Can DC gain a foothold against Marvel and achieve at least a fraction of the greatness that the MCU used to be?
After the big climax of Infinity War and Endgame, Marvel is toning things down. Both in budget and in action. It is introducing a lot of new characters, from bringing Deadpool into continuity, to confirming the Fantastic Four and the X-Men will appear, and there are rumors of Inhumans, Dr. Doom, Blade, and Adam Warlock.
But can they actually achieve anything to hope to compete with Marvel as it hits a slump?
- Get it together
The Avengers ended with the appropriately named Endgame movie. Disney moved
the MCU to television (mainly) and has been having marketing trouble
ever since they forgot to, well, tell fans to enjoy the movie instead of ignore
it or telling large demographics that the movie ‘will put [them] in their
place’. This leaves a large audience
looking for movies that won’t belittle or insult them, but will entertain
them. The problem is: DC has no plans to
do either. DC failed to market Suicide Squad
(which, to me, was great and would have been perfect if not for extended Harley
Quinn scenes which had neither lots of action or comedy as the rest did.) But DC has announced no plans after that
other than Superman and an insulting race-swapped Superman, forgetting there
are several black characters who have superpowers, including Steel, who was
canonically inspired by Superman, and continuing Shazam, who has been compared
to Superman for decades.
2.
These aren’t anyone’s
superheroes
DC is trying to push Justice League but with angry and belligerent characters. They want wars between metahumans, not character conflict. That’s called Injustice. Or Red Son, or Kingdom Come, or Superman: Earth’s End. Audiences need Superman, not a crazy alien that starts blasting randomly at property and people. They need Batman, the tortured soul who will do anything to protect people, the world, and his friends (though probably won’t admit they are his friends. Whichever Flash they choose, he should be friendly, outgoing, and useful to the team. The same goes for everyone else. With all their flaws and fights they are a team of superHEROES and they should act like it. I know there is an injustice movie coming out and I am myself hyped, but that’s an elsewhere story and the characters are driven to violence by extreme circumstances; that is not how they normally act and audiences need normal.
3.
Stop going woke because you’ll
keep going broke
Both Marvel and DC have gotten flack for pandering to ‘woke’ crowd. Jumping on the bandwagon of blaming an entire gender for not wanting to watch another gender (especially when there’s tons of evidence against it) is exactly that—it’s even worse when such narratives are in the movie. Now, there is a HUGE difference between ‘woke’ and having great gay, trans, women, or minority characters. Those are NOT the same thing. Preaching to the audience—especially in a way that is hypocritical to the film itself or to the company that made it—is not a plot or entertaining characters. It is talking down to people and insulting a majority of those who might have been interesting in the movie. No one likes being preached to, and no one likes a movie insulting an entire gender, minority, or anything else you were born as and can’t help it. Thousands of shows and movies were made for decades to show women, minorities, the disabled,--anybody—can be awesome. Not to mention audiences don’t like it when the story screeched to a halt for any reason. It’s actually really easy to make representation work. All you need are two things: first, no gender or race swapping. That’s insulting to say ‘yeah, we can’t be bothered to find a character already trans/gay/woman/etc, so you’ll have to replace someone and thus insult you and fans of whoever was replaced. That’s called erasure and it happens a lot to races that are only considered white very recently in history and who have seen centuries of racism, such as the Irish, white Hispanic, and Eastern and Central European. Second: make the story your first priority. Wonder Woman, Mr. Terrific, Steel, give cyborg his own movie, Scandal as a villain, Hispanic Hawkgirl, Batwoman, Batgirl AKA Oracle, Asian Batgirl, John Stewart Green Lantern, everyone from Birds of Prey except accurate this time, Katana, and tons more have tons of potential. Showing characters who happen to be a certain gender, identity, or race being awesome makes thinking they can be as awesome as anyone else.
Do I think DC can pull this off? Probably not. Especially with DC putting out spin-off for a movie they haven't even hired a writer for and with fans arguing over which elease of different films should be offered. Do I think it is possible for DC or any other franchise company to
compete with the MCU? Right now, yes.
Disney owns the MCU and the company is infamous for abusing employees, hypocrisy,
and thanking China for allowing to film near death camps. Many independent bloggers and youtubers are reporting
on how the parks and the visual media are a sick, sad, joke. As a former Disney fan, I mourn for what the
company was and could be. But just like
other former fans, I’m eager to see what else there is to love and this is a
prime opportunity to create something for me or all the others looking to enjoy
shows and movies again.
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