvel was Green Lantern, and it's painfully obvious they didn't know what they were doing. At that point they could either give up on the idea, which with Marvel swimming around in piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck isn't realistic, or they could just go with the Superman film they were going to make anyways and work up from there.

Marvel was in something of a predicament prior to Iron Man's success, in that they needed to make a B-lister work if they didn't have access to X-Men, Fantastic Four, or most importantly, Spider-Man before their franchise idea went anywhere. Any of which would've been an excellent place to start before Iron Man. The FF being their first comic (I think, for Marvel Comics proper) with reasonable name recognition, X-Men being more than half their universe and very popular in their own right, and Spider-Man being their most marquee name of all -- and none of them were available. Thankfully for them the Marvel Universe is deep, and they're evidently competent filmmakers and extraordinarily good at marketing themselves.

DC/WB doesn't have to go beyond their top-tier characters, so why would they at this point? I mean you can complain that they're playing it safe, but there's a reason Marvel has been working so effectively and that's because every proceeding film builds on the inertia of the previous film's success, even the least capable films with lesser known characters are profitable by virtue of inertia.

Sadly, I strongly suspect that Man of Steel being a springboard for them means that every DC movie going forward is going to be done in the tone and style of Man of Steel, as Jayngfet suggested. This is going to curtail, if not the characters they choose going forward, than the variation in tone we might associate with them. Sure, we might get an Aquaman movie, because why the hell not, but it's going to be Batman. Because everyone is Batman, everyone.

Also, the Authority, which at one point were outselling Superman comics so much Joe Kelly dedicated entire issue of Action Comics to whine how everybody who likes Authority is a prick.
These days comics fans barerly know who they are nd they were reduced to a bunch of losers in books so bad like New 52 Stormwatch.

Didn't every comic about a Wildstorm characters get scrapped in the New 52 and every imported character relegated to insignificance?

Petrocorus

2014-03-10, 05:52 AM

Poland had several different translations of Lord of the Rings. In one of them they change every character's name to sound Polish. Bilbo Baggins became Bilbo Bagosz and it only went downhill from there.

In French, only the Hobbit's name have been translated, Bagging became Sacquet, and most of time it makes sense. Nickname and the names of places too, like Oakenshield and Weathertop. Except for Bilbo and Frodo becoming Bilbon and Frodon without any reason, this is one of the thing that have been correctly made.

First, you don't need to destroy entire cities to show bad guy is more powerful. Strange was facing opponents stronger than him without such thing happening since his creation, ~~~~ which pays back in next issue.
I agree, i was referencing Man of Steel. What you really need as always is good writing. And maybe better writing, because more powerful characters need more powerful challenges and that can be more difficult to handle for the writers. And if it is badly handled, the character doesn't seemed to be challenged and become boring or the audience don't relate to him and stop caring.

Generally, I feel that DC's problem is too much of an obsession with being "realistic". DC and Warner don't want to make Wonder Woman movie, because they feel story about amazon from isolated utopia in invisible jet wouldn't be realistic. Meanwhile Marvel is like "Our next movie is about Racoon with guns and talking tree!". DC is, according yto you, struggiling with the fact their characters are too powerful. Meanwhile Marvel is like "lets make a movie about guy who can casually blow up a planet". Stop with this "we have to be realistic", okay? If people can eat @#$% like talking snowman, they'll swallow superheroes beating gods easily.
This is true. Personally, i think the realistic and darker and edgier artistic choices made Man of Steel much less enjoyabl . Not to mention the weird dynamic of the film. I didn't say that the fact they were too powerful was the only problem. Maybe DC just don't know how to handle their own characters. Maybe they don't have found the right writers, or lost them, like a certain Joss.

And as for whom to pick up - Wonder Woman is actually an obvious choice. Like Iron Man, she is coutned among the biggest icons of the company, but dosn't really sell that well as them.
I agree on this. Wonder Woman has certainly the potential. And man people fondly remember the old TV show. And they could certainly ditch the Invisible Plane, it's not one of her most defining characteristic. She didn't have it in Justice League animated, she acquired it during Crisis on Two Earth and i believed it has been well handled. The Amazon part may be a bit difficult, but not much more than the existence of the Hydra with cosmic cube tech, flying suit, gamma-powered monster, or raccoon with guns as you say.

Concerning the feminist aspect someone mentioned earlier, i think the best way would be not to address it and focus on the action and story and not on the fact the hero is a woman. Anyway, whatever they do, they will have some people unhappy about that and how it has been handled.

Avilan the Grey

2014-03-10, 05:55 AM

Generally, I feel that DC's problem is too much of an obsession with being "realistic". DC and Warner don't want to make Wonder Woman movie, because they feel story about amazon from isolated utopia in invisible jet wouldn't be realistic. Meanwhile Marvel is like "Our next movie is about Racoon with guns and talking tree!". DC is, according yto you, struggiling with the fact their characters are too powerful. Meanwhile Marvel is like "lets make a movie about guy who can casually blow up a planet". Stop with this "we have to be realistic", okay? If people can eat @#$% like talking snowman, they'll swallow superheroes beating gods easily.

And as for whom to pick up - Wonder Woman is actually an obvious choice. Like Iron Man, she is coutned among the biggest icons of the company, but dosn't really sell that well as them.

It's not that they are too powerful. It's that they are too iconic. Big difference. It also makes WW a less than obvious choice. (Plus the whole "A female hero can't bring in the $$$ idea).

And DC "too realistic"? Then why are they making movies AT ALL, given that their main hero benchpresses Earth as an easy workout?? (It's even in the comic, so it's not hyperbole. Although I can't remember if it actually was Supes or Superboy). Maybe they are just idiots... :smallbiggrin::smallsigh:

Petrocorus

2014-03-10, 12:42 PM

I just watched Justice League: War. Is that me or Hal Jordan is a complete fool? After being more or less useless in Crisis on Two Earth and Doom.

Metahuman1

2014-03-10, 12:48 PM

Pretty much. DC replaced Flash twice, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Superman and Martian Manhunter never, Batman once that matters, but Hal? Hal's been kicked to the curb in favor of other usually more interesting lanterns 4 times now. Though I concede I'm not that crazy about the newest guy on the block.

lord_khaine

2014-03-10, 04:33 PM

I just watched Justice League: War. Is that me or Hal Jordan is a complete fool? After being more or less useless in Crisis on Two Earth and Doom.

As usual almost everyone but Batman were given a brain transplant with a random retarded monky.. :smallmad:

That movie is a shinning example of character murder.. i dont think i can find a single nice thing to say about it..

Or well.. it was pretty.. and thats about it.

Petrocorus

2014-03-10, 05:57 PM

As usual almost everyone but Batman were given a brain transplant with a random retarded monky.. :smallmad:

That movie is a shinning example of character murder.. i dont think i can find a single nice thing to say about it..

Or well.. it was pretty.. and thats about it.

I don't know the comics that much, but when you compare GL in his two animated movies, and in the Justice League movies, there is really a discrepancy, both in powers and in behaviour. And when you think that according to the fluff about what a ring can potentially do, he could be the most efficient member of the team, that's even worst.

SeeDarkly_X

2014-03-10, 07:11 PM

I just watched Justice League: War. Is that me or Hal Jordan is a complete fool? After being more or less useless in Crisis on Two Earth and Doom.

You have to remember a few things about those movies in contrast with one another.
*None of those specific movies are technically set in the same universe/continuity. (neither are the two GL specific movies.)
*Some of the voice actors for certain roles are different in each film as are some of the characterizations. However it's the writers that define those characterizations.
*All of those specific films are adaptations of previously published material... and NONE have held appreciably well to that material, because they are attempting to present it in a 90 minute format and they are making changes that (I'll say it again) seem designed to facilitate a marketing need more than anything useful for the story.
There are tremendous changes in each that just don't make any sense.
(for example: GL in Doom was Hal Jordan, but in the published work of the story, "JLA: Tower of Babel", it was Kyle Rayner... and they even changed HOW he would be nullified.)

While I haven't seen WAR yet, I know it is subject to that same flaw... though it SHOULD technically be set in the same universe as the one set up by the end of the Flashpoint film. It is essentially the story of the first six issues of the New 52 Justice League title (the trade is subtitled "Origin.)
HOWEVER... they changed the cast (as they did with Doom) to leave out Aquaman, and replace him with Redundant Lightning Superman aka Shazam (who had not even been reintroduced in the continuity of the comic stories yet.)

I'll also note that Crisis was originally meant to be tied to the previous DCAU but got scrapped and reworked to have a good deal of it's material drawn from two different published sources.

Truthfully, ever since they stopped producing ORIGINAL animated features in favor of making film versions of existing trade paperbacks, they haven't been doing as well in the animated world. Yeah it's watchable... but mostly it's disappointing that they didn't stay faithful to the material they're adapting.
(Batman TDKR parts 1 & 2 is the only exception I can think of. It may not have been 100% accurate, but it was far closer then any other adaptation they've done.)