bdcjacko said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ironman, Thor, and Capt. America were all B-list super heroes before their movies? I mean sure the average man on the street could have probably been able to name them if shown a picutre, but they aren't the A listers like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Wolverine or the Hulk. I feel like Martian Manhunter would be at least a B- lister, the average fan would say they recognize him. He shows up in the JLA cartoons and one off cartoon movies. It isn't like he is this Rocket Raccoon Marvel has a movie for.
Point is you can introduce this Martian Manhunter in other movies not unlike how Hawkeye and Black Widow were introduced in Thor and Ironman 2 respectively. Sure he is a silly character (i mean that from an outsiders perspective) but he isn't any sillier than Thor or all of Guardian;s cast. And that is half the point of superhero comic books, is to have these silly characters that do awesome things.
Goyer is short sighted and undervaluing what the mass will accept. Hell the masses just went in droves to see Godzilla. I think they can buy a flying green dude.
Actually the thing is that the Marvel stable has a lot of characters that seem like they should be obscure, cult, things, things but are actually pretty mainstream. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and others did the multi-generational thing being popular with the Baby Boomers, Gen X, and continueing to have awareness among the Millenials. The mistake in dealing with this kind of thing is that they are equating sales to awareness, overlooking how many hands a comic book passes through and how many readers it tends to have, not to mention how the internet lead to huge stockpiles of comics being scanned and put online for free, long before comic companies got the idea of running their own digital services and doing the same thing for money. The result is that while "common sense" dictates that something like Iron Man shouldn't be well known, it actually was, and it had a large fan base waiting for it. Marvel seems to be reluctant to acknowledge this, as does the media in general.
With DC you have characters that have been around even longer than Marvel characters and have also done the cross generational thing. I'm not sure how many characters in their continuity you can really call "obscure" as a general rule if a comic character was ever popular enough to get a chance to hold down their own book, it cannot be considered truely obscure, especially if that book remained in publication for a year or more and the character continued to exist and be used in other titles even after it's failure (assuming it failed).
The problem with DC's universe as I see things is that DC is intended to be goofy, and where Marvel has largely maintained a solid continuity, DC likes to blow it's up every few years for sales reasons (though Marvel seems intent on trying something similar, which I expect will backfire). For example in DC people go around calling themselves "Captain" whatever without a reason, where in Marvel if someone calls themselves "Captain" it usually comes from an actual rank or position. Marvel being a bit more grounded in reality (compared to other comic properties) and thus being able to be handled fairly realistically, where DC isn't remotely even trying to be grounded in reality. Something as outright silly as DC is going to be an entirely different audience than for Marvel (which is why the two co-exist so well), and not embracing that ridiculousness (stuff that seems like it should be from a comedy, but isn't) is doing it a disservice and simply serves to turn it's efforts into a "follow the leader" relationship with Marvel. The exception tothis of course being the one property they have managed to make money off of: Batman, largely because Batman is one of the few fairly grounded DC comics, to the point where he pretty much exists in his own reality bubble a lot of the time despite being officially part of the DC universe. A lot of critics have oftentimes talked about "Gotham Reality" as opposed to "DC reality" and how much effort is made to pretty much keep the rest of the universe from bleeding into Batman's corner of the world too much so they can continue making gritty, low-powered stories about psychopaths in costumes beating the crap out of each other.
As a general rule the guy who has written successful Batman movies, is the last guy you want to be dealing with other DC properties. The studios also need to realize is that if things look and sound absurd they are doing it right, because that is DC's trademark, nobody takes DC seriously, especially DC. I mean cripes DC is a world where intelligent Gorillas with an anti-humanist agenda invading say New York to devolve people is a viable, recurring, threat... stop and think about that one for a second. To do DC right you need to really embrace the sheer, ridiculous, absurdity of the entire thing while treating it in a deadpan fashion. This is what makes it somewhat different from Marvel which while equally absurd in an absolute sense doesn't take it to the same ridiculous extremes (at least not as often).
I mean crud, all you need to do is have contemplate doing "Captain Marvel" (one of their longest running, and most continually successful properties in one form or another), and then ask yourself "why does he call himself 'Captain'". Some crazy wizard just pretty much told Billy "you change into CAPTAIN Marvel" and people just kind of ran with it including him. In short your not supposed to think about it too hard, that's DC... and that's what DC movies need to try and capture IMO if they want to be successful and do their own thing.
