https://www.quora.com/profile/Joseph-Rose-33
Why Do Marvel's Films Do Better than DC's?
A couple reasons.
First, Marvel was working from a position of weakness, whereas DC has been working from a position of strength. At least as far as characters go. When the MCU started, they didn’t have the movie rights to any of their top-tier characters. What they had were the B- and C-listers (as far as popularity goes, at least…Cap will always be #1 for me). This is actually pretty similar to the position Marvel was in when they created the Avengers way back in the day. Rather than choosing to take their bestsellers and stick them on a team together (like DC did with the Justice League), Marvel chose to revitalize some of their less popular characters by teaming them up. It worked like a dream back in the day.
But anyway, back to the movies. Marvel knew they wouldn’t be able to bank on brand recognition alone. They had to think, they had to plan, they had to get it right on the first try. So that’s what they did.
DC, on the other hand, had all their characters. Especially the best ones. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman. They had the rights to everyone. They had the brand recognition that Marvel could only dream about. This meant that when it came time to make each movie, they banked a lot more on “Everyone knows Superman!” than Marvel could. Look at it this way, if you’ve got a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, you probably won’t feel a burning need to spend time lining up your shot before you push the big red button. But if all you’ve got is a bow and a handful of arrows, you’d better make sure you make your shots count.
The only thing they didn’t have was time. Marvel had beaten them to the punch with the whole “cinematic universe” idea, and now whatever DC did, they would get compared to Marvel. So they decided to distance themselves from Marvel tonally, with…mixed success, shall we say.
However, this created another problem. DC didn’t want to risk Marvel getting further ahead of them than they already were, so they rushed a few things. Whereas Marvel released The Avengers as the sixth movie in a series, DC only really had three movies leading up to Justice League (Suicide Squad was in there too, but didn’t really contribute much to the mix).
The other main issue is that Marvel hires fans. Kevin Feige won’t bring on a director or a writer if they don’t love the source material. Look at Winter Soldier. Look at how cool the Russo brothers clearly think Captain America is. And they give him a lot of moments to show it off. Look at how cool Favreau thinks Iron Man is. Or how much James Gunn cares about the Guardians. They love these characters and want to share that love with the audience. As a result, we love them too. Even more impressive is the fact that Marvel tends to hire up-and-coming directors who love comics. The Russos, for example, had hardly done anything big budget before Winter Soldier.
DC hires people with pedigree. Zack Snyder has done some visually impressive movies before, but he clearly doesn’t get Superman. In my personal opinion, I think Snyder doesn’t even like Superman, not because of his character, but because Snyder has a hard time with what Superman stands for. This becomes pretty evident in Batman v. Superman when everyone but Superman gets to tell the audience their side of the story. But that’s another conversation for another day.
Yet another reason is more deeply ingrained in the characters. There’s a meme that goes “DC heroes are gods trying to be men; Marvel heroes are men trying to be gods.” It’s pretty close to true. Your average member of the Justice League could probably take down most of the Avengers on their best day, but this cosmic level of power tends to make DC heroes a bit harder to relate to. Effectively, DC tends to go for the power fantasy route (even Batman and Catwoman can somehow take out three Flashes at the same time nowadays), while Marvel tends to make more down-to-earth heroes (the “anyone can be a hero” route). This is a lot of the reason why DC’s big three (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) are two godlike immortals and one supergenius, while Marvel’s main heroes (Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Spidey) are three mortals (one scrawny kid turned Super Soldier, one messed up recovering alcoholic supergenius, and a kid from Queens who got bit by a spider) and one godlike immortal. As a result, it’s slightly easier for Marvel to get us to relate to these characters on the big screen. I have friends who still have a hard time relating to Wonder Woman or Superman, even after seeing the movies.
Another reason is the visual effects (this is a tiny one, but it contributes). Marvel is owned by Disney, and Disney owned Industrial Light and Magic, one of the best visual effects companies in the world. As a result, Marvel and Disney get first dibs on ILM, and it shows. DC, unfortunately, tends to have to find someone else to be their main VFX company.
But the main reason, the #1 reason for Marvel finding greater success than DC…
Is this guy.
Kevin Feige. Perhaps the greatest superhero of them all.
If the MCU were a TV show, Feige would be the showrunner, the lead writer, the head honcho. He created a plan for the MCU early on (most likely he planned out Phase 1 by itself, with a few dangling plot threads, and then planned phases 2 and 3 together), and Marvel gave him the power to enforce that plan. Various directors have mentioned that Marvel gives them 2 or 3 mandates (this event needs to happen, this character needs to be introduced, this character absolutely cannot die, etc). These mandates all come from Feige. From his plan for the universe. And on top of everything else he does, he hires people who get along, so that James Gunn can work with the Russo Brothers just fine, without egos getting in the way.
After Infinity War, people are still finding bits of foreshadowing in previous Marvel movies (especially Age of Ultron). While some of this is probably the usual comics thing of one writer leaving a hint of things to come, and the next trying desperately to work out a plot that fits that hint later, but a lot of this is definitely Feige. He’s a master planner, and he’s a superfan to boot.
DC doesn’t have anyone to match Feige. Snyder was their best bet, initially, but we know how that turned out. And, later in his run, DC lost faith in Snyder and started undercutting him (again, with mixed results). Marvel has pretty much always backed Feige 100%.
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