Superman has always been my favorite superhero.
I’ve been in many a heated debate about who’s better between the Man of Steel and Batman. It’s something I’ve always felt pretty strongly about. However, in the past few years I’ve had to do some reevaluating. I’ve jumped on the Marvel train. Lately, DC has just seemed, well, irrelevant.
The Internet exploded earlier this week when Marvel announced a new slate of superhero films to be released up through 2019. With this announcement, I think the race between DC and Marvel officially ended. Marvel wins; there’s no chance of catching up. It’s actually more of a mercy ruling.
Marvel, it seems, has been planning ahead for years, a move DC would have done well to follow. One of the announcements Marvel made Tuesday was that the Avengers final storyline would be split into two films, focusing on the Civil War between Captain America and Iron Man. This will give us even further character development for our favorite heroes as well as two or three more hours of Robert Downey Jr. than we were expecting in the Marvel universe. Brilliant.
But, marketers knew the Avengers characters only had a few movies left in them, so they decided to launch several new franchises. They rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man series, returning more to the original comic book storyline. Guardians of the Galaxy was a gamble, but turned out a complete hit and will now have its own trilogy. Ant Man is expected to have the same amount of success after Guardians proved that Marvel fans go see the movies not for name recognition, but for the quality of the film. They are loyal enough to go watch a superhero they may have never heard of because they know it will be good.
The list of new characters announced Tuesday started with Black Panther, who will have a standalone film to be released in November 2017. Chadwick Boseman, a proven character actor with strong performances as Jackie Robinson and James Brown under his belt, has been perfectly cast as the lead.
The other movies listed were Captain Marvel, which will feature Marvel’s first female lead character, Doctor Strange and the Inhumans, none of which have been cast or given a release date.
I can’t help but wonder what Marvel will have in store for us for years to come, how long they could possibly keep this up. I shudder to think how much money I’ll spend on movie tickets over the years. I wish I could say the same for DC. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman look promising, but as long as DC keeps taking years between movies and focusing more on their Justice League television shows, they will always be in second place.
But I still love you, Superman.
