8 Year old question about comic book movies and shows.

Interesting article over at Time tangentially related to this topic.

It's been mentioned already, but definately pick up some of the DC animated features as they are all very well done. My personal favorites are the Wonder Woman film, both the Green Lantern films (especially Emerald Knights, which is in an anthology format) and the various short films which are all collected on the Superman vs Shazam release. The Green Arrow short is a particular favorite among them of mine.

I think if you give those a watch, you'll see something of a leveling of the playing field. Then it becomes "How come DC can't do this good in live action?" and that's a question all of us have been asking for years.

One of the major problems, which as been said a lot, about the other Superman movies is that while they can play Superman, they can't play Clark Kent.

Now the Clark side is probably, IMO, the most key part of the character because that will be the part the audience will relate to. Christopher Reeves Clark, while a bit foppish and clumsy, was a likeable guy. Not only was he acted really well (seriously, I've said it enough times but the scene where he's talking to himself, trying to picture himself telling Louis the he is Superman is downright amazing), he was written really well, he was the everyman.

Now Superman Returns played down the Clark Kent side to almost nothing, along with a pretty ropey plot stolen from the Superman TV series of the 90s and the lack of a decent villain it meant that Superman just wasn't as relateable.

One problem I see is there is a segment of the population that will associate some of the A-string characters to particular actors. That really isn't the fault of the studio but it makes it harder to relaunch a newer series.

Superman - Christopher Reeve
Wonder Woman - Lynda Carter

The image of those actors doing that role is so ingrain in the minds of the public that it's tough to see somebody else doing that role. Heck the last Superman film is a partial remake/homage of the 1978 one.

Batman was able to avoid this by "Bonding" there way through actors as well as drive the series over a cliff as many actors lined up to play the classic villains of the series. There was nowhere to go but up and it still took 8 years to try again.

And its not just DC. I believe the part of the reason the first two Hulk movies didn't do so well is because the image of an angry Bill Bixby and a green Lou Ferrigno in a crazy wig has been burned into the mind of the general public. No wonder people didn't accept an 8 to 10 foot sized Hulk after all those TV episodes with Lou.

The live action TV Flash or Spider-Man didn't last on TV long enough to make a lasting impact. The TV Superman from Lois and Clark wasn't terribly memorable and Smallville's Clark and his pretty 20 something friends was too different to affect the public's image of Superman.

Nobody in Hollywood has the guts to try and make a WW that intentionally steps away from the public's memory of that character. After all isn't the next Superman film rehashing Superman II's villains. Brave brave Sir Hollywood.

I lost patience with most of the two big names over a decade ago and then found I thoroughly enjoyed Gold Digger and various other independent American mangaka as well as the Japanese manga.

Marvel and DC got too recycled for my taste...the story never progressed, it was just the same stuff over and over again. When it looked like there was progression it would be reset to 0 by some dues ex machina often involving such words as scarlet, crisis and/or witch.

Just got fed up with it.


Also, the vs list is merely the conflict and is missing Man vs Self. Conflict is only one aspect to the story, not the story in and of itself. There are generally accepted to be 36-distinct plots.

That said, I do subscribe to the opinion that all stories are the same story just from different points of view and focusing on different portions.

Hello everyone again, I have been reading your posts to my son and he has a better understanding thanks to you all. I did do a disservice as one of poster said by not showing him the 70's Spiderman and 80's Captain America also 90's Nick Fury etc so were going to watch those this weekend to show even Marvel can have some flops.

Thanks again for the help everyone.

Personally, I think technology just recently caught up enough to make super hero flicks not as campy/cheesy as they had been. This was best demonstrated in Spider-Man 1, X-Men 1 and Batman Begins. The first 2 leaned heavy on f/x to make the heroes believable, Batman leaned heavily on artistic direction and excellent props, something that the Burton/Shuemacher era Bat films failed to do, instead focusing on gadgets and camp. Before those 3 films nearly all superhero flicks were just bad. Blade kicked off things and those 3 capitalized, demonstrating that superhero movies were not only viable, but profitable.

There were exceptions, as always, the Superman 1 & 2 were great off the top of my head.

I think what really separates Marvel and DC flicks is what's been said over and over here, creative direction. Warner Bros just doesn't take the DC stable as seriously, when they do we get gems like the Dark Knight. Even Superman Returns was an attempt at duplicating what made the first 2 Supes flicks great, just didn't find it's footing and had some ludicrous plots points.
Marvel films compete with each other, not just other properties. The Marvel flicks that had too much Hollywood input suffered the most, namely Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3/Wolverine. I'd say that more Marvel movies have failed than hit, but when they hit the slam it out of the park, also we've seen what triple the Marvel properties developed for film?

I think what really set the Avengers crop of flicks apart was the fact they were made with a shared universe in mind, and Marvel had direct control over plotting Brian Michael Bendis said in a recent interview with Newsarama that the films have a sort of council of comic writers, the films director and other creative personnel, all devoted to keeping the feel true, and to keep the universe linked and growing with each movie.

What I'm really eager to see, is what impact Avengers will have on DC's future plans. The market is there, as Marvel Films just demonstrated, but how can DC really up their game to compete in the film sector? I'd say creating a DC Films branch that focuses solely on taking their character seriously would be a great first step. If they could put the kind of energy into films as they do the animated universe, DC could make some truly great movies with some truly great characters.