On Civil War, Dawn of Justice, Foamy Beverages, and a Dash of Ayn Rand

So.  First off, hello and welcome to the inaugural entry into the Red Cape Diaries, which I'm fairly certain will be the only place on the entirety of the internet where you can read an overweight white guy's thoughts on superhero culture.....I think.  I'm Andy C., and I plan on using this little corner of cyberspace (does anyone still call it that, or was that just a 90s thing?) to provide reviews, character/film studies, fan theories, pitches for movie/gaming/comic concepts, and whatever other relevant thoughts spring to mind.  It should be fun, at least for me.

Anyway, pleasantries aside, let's get down to business with the first topic at hand.

It's been a banner year for "superheroes fight each other and then team up later" stories, with both Marvel and DC bringing their guns to bear, and everyone and their grandmother has been posting reactions, reviews, comparisons and contrasts, saying who's better and who should just give up and commit seppuku right now to restore their tarnished honor, and so on and so forth.

About six weeks ago, DC swung for the fences with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the general response has been....not kind.  Critics tore the movie apart, and while the majority of audience reviews were positive, said majority was hardly an overwhelming one.  While the film had an absolutely monstrous opening weekend and performed well enough to clear $850 million, it still fell short of the hard-sought billion-dollar mark that studios wanted.  The popular narrative now is that BvS is a failure, and that Warner Bros' moves since then--including expensive re-shoots for the upcoming Suicide Squad, the director for The Flash leaving, and Ben Affleck being made executive producer for Justice League-- are all claimed to be decisions driven by panic in the face of a perceived disaster.

Then, on the other side of the fence, we've got Captain America: Civil War.

The thirteenth entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Civil War has been basking in glowing reviews weeks before the movie was even released.  Obviously its box office numbers haven't come in yet since it's still opening weekend, but it looks on course to breeze right past BvS with contemptuous ease and join Iron Man 3 and the first two Avengers movies in the Billion Dollar Club.  The overwhelming popular narrative is that it succeeded on every facet in which BvS failed, and the Marvel juggernaut (the metaphorical term, not the X-men villain) will continue to trample all competition as the series looks to move into 'Phase 4,' with Doctor Strange coming out later this year to keep the self-perpetuating hype machine going.


So then, it's an open-and-shut case, isn't it?  Everyone loves Civil War and hates BvS, so....that's all there is to it, right?


Well, I don't necessarily think so.  In fact, I think the fallout from these two movies has made the competition between the Marvel and DC universes far more interesting, and that a long view will tell a very different tale than the one that's being told now.  And I get this suspicion thanks to some beverages I recently had and a book I read once.

For the last eight years, Marvel and their tyrannical overlords at Disney have been making cinematic soda pop.  It's bubbly, it's sweet with just a little acidic bite, it gives you a little extra energy, and it's addictive as all hell.  It's not a particularly memorable drink, but that ultimately works in its favor, since you can have one after another without ever really getting tired of it.

Care for a refill?  How about refill after refill for the next decade?

So with everyone conditioned to think of Marvel as the Coca-Cola of superhero movies, it would make perfect sense to expect DC to come out as Pepsi, right?  That's how these things work: you have two slightly different flavors of basically the same thing, and then everyone fights forever over which one is better.

Zack Snyder, the folks at DC, and their own tyrannical overlords at WB, however, eschewed soda altogether and have instead been offering glasses of really stout porter.

At this time of day?

You can't drink a porter the way you drink a soda.  It's dark, and it's bitter, and there are a lot of little flavors that you can only parse out if you savor it, and even then it takes a good amount of effort to acquire a taste for it.  It's very easy for people who aren't big beer drinkers to look at a glass of nearly flat-black beverage and decide they're not going to enjoy it, or spit the drink out after the first sip of a flavor they don't like and never try it again.  And if you are a big beer drinker, there's the chance that your own personal tastes are more towards a blonde ale or a Pilsner.

People who particularly like really dark beer aren't commonplace (the ten most popular beers in the world are almost exclusively light), but those who do are generally very enthusiastic about their beverage of choice.  Meanwhile, basically everyone in the world drinks Coca-Cola, but the people who are die-hard Coke fans are generally considered oddballs, since most people will be perfectly fine drinking Pepsi instead.

This is already being reflected in the respective fanbases of the Marvel and DC movie franchises, at least as far as I've seen.  While the internet is overflowing with praise for Civil War and the dozen other films that preceded it, I've noticed that the minority coming out in support of the DCEU have generally been far more passionate about their films of choice, going into a far greater depth in analyzing underlying themes and character motivations and creative decisions on the part of the filmmakers (in that regard, I cannot endorse the MOSAIC blog highly enough, or the Tumblr user pulpklatura who has written an excellent analysis on BvS as a modern Revenge Tragedy).  Maybe not as many people like the DC films as the throngs who put money into Marvel's coffers, but those who do tend to appreciate said films far more, and that alone may get others to give the films another chance over time.

Speaking for myself, I had to watch Batman v Superman three times before I felt I really had a full appreciation of the movie.  Conversely, I saw Civil War once, and while I did enjoy it very much (particularly Tom Holland's debut as the new Spider-Man), I honestly don't think I would be too disappointed if I never saw it again.  Then again, I liked Prometheus more than I liked The Force Awakens, so what the hell do I know.

I think the clash between the MCU and DCEU goes further than merely a difference in flavors, but rather a conflict of ideologies in terms of the creative process.  Zack Snyder, the director of DC's flagship titles and currently in the running for Most Hated Man in America Not Named Donald Trump, has made no secret that one of his dream projects is to do an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and I think it's become more and more appropriate by the day, because for the last six weeks (and really the last three years since Man of Steel), he's been living it.

Surely bringing up Ayn Rand on the internet will spark only civilized and good-natured discourse.

The Fountainhead is a novel about an architect named Howard Roark, a promising but arrogant creator whose designs fly in the face of a status quo he views as outdated and mundane.  Roark absolutely refuses to compromise his ideals or his creative vision, and as a result he is met at every turn with derision from critics, denied opportunities from more powerful men, and eventually loses everything he worked to achieve.  He falls in with a publisher who has lost his idealism and gets by on pandering to the lowest common denominator, and when things go south for Roark again, throws Roark under the bus.  In time, however, the publisher comes around and defends Roark one last time, and the book ends with the protagonist being commissioned for one last building, a towering monument that will stand the test of time.

It's also the story of one of Roark's classmates, Peter Keating, who trades on being a people-pleaser.  His designs are wildly popular and met with critical acclaim, even if they're rather uninspired and samey, because they fall in line with that people want.  He rises up the corporate ladder quickly and amasses a fortune, but eventually falls from grace when the trends change and his work is no longer in demand.  While he is not the villain of the piece, Keating is viewed with a degree of contempt, as he is a man of constant compromise, bending and scraping for the approval of his peers, and while he is liked for a time, he is ultimately abandoned and forgotten.

Now, we can spend days going back and forth over the merits and failings of Objectivism as a philosophy--or of Rand herself, for that matter-- but that's not the point of this blog, or why I'm bringing it up now.  I'm bringing it up because I think it raises a very interesting question when looking at the two different approaches these studios are taking towards making movies about people in tights: is it better for you, as a creator, to give the people what they want, or to give the people what you want?

For all of the obscene amounts of money they make and the unbroken string of universally praised hits, the Marvel movies do have a rather unsettling feel of uniformity to them.  There have been numerous reports about how the studio can be creatively stifling, and has driven off brilliant directors like Edgar Wright and Patty Jenkins (who will now be directing Wonder Woman over at DC).  While most people involved have had little but kind words to say about their experiences, I do question the point in making films directed by Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh, James Gunn, and Joss Whedon, and have them all look and sound and feel nearly identical to each other.

On the other hand, for the two films that comprise the DCEU at the moment, Zack Snyder has been given a tremendous amount of creative control, and while many aren't particularly happy with that fact, Man of Steel and BvS are undeniably his inside and out.  Suicide Squad will be the first of the franchise with another director at the helm, and David Ayer's vision of the seedier side of the superhero world looks starkly different, with its characters all in plainclothes and covered in tattoos, and trailers blasting irreverent party-rock hit "Ballroom Blitz" instead of BvS's bombastic orchestra.  I imagine we'll see what Jenkins' Wonder Woman looks like before too long (I expect a teaser at least at Comic-Con), but so far, for good and for ill, DC seems more confident in the individual visions of the people at the helm.

Of course, with the mountain of negative feedback in BvS's wake, it remains to be seen if WB will keep that level of confidence in its creators.  As mentioned at the beginning of this increasingly ungainly post, Snyder's unorthodox vision of the DC universe and his unapologetic attitude towards critics is reportedly landing him in hot water with the higher-ups, and many believe that Affleck being promoted is a way to rein him in among all the calls for his public crucifixion.  So, much like the fictional Howard Roark, Snyder's unwillingness to compromise could cost him everything he wants to achieve.

The fact that Marvel will continue to make money and be loved by all is as predictable as the sunrise at this point.  If the last twelve movies were any indication, Civil War will retain a high-80-mid-90% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and will make well over a billion dollars, one dollar for every smug comment about how "this is the movie BvS should have been!," and then, just like Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron and Thor: the Dark World....it will be completely forgotten before the end of the year.

That, I think, is why the Marvel/DC conflict is nowhere near the one-sided trouncing that people assume it is after glancing at Rotten Tomatoes.  Even if the DC movies tank and Snyder is run out of town by an angry torch-wielding mob, he's still made films that a passionate (and growing) community of fans have spent countless hours delving into, finding far richer treasures beneath the surface.  Meanwhile, the Marvel movies are almost entirely surface, with very little reason to revisit any individual film after its contribution to the nebulous whole is done.  They'll keep refilling your soda, but little by little, I think we'll see more people start to gain a taste for that glass of porter.

To put it another way, Peter Keating was popular.  Howard Roark, though, was remembered.


(Also, in the novel Roark was a rapist and Keating was a murderer, but that's not particularly relevant to the allegory I'm making)