Last week, when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige
announced the 9 new movies that would make up it’s cinematic "Phase Three", he didn't do it in a boardroom full of stodgy investors or on a corporate conference
call with a few invites from the press. No, instead, Feige took to a stage at
Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre. While the crowd before him very likely had it’s
share of investors, and it very obviously contained members of the press, it
also contained something you don’t really see at studio announcement events;
fans.
Make no mistake, people were excited a few weeks ago when
the list of DC movies slated for release over the next few years was a
announced. Twitter and Facebook exploded with non-stop talk of Justice League,
Wonder Woman and even Aquaman. People were excited that rival characters,
characters many of us thought we’d never see in a movie, let alone headline
one, would soon be taking to the screen. But even in all that excitement it
felt different to the big announcement from Marvel. In hindsight, it felt
impersonal. One studio opted to go with a traditional announcement with a CEO
with no connection to viewing audiences relating a corporate strategic plan and
then sending out a press release while the other held a party and made the fans
feel like guests of honor.
So of course many of those fans are reacting
as you’d expect; Marvel rules DC… well, not so much.
Be it Marvel or DC, more than a few people find it strange
that such wide swathes of an audience can be so blindly loyal to any for-profit
organization. And it is strange. Neither Marvel nor DC (or Disney and Warner
Bros. as the case may be) is putting out these flicks with any intention
remotely resembling altruistic. They’re in the business of making money and
super hero movies have so far, for the most part, proven to be a boom. Both
only care about fan loyalty in as much as that loyalty can be converted into
dollars come opening weekend.
However, for anyone who’s ever identified as a comic fan,
this fevered and impassioned war over which company is superior to the other is
nothing new. It’s a war that’s been raging for more than 50 years amongst a
readership that thrives on drawing arbitrary lines in the sand and it’s a war
the looks to be defining super hero cinema as much as it’s defined super hero
comics.
It’s also a war DC has been historically bad at fighting.
Before Stan Lee, you never really saw readers proclaim loyalty to one company over another. Either they liked a comic or a character or they didn’t. Fights may have broken out on playgrounds as to whether Captain Marvel or Superman was the more interesting character but it was unheard of for kids to announce absolute fealty to either Fawcett or DC (or National as the case may be).
Before Stan Lee, you never really saw readers proclaim loyalty to one company over another. Either they liked a comic or a character or they didn’t. Fights may have broken out on playgrounds as to whether Captain Marvel or Superman was the more interesting character but it was unheard of for kids to announce absolute fealty to either Fawcett or DC (or National as the case may be).
But that changed when Stan found himself backed into a corner.
Marvel had finally managed to break out of the generic monster comic monotony
of the 1950s and, thanks to the success of The Fantastic Four, was back in the
super hero business. One by one, other characters were starting to take hold:
Spider-Man, Iron Man, Nick Fury, Thor, The Avengers. However, as popular as
these characters were, DC still had a stranglehold on the super hero game. At
Marvel, Stan had the talents and he had the characters, now he just needed
attention. To get that attention, he initiated one of the most genius guerilla
marketing campaigns in comics or any other medium; he tricked fans into
thinking that they were an actual part of Marvel Comics.
In addition to letting readers know what was coming out month
to month, he pulled back the curtain on the company and let them see the inner
workings of Marvel’s Bullpen (or at least he crafted a pretty convincing
fiction of a Bullpen). Artists became personalities sold to fans right
alongside the characters being published each month at a time when creators at
DC were lucky to even get a credit. Readers were spoken to directly. “Because
YOU demanded it!” emblazoned more and more title pages and readers were told
they were the real bosses at Marvel. The Merry Marvel Marching Society was born
and finally DC went from being “the other guys” to “Brand Echh.”

Kevin Feige, and what amounts to a revamped Marvel Bullpen
for an all new audience and medium (“Jolly” Joss Whedon?), are just carrying on
a marketing tradition started years and years ago by Smilin’ Stan. Only unlike
Stan, Feige isn’t just making young children and disaffected college students
feel like they’re integral parts of this new Merry Marvel Marching Society;
he’s extended that circle to include people of all ages, demographics and
nationalities. Lee had Stan’s Soapbox; Feige has the El Capitan Theater and #MarvelEvent.
There’s been a lot of speculation over the last few weeks as
to how Marvel is going to fare in cinemas now that DC has unveiled it’s
years-long strategic plan. For the first time since Iron Man hit the
stratosphere, there’s going to be actual competition for Marvel and many are
wondering just how hard The House of Ideas is going to be hit.
I would wager not much.
Oh, DC’s movie franchise will
absolutely make money. The public, at least for now, is hungry for all things
super hero, and DC will absolutely be able to feed that beast. But will their
films be as popular has Marvel’s? Well, that depends on if DC can stop acting
like DC for a change and that doesn’t look to be happening anytime soon. Once
again, they’re late to the party in giving audiences what they want and as always
the company seems to be copying the wrong things from it’s rival. DC sees
Marvel has a veritable library of films that, like their source comics, take a
real world approach. So what’s their response? Flooding the market with product
with little to no build-up with an emphasis on dark and gritty.
Marvel has been successful at the
box office not because of volume or perceived realism but because over the
course of six years and counting, they’ve been building good will with audiences
both inside theaters and out. Every monstrous opening weekend is built not only
on the success of the string of beloved (for the most part) movies that have
come before but because audiences are given the illusion they were part of the
team that made it all happen.
Excelsior.
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