Marvel vs. DC, movies vs. television

The weekend grosses for DC’s major release Justice League are in, and the results are not good for DC.  Justice League may be the worst DC opening ever, and the first to open below $100 million domestically.  This follows on the heels of the successful opening of the latest Thor movie, Ragnarok.  The primary explanation for Justice League’s failing is that despite some major script doctoring and reshooting by Joss Whedon, Justice League still share the DNA of such dour fare as Superman vs. Batman and Man of Steel, neither of which were laugh fests like Whedon’s The Avengers or its far less superior sequel.

Of course, the whole “Marvel vs. DC” thing goes way back and is bigger than one film.  What I find interesting is that the images of the two comic universes are completely reversed if you switch from the TV universe and the movie franchises.

On TV, DC has The Flash, which was great in its early days precisely because it was a breath of fresh air after the gloomy Batman trilogy and all its angst and gloom.  The series stumbled last season by getting a little too dark, but seems committed to going back to more light-hearted fare this season.  Arrow, despite being pretty angsty, has consistently embraced its inner silliness.  Legends of Tomorrow started off as deadly earnest and was a bore its first season; then the show decided to just go with the silly and has been a rejuvenated show ever since.

Marvel’s TV image is far more glum.  Agents of Shield started out light and breezy, but once it started taking its plot points from the movies (see below) a lot of the humor went away.  Marvel’s newer offering, The Gifted, is nothing but perpetual angst as the forces of the US Government torment and harass mutants on a weekly basis, with the government agents all but cackling with glee. I tried to watch The Gifted mostly out of loyalty to Amy Acker, but I gave up after six episodes.  Another recent Marvel offering, Inhumans, was described by the LA Times as, “tr[ying] for a joke now and again, but it is overall somnolent and solemn.”  I haven’t been watching Inhumans as the first episode was described in one review as the worst thing Marvel ever produced, and other reviews have produced a Metascore of 27.

In movies, the opposite is the case.  DC has been slammed for bleak products like the aforementioned Zack Snyder offerings, while Marvel went with the master of mixing superpowers and humor, Joss Whedon, and reaped the biggest superhero film ever, The Avengers.  The Marvel X-Men franchise started out light and quippy as well, and the franchise tried to sell the heavier ideas it possessed with a spoonful of humor.

I don’t know why both studios should be so schizophrenic about the tone of their products.  There has been some blurring recently; as I said, once Agents of Shield started to incorporate plot points from Winter Soldier it started getting less fun, and DC has tried to lighten the image of its films by bringing Joss Whedon on board for rewrites and reshoots (I would love to bet that every punch line in the Justice League trailer was written by Whedon; each one sounds like something that was an outtake on Buffy).

The Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy demonstrated that comic books (excuse me, “graphic novels”) could be taken seriously; maybe a little too seriously.  I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to watch the first few episodes of The Flash and see a superhero who was happy and liked using his powers to help people.  But things change, and now it seems that audiences want a lighter touch when viewing the activities of their favorite metahuman, or X-man, or whatever.

The fact that Thor: Ragnarok has succeeded as a comedy is the best proof of this.  The first two Thor films were the least amusing of the Marvel entries, and the second one, The Dark World, was, well, dark (the one great moment in that film was a supposedly ad libbed moment by Chris Hemsworth when Thor entered Jane’s apartment and politely hung his hammer on an umbrella hook near the door). Ragnarok’s success, combined with Justice League’s unimpressive first weekend opening under $100 million, would seem to show the writing is on the wall.

It’s a narrow path to tread; be light and carefree, but don’t fail to take your material seriously.  Joss Whedon did this better than anyone for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the fact that he couldn’t quite rescue Justice League indicates to me that it must have been pretty far gone.  Both studios could learn from each other, with Marvel’s TV programs taking a cue from Legends of Tomorrow and the DC movie producers finding writers capable of finding the funny.