Cilogy wrote:To play devil's advocate for the people wanting a sequel, the concept of a shared universe is a relatively new thing and I think it adds a new dimension to sequel-making that complicates things a bit.

It kind of (sometimes unfortunately, in the case of SS or BvS) creates this obligation to develop more content in a way that has never really been implied in film before. It also helps that superheroes are already so pervasive in so many other forms of media and entertainment.

CA: Civil War ends on a note that implies a continuation of not only its main character's story, but threads into multiple films. It warrants a continued story simply by the virtue of its existence. Like, hypothetically, if Thor 3 bombs, Marvel isn't gonna go "well shit, guess we have to shut everything down".

In other words, creating this shared universe also creates a burden to sustain it; a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. WB/DC is 3 films into its universe and arguably has yet to make a good one that really warrants its own existence, but it's a huge investment so they're not just gonna drop the whole plan because all 3 have been critical failures. And I'm not talking about revenue, I'm talking about sheer cultural impact and viewer/fan satisfaction, which has been mixed at best.

Compare that to something like ... I dunno, John Wick 2, which implies a continuing story, and is clearly part of a trilogy, but doesn't automatically warrant a sequel simply because it was made.

tl;dr - sunk cost fallacy

yea basically

what's funny is I don't think Marvel ever really experienced that, since their investments seemed to pay off (critically/culturally) almost immediately

DC is pretty sunk right now

And none of them hit 1 Billion mark. Marvel did that 4 times already and are all set to do it for the fifth time. Statistically, they are crossing 1 Billion line once for every three movies. If WB/DC suits are actually satisfied with the returns they are getting then I will eat my hat.

True, though I think there's something to be said about the films making more money if they were actually better films.

But that's such a hypothetical so it's impossible to tell.


So funny enough it makes me wonder whether there's really much point to making these films any good at all. If they're gonna make billions anyway, should DC really put any more effort into it than they already have?

Wait you mean there are MCU films that are actually good?£

Like, at the very least, the MCU films have conventional and reliable structures (even if it dips into over-reliance).

yeah it really does wear down over time, but I don't think that makes them bad

Pratham wrote:And none of them hit 1 Billion mark. Marvel did that 4 times already and are all set to do it for the fifth time. Statistically, they are crossing 1 Billion line once for every three movies. If WB/DC suits are actually satisfied with the returns they are getting then I will eat my hat.

Sorry but that argument is not good. It took Marvel 6 movies to reach that point lol. You're not fair to both franchises. Take first 3 MCU movies and then draw the comparisons.

As for the quality of MCU movies. There are few that really stand out. Most are fillers that are already starting to be forgotten by time. A lot of the films have the same formulaic structure which is serviceable in a shared universe but completely forgettable when it comes to film in general. You've seen it, you enjoyed it, you moved on. An incredibly good case is the second Avengers film. When it came out it had lots of hype, lots of people going crazy over it. Now it's seen as one of the lows in the franchise lol. Even the first Avengers is now starting to drown in mediocrity accusations by own MCU fans. And it's not because the MCU has gotten so much better. It's just that people now realize how generic most of it it is. And how poor most of these films stand against the test of time.

The MCU movies that stand out so far are Iron Man, Winter Soldier, GOTGm, Civil War, and the first Avengers. That's 5 out of 14. So that's 5 good to great movies to 9 fillers and there's a couple of bad ones within those fillers too. Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and first Captain America. And the rest are just consistent serviceable fillers. A lot of movies with good reviews like Doctor Strange (recent example) that nobody really gives a fuck anymore besides the MCU fans.

The main reason why MCU suceeded so far besides the fact that they were the first ones to do it is that they are slow in developing the story which allows them to be consistent when it comes to delivering generic content. You might get a memorable one, you might get a trash one, but you will more than likely get a serviceable one that will just add a bit more to the whole thing. I mean let's be honest, if MCU wanted to rush this and make everything happen quicker they could have. I mean I've seen people complaining that they take too long to get to the damn important stuff. And I agree. There's a lot of unnecessary stuff that's been released so far. I'm not saying there's no point to it... I'm saying it takes too long for some people.

Let's not blindly glorify MCU and pass on the plenty of negatives it has already.

It's correct to say it's not fair to compare DC and Marvels trajectories. DC has opened with the monster properties of Batman and Superman. Marvel opened with 2nd and 3rd tier characters and only last year introduced their first truly major property in Spider-Man.

Marvel also yielded 1b by actually building up to it. If you had said a film with the cast and characters of The Avengers would hit 1b in 2008 you would have been dreaming.

ArmandFancypants wrote:Marvel also yielded 1b by actually building up to it. If you had said a film with the cast and characters of The Avengers would hit 1b in 2008 you would have been dreaming.

Iron Man did close to 600 million. That was very good at that time given that it was only behind the Spiderman trilogy and TDK wasn't even out yet. We also didn't knew much about Avengers anyway. So your 2008 statement makes no sense.

When we actually got a feel of the Avengers movie then 1 billion was never out of the question.

Especially after Iron Man 2 banking another 600 mil while being a bad movie. Not even gonna add Thor and CA being duds and still bringing 350m+ because you'd tie that into "building up to it". It was pretty obvious Avengers would be a different animal since 2010.