I’ve harped on this before, but I still find it weird that people try to equate the traditional comic book Marvel Vs. DC rivalry to the film universes, even though that **** doesn’t scale. Marvel began this cinematic endeavor as its own autonomous studio that depended wholly on its successes to continue, and will likely operate much the same way despite being acquired by the mouse house. DC has long been a total subsidiary of WB, and has never operated with the kind of single vision that the Marvel MCU put together.
It’s like mocking an oil field for not operating like a coal train- the business models have always been different. What this has provided us is with the best of both worlds- a beloved IP like Batman has been stacked — entirely on its own — amongst the Potters and Matrix flicks and Ocean’s movies as a property to be individually developed, while Marvel has orchestrated a grand plan where the individual pieces have served a whole. So for this reason we’ve gotten a lot of unique, singular takes on Batman (some good, some bad), while with Marvel we’ve seen a lot of decent, but compromised films lead to something epic and web-connecting. To put it more simply: consider that this year alone will have provided us with two entirely unprecedented experiences as a result of both approaches, neither of which could have happened as they did at the opposite studio. Your mileage may vary on which has provided you more raw hours of entertainment — and the scales would be more balanced if flicks like Green Lantern and Superman Returns were actually good — but there’s certainly a creative value to both.
Cool things could come of a bigger cinematic DC universe, but I personally feel it should either be done all the way, or not at all. My own personal aesthetic OCD demands consistency, and two men of steel running around is going to bug the **** out of me, and probably more than a few of you. I predict the next few years will be fascinating and frustrating for those paying attention to WB/DC’s efforts. Of course now begins the fun of wondering what kind of villain will draw these heroes together, how the origin of the team and new characters will work, and all those other fan-exciting questions…
