We are living in what seems to be the second Golden Age of superheroes, with television and movies rather than comic books. With this new era of superhero movie blockbusters, nerd culture is growing and attracting vast amounts of the population that would probably not have been interested in superheroes until they were brought to the movies. The classic feud between DC and Marvel is still very much alive, but unlike in the Golden Age of Comics, there seems to actually be an obvious winner.
Marvel has been cranking out hit after hit ever since "Iron Man" was released in 2008. They have established a interconnected web of the Avengers universe with the Iron Man movies, the Captain America movies, the Thor movies, the Avengers movies, "Ant Man," "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D," and "Agent Carter." Marvel has had incredible success with these because the movies and TV shows have intertwined their story lines.
Many Marvel fans watch all of the movies and TV shows in order to get the entire experience—backstory and all. Marvel also completely changed the game with the Netflix shows, "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones," despite featuring relatively unknown characters. With Marvel releasing three times more movies than DC within the past eight years and better TV shows as a whole, DC severely needs to step up their game if they have any prayer of continuing to seriously compete with Marvel.
DC has generally had success with the movies in the Batman and Superman series, but has greatly fallen short with their TV shows and movies about any hero that is not either Batman or Superman. As Marvel was starting their new empire in 2008, DC released the "The Dark Knight"—which was incredibly successful—and "The Spirit"—a movie that I have never heard of until I researched this. They soon followed with "Watchmen" and "Jonah Hex," which were not very memorable. Then DC created one of the worst superhero movies that I've ever seen: "The Green Lantern." The point being that DC has proven that they can only compete with Marvel by using big name superheroes, whereas Marvel has been incredibly successful with superheroes, regardless of how well they were known through the comics alone.
DC tried to respond to Marvel's hit TV shows with some shows of their own: "Gotham," "The Flash," "Supergirl," and "Arrow." "Gotham" made me believe that DC had the potential to catch up with Marvel. It was new and refreshing because it was based on the backstories of the villains, and the acting is honestly superb. "Arrow" has also been quite successful but isn't quite as good as Gotham or any of Marvel's TV shows. "The Flash" is decent, at best, because despite having a good story line (sometimes), the acting is nowhere near good enough to actually support it.
Then I saw "Supergirl," which actually has worse story lines and worse acting. I honestly don't understand how anyone can watch it because it is painfully terrible. Additionally, despite DC just now trying to adopt Marvel's approach of connecting the stories of each hero in the Justice League, DC is still not even attempting to create unity between their TV shows and movies. That's defintely part of what has made Marvel so successful.
DC's first attempt at uniting their heroes with "Batman v Superman" proved that just attempting to do the same thing as Marvel doesn't mean automatic success, or even a semi-decent movie. The movie committed the worst crime that a superhero movie can commit—it bored me. Had there been a new Batman movie that allowed Ben Affleck Batman's origin story separately from "Batman v Superman," the movie might have been a bit less slow and more focused on the main conflict. The only aspects of the movie that I genuinely enjoyed were Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, and the Batmobile. Gal Gadot's performance of Wonder Woman leaves me cautiously optimistic about the upcoming "Wonder Woman" and "The Justice League" movies. Unfortunately, I believe that "Suicide Squad" will meet the same fate as "Batman v Superman," which is incredibly disappointing with the amount of potential that it has. The villains shine in "Gotham," and I was hoping to see the same quality in "Suicide Squad." But the casting of that movie alone seems as though all of their first choices were too busy acting in movies that are actually good.
As it stands now, Marvel has completely surpassed DC in nearly every aspect. If DC doesn't step up their game soon, I don't believe that they can compete with Marvel much longer. When diehard DC fans can't even enjoy the movies and TV shows, there is something seriously wrong. "Wonder Woman" and the future Justice League movies are DC's only prospects of salvation, but if they meet the same fate as their other recent movies, I truly don't know how much longer DC can be taken seriously.
