The civil war between Marvel and DC heats up as Kevin Feige steps up to defend his MCU from Zack Snyder’s criticism, and Steven Spielberg’s grim prediction about the future of superhero movies.
Superhero fans have been fighting this war amongst themselves for years, but it seems like DC and Marvel are done playing coy about the fact that they are essentially competing for the exact same audience, developing parallel cinematic universes and telling very similar stories at what can best be described as the golden age of superhero movies.
DC has Superman, Marvel has Captain America. DC has Batman, Marvel has Iron Man. DC has Wonder Woman, Marvel has Captain Marvel. Characters cross over and mesh up in the comics, so it’s not surprising that the two movie studios are finding themselves grappling for control and artistic superiority.
Related: In the wake of ‘Fantastic Four’: Is the superhero movie a director’s or a studio’s medium?
All of this finally got articulated by Zack Snyder in a recent interview, when he told Collider, “I feel like Batman and Superman are transcendent of superhero movies in a way, because they’re Batman and Superman. They’re not just, like, the flavor of the week Ant-Man — not to be mean, but whatever it is. What is the next Blank-Man?”
Ouch! Surprisingly, the rebuttal didn’t immediately come from up high, but rather from Captain America’s very own avenger Sebastian Stan, who plays the Winter Soldier in the Marvel movies (and could potentially be picking up the shield himself down the line).
“I would say we’re still making something very original in our own way,” Stan said in another Collider interview, referencing Snyder’s comments. “[The Russo Brothers are] not trying to mimic a better Christopher Nolan movie or something like that.”
But what does Marvel president Kevin Feige actually have to say about it?
Speaking to IGN about the future of Marvel Studios, Feige takes the high road and avoids referencing Snyder’s comments directly — but does emphasize the inherent uniqueness to each instalment of the MCU.
“As long as the ones that we can control are as good as they can be, that’s all that I care about,” Feige says. “I think we’ve been doing pretty well. I’m very confident in the films we’ve announced that we have coming forward that they’re going to be surprising and different and unique.”
Feige goes on to re-iterate what he’s been stating pretty much since the launch of the MCU, that he’s not approaching each movie as a comic book adaptation. Says Feige, “I don’t believe in the comic book genre. I don’t believe in the superhero genre. I believe that each of our films can be very different.”
Indeed, just looking at the Captain America trilogy alone, Feige promised yesterday that it’d stand as, “one of the most unique and different trilogies ever made.” We shift in genres from a WW2 epic, to a political thriller, and finally to what is promising to be the biggest clash of superheroes ever seen in Captain America: Civil War.
“There is a more emotional and more geopolitical and real world through line through Civil War than there was in the broader Age of Ultron,” Feige teases.
Finally, responding to recent comments made by Steven Spielberg suggesting that superhero movies will go the way of the Western, Feige jokes, “The Western lasted 40-50 years, and they still pop up occasionally. It’s been, what, eight years since [Iron Man]? Maybe [the superhero genre] will only last another 42 years.”
Oh boy. Guess Hypable is set for content through 2057!