It's About Characters, Stupid

[krazykidd]

Please don't generalize super heroes like that. Superman can be interesting when given the right author believe it or not.

Here's the thing, though: Anything can be interesting when given the right author. The problem is that the character of Superman, being nigh-invulnerable and incredibly strong, does not innately lend himself to being interesting.

snip

I have to know where your avatar comes from.

You may or may not be disappointed by the answer.


Also, I agree that there are a lot of superheroes, particularly in the DC Universe, that don't lend themselves to interesting story-telling. If there's one thing Marvel does do better, it's making the actual heroes more... human. Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Hal Jordan (or whatever other Green Lantern you prefer), Wally West, these aren't people that we can relate to, they're people we can idealize.

What the hell did i just watch ? I didn't blink the whole while .

OT: Yup People are going overkill . They make things flashy so that it sells well , then they realise their kinda shot themselves in the foot for sequels. Then they wonder why people say sequels tend to suck.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

have Batman show up at the very end of each one to punch them all in the stomach 'cause he's an empty-headed violent fascist.

Ah, pure comedy gold!

Having just beaten Arkham Asylum, what does Killer Croc symbolise? I wasn't even aware there was a 'Killer Croc' villain until I played the game.

 

[gardian06]

in most mediums it's not so much what the person does it's more what we know about the character before they do it. take like the punisher movie for example and just start the movie from the point where he starts hunting down the "bad" people

Spoiler

he is a supervillain running around causing collateral damage in an attempt to kill/maim/harm a few people

or most other "vigilantly" superheros take away their back stories and what you have is no real different then the villains they fight. like the x-Men for example when Magneto said 'you know we are not all that different' he meant that when taken at face value without knowing the history of these specific people, and not have them be "likable" to some degree you would be wondering why they are the heroes, and the other is the villain. this is the same reason why when introducing a new hero they are typically either shown in a "normal" day before they were made the way they are now, or we are given that information in retrospective. then if we ever do learn information about the villain it is usually for the purpose of dehumanizing/montrafying them. step one to creating an enemy whether it be in comics/movies/politics/war is to remove any kind of human connection the general public/person has for them.

 

[crimson sickle2]

I agree with most of the idea behind the DC antagonists, but some later Marvel stories experimented with ideas like that to varying degree. However, most Marvel villains are shallow and unrelated to the protagonist still, but the same could be said of DC: how does Gorilla Grodd relate to the Flash?

...I would definitely be on the hype train for a movie about a league of injustice though, I hate most DC heroes.

 

[themilo504]

I disagree a skilled writher does not have to higher the stakes and can even lower them and still make a good follow-up story I personally really like the avengers and with the right people the next one can be about them trying to keep their favorite shoarma tent open and I would still be good.

Do agree with your legion of doom plan god that would be awesome.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

But wait didn't you dislike Dragon Age 2 partially because it didn't have a world threatening fantasy story, but instead a mor etight focus on a single city and its various dangers and struggles?

 

[Flatfrog]

Great article.

Here's a crazy thought: maybe you don't have to. Maybe you could give your audience enough credit that they might appreciate any new direction, not just always moving in the same direction towards increasingly big explosions. Maybe it's not entirely unthinkable that you can dial down as well as up, zoom in a bit tighter on some characters we liked and flesh them out a bit in a way where they don't get muscled out of screen time by giant robots.

This is why I loved Buffy season 6. Having gone up the Big Bad scale from Super-vampire to Vampre-Love-Interest-Gone-Evil to Giant snake-demon to Frankenstein uber-demon to Hell-God, they realised they needed to go in a different direction and made the sixth series go all psychological on our ass, and while it wasn't perfect it was really the only way they could have made it work. Of course in season 7 they went back the other way again and fought against the very concept of evil itself, but you can't have everything.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

And with that in mind... imagine what Marvel and DC could accomplish with a coalition experiment where Marvel designs a new superhero and DC creates the arch-nemesis of said character.

Might be a bit of a stretch to say it would automatically work, but sounds like a good idea on paper.

 

[Frostbite3789]

No, but the Joker's the exception to the rule. He's Batman's greatest nemesis, because Batman is all about an orderly, predictable universe where everything can be investigated and analyzed and he can have a plan for every situation. But the Joker is completely unpredictable and his motivations defy examination, so Batman can't really plan for him.

Oh...oh my god. Joker is the Assassins and Batman is the Templar. WE'VE BEEN ROOTING FOR THE WRONG SIDE ALL ALONG.

 

[Proeliator]

I don't think the Avenger movie works very well as a comparison, because (I thought) the whole concept of the Avenger movie was it was the big pew-pew movie, all the Smaller scale movies were the previous movies, all leading up to the big Finale. So in a since I think The Avenger movie was more a of a closing of the series rather than really opening up a new franchise. Plus the alien invasion didn't feel like it was trying to be too big, it wasn't, say, an ancient evil asleep for thousands of years threatening the entire universe but just happens to need to be stopped by a guy on Earth with a green ring...

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

"...it's eventually revealed that the zombie attack in America was started as an attempt to assassinate one solitary individual who was planning to reveal information about a previous zombie attack - get your head around that logic...."

...I'm afraid I can't do that, Ben, because my brain is not made of taffy.

I mean, seriously, Capcom has completely tossed any sort of logic or sense of scale out the window at this point. As much as I'm typically a foe of reboots, Resident Evil needs one, stat.

More on-point: Depowering your protagonists isn't the only route towards making them more interesting, of course. You could place other limiters on them, force them to scale themselves back voluntarily- making them fight in a place where high innocent casualties are likely if they go full-out, or keep someone they care about in constant danger. I think it's a lot more interesting if a hero whose typical Plan A is "smash through wall, punch bad guy" has to come up with a much more subtle attack plan on the fly AND ensure that he doesn't accidentally go overboard with his own strength and endanger what he's trying to protect.

Of course, that requires good writing, which is not the most easily-found thing in the entertainment industry.

 

[Alaster Angelo]

DC doesn't have better villains. They're pretty even in my view. Yes yes, DC has Batman's rogue gallery, Sinestro, etc. but Marvel has provided us with Magneto, Dr. Doom, Loki, Thanos and several others with their own complex view on the world and interesting motivations.

The Avengers did portray Loki as the "MWAHAHAHA I SHALL TAKE OVER THE WORLD" kind of guy/god, but remember his interactions with Thor in that movie, as well as every scene he had in the Thor movie and you can clearly see that he's a conflicted and interesting character.

The reason he and the rest of the characters didn't get a lot of character development in Avengers is because all of that happened during each of the heroes' individual movies. The Avengers was basically one long, drawn out climax to the collective story of each character, and that's pretty much the reason why I prefer most of the individual movies over the Avengers itself.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Great article, I like that it wasn't the inevitable "bash RE6" article that every Escapist contributor has had to put out recently. There's a little bit of that, but not nearly as bad.

Yahtzee, you have a great point that DC definitely does better by their villains than Marvel does. The only think I would point out is that X-Men has some pretty interesting villains, not the least of which being Magneto, the Malcom-X to Xavier's Martin Luther King. The X-Men story has some pretty complex characters all around, some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies. But for my money, Lex Luthor is a more compelling villain than any of them.

I think an entire movie focused on DC villains would be great, but the problem I would find with that is that villains tend not to stand on their own very well. Or they at least don't without some super hero to menace. Sure, you could make a plot where they all inevitably betray one another, but it wouldn't be as interesting without their heroic counter parts.

That's just my opinion, of course. It may be interesting to some people.

 

[Tanis]

The best thing to come out of the DC films have been the animated ones.

I'd LOVE to see Superman: Birthright and/or Luthor: Man of Steel animated.

Luthor:MoS is probably one of the best 'examples' of Lex.

 

[Ron Alphafight]

I think every story would benefit from Batman showing up at the end and punching someone in the stomach. Try it:

A kid came to my door and asked me if I wanted to buy some candy bars to help his school. I said sure and handed him some money. Then Batman walked up and punched him in the stomach.

 

[VoidWanderer]

While it is a lovely idea watching a Legion of Doom movie, I have very low expectations of any non-Batman movie put out by DC...

I do agree with Moviebob that a Captain Marvel (or 'Shazam') would be epic to watch.

 

[-Dragmire-]

You may or may not be disappointed by the answer.

That was 2,000 types of fantastic! That vid made me weirdly happy, thanks for that.

 

[octafish]

The DC heroes exception that proves the rule...why Doom Patrol of course.

Still, I've always secretly hoped for a Suicide Squad movie...the good '80's Suicide Squad that is, not the new debacle.

 

[RandV80]

Just some random thoughts, but I wondering if the more 'boring' nature of the iconic DC hero's has more to do with being stuck with decades older origin stories. Doing some quick wiki lookups, it seems like the DC cast were all created between 1930-40, while the Marvel cast came around in the 60's. In video game terms there's enough time between the start of Superman and Spiderman to go from the Mario Bros to Commander Shepherd.

 

[piclemaniscool]

I see Yahtzee read my opinion on Lex Luthor. Yes, we definitely need a movie for him. TBH I don't even care about the other villians. Batman villians change so drastically with each adaptation, that I can barely call them by their names. I liked Bane's backstory. Not TDKR Bane, but maksed wrestler on Venom Bane. However, they will never make a movie about the villian when the audience usually doen't know of their existence without the hero. It's just like Transformers. In our niche, here on the internet, it may seem like everyone knows this stuff and it would totally sell well. Not true. Without "Superman" somewhere in the title (or common title, i.e. Man of Steel) the VAST majority won't know it takes place in the same universe. And then once they find out, they will complain why Superman wasn't in it at all/enough (pretty likely chance of that is you saw TDKR reviews).

Actually, how did that all work in Smallville? I never saw a single episode, but it sounds like the kind of thing that would have hours worth of Luthor talking to himself in order to give off more exposition.