Yesterday, we finally saw The Justice League. Although I have always been a fan of The Avengers type of movies, I never really felt the pull to watch this movie. Boy, was I wrong! The movie was just as good as any of the Avenger movies, and it introduced me to the awesome world of DC Comics movies.
Effectively, DC Comics is trying to replicate the success of Marvel. Marvel has created too many movies to list, but basically they started off with single character focused movies (like Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Spider Man, etc.) and then transitioned to having these characters make crossover appearances in each others’ movies and eventually appearing together in the same movie. Now, Marvel continues to build on the Avengers franchise, while still also occasionally doing single character focused movies to develop each character’s personal story further.
DC’s approach is very similar, but not exactly the same. DC started by focusing on making a very limited number of movies about a handful of headline characters from their portfolio. Then, they immediately jumped into making movies where lots of their characters appeared together, without previously introducing the audience to these newer characters. Recent blockbuster movies from their stable include Man of Steel (2013), Batman vs. Superman (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), and Wonder Woman (2017). In fact, by simply taking a look at their DC Extended Universe Wikipedia page, you see that going forward they plan to continue building on the Justice League & Suicide Squad franchises, while at the same time focusing on individual characters from that franchise, and over time even introducing further new characters. For example, upcoming movies include Aquaman, Green Lantern, Cyborg, etc.- all characters that have already been introduced in the Justice League franchise.
As I mentioned earlier, we loved the Justice League movie, as well as Man of Steel, Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. A number of references were made in the movie to Batman vs. Superman, and being a fan of both, I am going to ensure we watch it this weekend.
If you’ve loved the Marvel movie universe as much as I have, I would definitely encourage you to explore the DC world. It has a lot of comic book characters that are much larger and better known universally, like Superman and Batman. I am certain you won’t be disappointed. And who knows, maybe one day the 2 studios might decide to collaborate and blow our minds by having the Avengers and the Justice League work together.