DC vs Marvel: Why it's Bull

It's one of the most intense rivalries in all of geekdom. Which comics do you prefer? Marvel or DC? This isn't anything new, ever since there was such a thing as science fiction or fantasy, there have always been rivalries between fans. Star Wars or Star Trek? Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? George Orwell or Ray Bradbury? Okay maybe that last one was just me but you get the idea.

The difference is that I've noticed the Marvel/DC is much more intense. It's actually treated like a rivalry. In the case of Wars/Trek, you mostly find that even though someone prefers one, they still respect and see the appeal of the other. In the case of Potter/Rings, you find that most of the time, people are fans of both, but still say they just happen to like one more than the other. So why is DC/Marvel actually seen in this light?

If you look at the comics themselves, you find that there really isn't that much of a difference. Most people think that DC tends to be more dark and gritty while Marvel likes to be lighthearted.

Oh yes, Marvel so lighthearted and kid friendly, with great warm and fuzzy moments like this shot of Wolverine decapitating Red Skull with Captain America's shield.

(I just googled Wolverine: Old Man Logan, and this was on the second row)


And DC, being so dark.

(Third image that showed up on Google)


Okay, so maybe that stance stems more from the movies and shows that these characters produce. Afterall, movies like The Dark Knight and Batman V Superman had a noticeably darker tone than say Guardians of the Galaxy.


For example, here's the poster for Batman v Superman, next to the poster for Guardians of the Galaxy

   

While they both look like movies with a ton of action, one of them clearly looks like it's going to be more fun.

Except wait, see that's not even fully true because when you think about it, the X-Men movies have been pretty dark too. And those are not so much about defeating a one-off villain, they are more about conflicting ideologies and worldviews. Kind of hard to make a kid sit through that.

 And what about the tv shows? This is again where people would assume that DC's shows are more broody and violent while Marvel are more upbeat and optimistic. Oh really?

  
There's no need for a caption. If you've seen the shows, you know what I'm talking about.

Compare that to DC shows...

   

I know that Arrow looks kind of intense, but come on, it's on the CW, when have they ever done anything that dark? Even Supernatural has more than its fair share of funny moments.

But going back to the movies, the distinction between them is that DC has charged the wrong man with their expanded universe. That being Zack Snyder. See, while Joss Whedon, James Gunn and many others have had the chance to really take their Marvel properties and really expand on them, letting the characters develop on screen the way that they did on the page, Snyder is less concerned with the story and more concerned with making shots that look cool. He doesn't take into account the purpose of the shot, nor the story behind it, or if it even makes sense, he just sees that it looks cool and moves on.

Take this shot for example. If this were in a comic, you could assume that he was there for like a second or this is him descending on them to rescue them. But in actuality, he just hovers there for like a minute. Hey Supes? You gonna save those people? You're supposed to be faster than a speeding bullet, think you can maybe hit the throttle on this? People are only drowning, I'm just saying. Seriously, f*%$ this movie.

Forgive me, I digress. As far as the films go, DC thinks that if they are going to make an expanded universe, then they have to carbon copy the two movies that really did it right. Problem is, Snyder is not very good at copying.

  

Dark tone? Let's make it darker than Schindler's List! With no humor or even a smile throughout our entire movie!
(even The Dark Knight and Vendetta had some humor in it)
Weird cast choices that actually work out in the end? Let's do Zuckerberg as Lex Luthor!
(I said that actually worked out in the end. I still want a Bryan Cranston Lex Luthor)
Long run time to develop the story and give a fuller understanding or characters' motivations? Let's make it 3 hours, with a director's cut, and cram as much set up for Justice League as possible!
(Have you even been paying attention?)
Present characters in a new light that still finds a way to stay mostly faithful to the source material? Let's have Batman use so many guns Charlton Heston is going to have to take a cold shower! And let's make the entire Suicide Squad cast look like Hot Topic employees!
(I'm done with you)

 Seriously Snyder? Do you even Batman?!

Marvel on the other hand, let's all their movies feel a little different. Captain America 2 and 3 for example feel like political thrillers. Ant Man came off almost like a heist movie. Iron Man 3 felt like something Tom Clancy would write.


Movies aside, the rivalry between Marvel and DC really flabergasts me because with the other rivalries, there is a clear distinction, and knowing what people prefer tells you a little more about them. With Marvel and DC, there really isn't that much distinction between them, they both have their darker moments and they both have there fun times. For every Killing Joke, there is Teen Titans, for every Avengers, there is Deadpool.

And for those that say that Marvel makes better movies than DC, just remember that while for every Dark Knight, there is a Green Lantern, Marvel also has this on its track record.

 

Do I need to go on?... Yeah, I think I'll go on.









 



Say what you will about DC's failures, but they never screwed up so bad that they had to reboot the same franchises multiple times and erase whole movies from the continuity. Also, they don't have Howard the Duck.


So truth be told, if you were to ask me if I was a Marvel fan or a DC fan, I would say that I'm both and I'm neither. I like and read comics from both sides, I have eagerly awaited to see movies from both sides, and in terms of the actual comics themselves, I don't really see much of a distinction as to start such an intense battle over. They both have their awesome movies and the both have their Green Lanterns.

Though, if there were a gun to my head and I was forced to pick one, full disclosure, I would pick DC because of


THIS


NOT THIS



THIS


NOT THIS



THIS



NOT......... THIS



When you're a comic book fan, you have to take what you can get.

Oct 7- Dragons

Honestly, what is more awesome than dragons? They breathe fire, they fly, they can grab people up and eat them, and they are gigantic. I want one. Dragons are not typically seen in a lot of movies these days, but they are a staple of fantasy. After all, another name for a classic hero is "dragon-slayer". No matter what story we are talking about, once a character has killed a dragon, their badass level has gone through the roof. Nobody says "he killed a dragon? who cares". Dragons are known as the destroyers of villages and the bringers of death. When one guy is able to stop that, he should get all the praise one can give. On top of that, owning a dragon becomes just as badass. Part of what makes Daenerys Targaryen so awesome is that she owns three dragons that are getting larger all the time. You take this destructive force of nature and get it to call you "mommy". That is the mark of a true bad ass.

Yeah, that's all I got for dragons. I can definitely say that defeating dragons is extremely satisfying too.  In the 2011 game Skyrim, all you do is kill dragons and devour their souls to get new abilities. That's the ultimate insult to injury. What's better is that no matter how many times you kill dragons, you still get that feeling that your genitalia is increasing.

Here are some pictures of dragons, May they make your day better.

Not quite what I was going for but it will work

   

Oct 6- Nazi's

Nazis are almost too easy. In the same way that Darth Vader and The Joker are easily recognized across all factions of culture, so are Nazi’s unanimously recognized across cultures as some of the worst pricks on the planet. You can say literally anything about them and not worry about offending somebody. As Craig Ferguson put it, “fuck you, you’re a Nazi!”

Given their almost universally hated status, they’ve become the easy go-to when it comes to making an easy villain. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he thought he was just looking for his father, and then he discovered Nazis were involved, then the whole game was changed. In the recent spy adventure, The Man from UNCLE, both Soviets and the US put aside their differences. Why? To stop a Nazi. When Captain America decided to dissolve SHIELD, why did he do it? Because they had been taken over by Hydra, a Nazi organization. Once a Nazi gets involved in anything, that’s when you know it’s time to pull the plug.

So why are Nazi’s so hated? I don’t really think I need to answer this, but here we go. They mass murdered both their own people and people from other countries, they tried to take over the world, their politics were insane, and their leader sported one of the worst mustaches in history. They also were not very good at letting things go. For example, when France surrendered to Germany, Hitler made them sign the surrender document in the same train car that Germany had surrendered to France at the end of World War I. Does anybody want to be friends with someone who throws that much shade?

What makes them so terrifying is that they aren't aliens or monsters. They are people. Actual thinking people thought that murdering so many people for such trivial reasons was not only justified, but the right thing to do. They told themselves they were making the world a better place by doing these things. That's a horrifying. Convincing a small group of people to do something crazy is one thing, but Nazi ideals had an entire country supporting this. Now of course, the defense that a lot of former Nazi's threw around at Nuremburg is that they were under orders. This notion had psychologists baffled for years. How is it that these seemingly intelligent, decent people could be coaxed into committing these atrocities? Eventually an answer was found, though through less intense means. Nazi Germany is the ultimate example of what can happen when too many people let their emotions get the better of them. 

As odd as it sounds, it was hard to pick a specimen to represent the ideal nazi in movies. The reason being that there have been so many of them throughout cinema history and the type of movie they are in depends on how they are going to be shown. If this were Indiana Jones or Inglourious Basterds, then they are mustache twirlers. If this were Schindler's List, they would be as true to history as possible. 

So I guess speed round?

 Belloq. Not techinically a Nazi, but was willing to go along with it to reach his own ambitions.

Hans Landa. Actually, one of the most likable on screen villains you'll find. Super polite and courteous. He even hints that he doesn't really support the Nazis in his mind, but he's a detective, so working for the Nazis is just his way of putting food on the table.

 Hitler, or Kung Fuhrer. Perfect example of how we take Nazis and exploit the hell out of the fact that we can point and laugh at them all we want and nobody gets offended.

Oct 5- Artificial Intelligence

Technology. Can't live with it, and if the last 5 years have taught me anything, we sure as hell can't live without it. If you're new to the sci-fi genre, one thing you should know is that we seem to have a fetish for killer robots and machines. From 2001 to Terminator to most recently Avengers: Age of Ultron, murder bots have always been a staple of sci-fi culture. In recent years, it's evolved to the point that we have gotten scared of technology almost. As soon as people mention the development of thinking computers, we immediately imagine scenes from Terminator or The Matrix of robots rising up and destroying or enslaving humanity.

And they all follow the same formula. Mankind invents a technology that can keep the peace or save the world. The problem is, that's all they tell it to do. All the computer learns is "Finish the mission". That's the only command they're given, they aren't given any guidelines or restrictions. Eventually (or sometimes right away), said machine will see humanity as an obstacle to completing the mission and therefore decide that we all have to go. This is what happens in all three of the movies I mentioned above.

The scary thing about Artificial Intelligence is that in every case, it's our fault. The machine didn't go haywire, it was just doing what it was programmed to do. So, in that sense, the only ones that we have to blame is ourselves. We told Skynet to destroy its enemies, so we became the enemy in its eyes. We told Ultron to create peace of our time, so he decided the only lasting peace would come at global extinction. We told HAL 9000 to finish the mission, and saw human emotion and doubt as being a hindrance to that end. I don't really know what led to the machine uprising in The Matrix, but I'm sure it's not different from the other ones.

Artificial Intelligence is the perfect mirror of humanity's ambitions and its flaws. It's not that our reach exceeds our grasp, it's that we don't think about what we are reaching for, and if it will be worth it. We have a bad habit of leaping before thinking. We want to achieve something, but we fail to consider the cost. In that way, all of these movies can be a cautionary tale of what could happen if we keep going with that mentality.

Ideal Specimen: The T-1000

An idea of someone who knows only one thing, that being to finish the mission would be the T-1000, and all of Skynet for that matter. As I mentioned before, they were told to destroy its enemies, and it saw mankind as the target. The T-1000, though simply a footsoldier, perfectly displays this. He doesn't care who or how many people he kills, or how much damage he causes, all he cares about is killing John Connor. Just look at his face in the picture above. There's no emotion, no feeling, just pure unadulterated determination. You wouldn't even know that he just came out of a flaming care wreck. He gets shot, gets run over by a car, he walks it off like nothing happened.Of course, I could also put the original Terminator played by Arnold himself on here, and yeah, he does belong, but Robert Patrick's T-1000 is far more intimidating in my eyes. For starters, he doesn't look all that intimidating, he looks like a normal guy. But his cold gaze and his scanning eyes make him hard to make eye contact with. He also is the more resourceful. Since his body is entirely liquid metal, he can form knives with his hands, he can mold his face to look like anyone, he can even change his voice to sound like other people. Not to mention he's disguised as a cop. He's about as big of a devil in disguise as you can get.

Oct 4- Aliens

Much like ghosts, aliens tend to be something of a blank slate. While vampires and werewolves usually follow the same set of rules, aliens and ghosts are much more flexible. If you wanted to make a similar questionnaire about aliens like the one I made for ghosts, the questions would be different, but there’d also be more of them. The obvious first choice is whether they are friendly or not. From there, you have to choose several other items. What do they look like? Are they intelligent? Why are they here? Where do they come from? Do they eat brains? What color is their blood? That last question may seem random, but pay attention to alien blood next time you see it. Aliens can be terrifying because again, we don’t know if they are hostile or not. And two, they don’t always follow the same logic and philosophies that humans do. What could seem dastardly to most people could be perfectly justified to an alien from another world.

A common theme that I’ve seen in alien movies is this extraterrestrial civilization saying that Earth is an underdeveloped planet, as are it’s people. Oh really? If that’s the case then why does the movie always end with earthlings kicking your ass? We may not have as cool space ships as you but at least we know how to fire a gun. In some cases, the humans use alien technology against them. That’s gotta be embarrassing for them.

  

Ideal Specimen- Xenomorphs

Holy crap, are these things scary as hell. They’re so intelligent they make the raptors from Jurassic Park look lobotomized. They bleed acid. They hunt by scent and hearing. They have two mouths to eat you with. They can impale you with their tale. And they have no eyes. So help me god they have no eyes. How can you look death in the eye, when it has no fucking eyes?!

I don't know what is more terrifying about them, their very existence or that they give birth by implanting an embryo inside a host and then the baby bursts out of that person's body.

That scene still gives me the creeps to this day.

If you want an idea of how terrifying xenomorphs can be, don’t just watch the first two movies, also play the video game Alien: Isolation. You are stuck on a ship, the inhabitants have gone nuts, the androids have gone haywire, and there is an infinite number of xenomorphs roaming around like they own the place. Because let’s face it, they pretty much do.

All things considered, xenomorphs can't really be considered evil. I mean, sure they are abominations of nature that eat and murder (in that order) everything in sight, but they are essentially fulfilling the most basic instinct of evolution: to survive and to thrive. Every organism has that goal whether advanced or not, xenomorphs are just dicks about it.

Oct 3- Ghosts

Ah, ghosts. The one horror element that never seems to get old. They might be the original horror villain because they are the first reason that we are afraid to turn off the lights, and they tend to be the subject of many scary stories we hear as kids. Think about it, there is a whole category of “ghost stories”. Ghosts are also the most flexible of monsters. You can make them threatening, as in The Woman in Black or they can be friendly like Casper or most of the ghosts on The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. You can also make up your own rules for ghosts depending on what you’re writing. It’s like you can play Mad Libs when writing a ghost story. I actually picture this kind of questionnare being filled out when writing a ghost story.

Circle one for each answer:

What are they haunting?    

  A specific area (such as a town or hotel)            A person or a group of people

Why are they haunting?     

Curse on the area                  Unfinished business                   Person(s) was an asshole to them in life

Is there any way for them to go away?                    Yes                                                No

If circled yes, explain below (bonus points if it involves human sacrifice):

Do they have any abilities? List them below:

Most of the time, they only circle one answer. They circle two, then things start to get needlessly complicated.

Ideal Specimen: Lloyd the Bartender

One of the brilliant aspects of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the build up. At first it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot happening, but once the ghosts in the hotel start to reveal themselves, things get going very quickly. One of the first ghosts to appear is Lloyd the Bartender, who appears to Jack in a moment of weakness. We don’t know what to make of this guy. He seems more than friendly and polite, but considering how tense things have been building up, we don’t trust him at first. I think it’s the fact that you never actually see him blink. Much like Hannibal Lecter, there’s an uneasiness that comes when you are talking to a person who never seems to close their eyes. It just feels more like they are studying you, learning everything they can. And considering Lloyd is a supernatural entity, we can assume it won’t be that hard for him. And besides, he's a ghost. Why would a ghost blink?Now some may be expecting that I would put Grady instead of Lloyd, and I can understand that. But for me, Grady is the one who spoiled the mystery of the hotel. He was the one that confirmed to us that the hotel has sinister intentions and that it’s not just screwing with its inhabitants. Since a good portion of this movie is trying to figure things out, the questionable nature of Lloyd kept the theme going. Don’t get me wrong, Grady was cool, and the way he slowly lifted the veil and went from being friendly and polite to commanding and threatening was brilliant, but it was more fun when we were trying to answer questions ourselves. And that is another thing that people don’t really think about when it comes to ghost movies. It becomes a mystery of figuring out their nature and whether they can be stopped or not, and how.

Oct 2- Vampires

Number 2 on the list of most popular monsters as of late are vampires, though they seem to have seen their days come and go. Now, I know why they became more popular for a stretch, it’s because of Stephanie Meyer, even though her books had little to do with actual vampirism and more to do with being hot and immortal and misunderstood and having a personality that would make wet cardboard jealous. So we aren’t going to talk about them. We are here to talk about the old school vampires. The ones that suck the blood of the innocent, turn into bats or demons of hell, depending on which version you look at, and are so unholy and satanic that water with a cross on it will give them hives.

So why have vampires been so popular? Even before Twilight, vampires were already a staple of pop horror. One of the first horror films ever, Nosferatu, is a vampire flick. Think about it, in terms of being a horror icon, they really are the complete package. They suck blood, they prey on the weak, most of the time they got their powers as part of some Faustian bargain. And unlike zombies, who look like people but have lost all of their personality and humanity, vampires still get to keep that. And they get to keep their faces without any decay taking place. And they’re immortal which from a character stand point, makes them perfect for story telling. Many times a vampire is a character that has lived for centuries and has seen civilizations rise and fall. They’re viewers of the never ending story that is human history. This may play a part in why many vampires are people who have lost their humanity. They’ve seen the mistakes that mankind has made and continues to make, even though they should have learned from it the first few times. So, to them, they probably don’t see the killing of an innocent to be that big of a crime because they’re saving the world from one more idiot who would have contributed to humanity’s next big mistake.

Okay, it actually just hit me that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that angle played out in a vampire story, so whoever plans on writing a vampire novel next, feel free to use that. Just give me a writer’s cred for it. But I digress.

Ideal Specimen: Count Dracula

Well, who else am I going to name? Sure, there are other vampires that have left their mark, but none of them have had such a big impression than Dracula. He’s been adapted dozens of times and by different actors who all had their own spin on the blood sucking count from Bella Lugosi to the immortal Christopher Lee and my personal favorite, Gary Oldman. In a way, every time the horror genre goes through a reinvention, there’s going to be an adaptation of Dracula that puts emphasis on the style of the day. When Christopher Lee played Dracula, it was during the Hammer Horror days when horror films were very goofy with lots of fake looking blood and special effects that didn’t really hold up, even back then. However, when you look at it, you get the idea that those decisions were made on purpose. The whole idea behind these films was more about the visual style than anything else. If you want a more modern idea of what a Hammer Horror film was like, take a look at any of Tim Burton’s movies, particularly Sweeney Todd or Sleepy Hollow. When Gary Oldman played Dracula, it put more emphasis on the sexual nature of vampires than past films. Not that that was the whole focus of the movie, but it was definitely more present than past adaptations. Because when you’re immortal, you’re gonna have a lot of time on your hands, and when you have three eternally beautiful wives, you’re gonna find some use for both that time and those hands, giggidy. What’s more interesting is that Oldman’s, while being more sensual than past versions, is also much creepier. Even when he’s a young man, there’s something unsettling about him. I never really knew if he was going to turn Mina into a vampire or not.

Oldman’s Dracula was also the first time we saw just how powerful he could be. He can take on the form of almost anything from a young man to a wolf, to fog, to a demon out of hell. It made him more threatening because you never really knew what the limits to his abilities were. If you haven’t seen this movie, and you like vampires, check it out. Visually, there’s some good stuff, and the performances, with a few exceptions, are really good.