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DC Rethinks Its Universe

Sep 29, 2017  •  Post A Comment

Despite sucess in comics, on television and in games, there’s one area in which DC Entertainment has underperformed, according to a report Friday in Vulture, and that’s at the movies.

“For years, they struggled at the multiplex while their blood rival, Marvel, soared,” Vulture reports. “Starting in 2008, Marvel pioneered a Hollywood-buzz concept known as the cinematic universe: a narrative enterprise in which a bunch of individual films are said to exist in the same world, with characters crossing over and lots of buildup to megamovies where the whole gang gets together. Disney-owned Marvel has captured billions of eyes and dollars by running that operation with an iron fist: Its movies are all tightly linked and its brand image is held in a vise grip.

“Seeing the success of that model, Warner launched its own shared filmic cosmology with 2013’s ‘Man of Steel,’ which did well at the box office but received criticism for its depiction of a brooding Superman who murders someone at the end of the story. Then came 2016’s grim, gritty, and costly ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,’ which drew a harsh critical response and, with a global gross of $873 million, fell far short of Marvel’s $1.153 billion-earner that year, ‘Captain America: Civil War.'”

Now, Vulture reports, “DC and Warner have adopted a new strategy: Let’s rethink that whole universe thing. They’re not giving up on the idea of continuity, but they want to deemphasize the idea that all of these flicks are occupying the same space.”

We encourage readers to click on the link above to Vulture to read the full analysis.

3 Comments

  1. Yeah… that’ll work.

    It’s called “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

  2. Well…Marvel really hit a home run with the first Iron Man back in 2008. It’s what started it all. DC was late out of the gate with Man of Steel. Also Marvel’s Kevin Faige has the recipe to make it work. Marvel chooses great directors and actors. DC, while having great direction, really scrapped the bottom of the barrel for it’s actors. They had a home run with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night trilogy but then shortly after decided to go in another direction with Batman. Huge mistake. Batman vs. Superman was an awful movie. The one bright spot was Jessie Eisenberg as Lex Luther. I really enjoy the characters but DC has some homework to do to reach the level of Marvel.

  3. DC’s biggest problem is that their movies are dark. Dark in plot and also visually dark. I just saw Wonder Woman, and it was DC’s best movie by far, but while not dark in plot, visually, once off the island, it still looked dark. I saw the trailer on the disc for the Justice League, and it’s the same. People turn to super hero movies to lift their spirits from our now daily darkness, not enhance it.

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