Marvel vs. DC: From Comics To Movies
Two Legendary Companies Battle On
This rivalry, which had been confined mainly to the printed page, now is finding a new battleground – on the silver screen, where both companies are jockeying for position to establish dominance in a new arena.
Due to being owned by Warner Brothers, DC was the first of the two companies to successfully branch their characters onto the silver screen, creating franchises around Superman and Batman. Whereas on the flip side, Marvel stumbled out of the gate with low-budget films based on Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and the Punisher.
Marvel - From Failure To Iron Man
In the 1990’s, Marvel Studios was formed to produce movie adaptations of Marvel characters through co-productions with other studios. The first of these collaborations was a film based on an obscure horror character from the 1970’s – Blade, which became a modest hit film.
By the end of the decade, Marvel found gold with the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises while films like Daredevil, Hulk, and The Punisher were considered mixed successes. Concurrently, the Batman franchise fell into disrepair after the commercial and critical failure of the fourth film, Batman and Robin, and numerous attempts to renew the Superman franchise were unsuccessful.
DC – Coming Of A Dark Knight
This trend began to reverse in 2005, with Batman being reinterpreted by Christian Bale for director Christopher Nolan in the film Batman Begins. A sequel, The Dark Knight, was released last year and thanks in part to Heath Ledger’s inspired portrayal of the Joker, became the most successful comic book film of all time, earning more than $1 billion in ticket sales.
On the flip side, Superman’s big screen return was finally realized by director Bryan Singer in 2006 with the film Superman Returns but was not considered by many to be a rousing success. Subsequent rumours have surfaced that the character will be rebooted with possibly a new director at the helm.
DC and Marvel - A Look Ahead
The future of this on-screen war will be even more interesting. In 2005, Marvel Studios made the announcement that they would independently produce their own movies with Paramount Pictures being the official distributor, with the goal of creating a synergistic movie universe similar to what the comic book Marvel Universe is.
The first film born from this strategy was Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, which was the second most successful film of 2008. In that film, important story details emerged around the Avengers Initiative. The Incredible Hulk was released afterwards through Universal Pictures and featured a cameo by Downey Jr. as Stark spreading the word about the Avengers Initiative.
Other films in development by Marvel Studios include The First Avenger: Captain America, Thor, and Ant-Man, with the eventual goal of bringing all these characters together in one film as the super-hero team, The Avengers.
Over at DC and Warner Brothers, in an attempt to match the strategy by Marvel, a movie featuring the Justice League was put into production in 2007 with the intent of reproducing on screen the super team featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman together along with other DC characters. Although the production was fast tracked, script issues forced the production to be delayed indefinitely.
At the beginning of this year, writer/producer David Goyer revealed in an interview that Warner Brothers effectively put their development of DC properties on hold in an attempt to create a new strategy for producing films based on these characters, setting the stage for a full-on struggle for supremacy on the silver screen.
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