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Movie Theater I cracked the DC vs Marvel Code

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  • Apr 12, 2001
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    Okay, big superhero movie fan, I watch them all over and over and I realized something watching Aquaman last night.

    DC suffers because they film their movies all wrong. The Dark Knight series got it right, and I really like Zack Snyder but this Aquaman, makes the classic mistake I see:

    Too off the page, or off the screen. You can tell the only thing real, are the actors and very little of the set. The actors stand off the screen and are not part of the movie. Marvel films their stuff like a film, DC films it like they are part of a video game.

    That video game feel to it ruins the idea it's happening. Marvel movies try to suspend disbelief by saying all this going on around us. The DC have that in their storylines but not in the filming of it. It's to gamer and not very cinematic.

    I like the cinematic feel to Marvel movies, their greenscreen work is pretty seamless where you can tell in the DC movies nothing is real.

    I was looking at some scenes online and the DC Characters fly off the screen, the Marvel ones are more subtle and subdued so they blend into the scene not out of it.

    Examples from the internet, not the best, but you can see my point.

    director-james-wan-explains-that-big-tidal-wave-scene-from-the-aquaman-trailer-social.jpg


    Nothing here looks real or is real, and it looks that way, there are other scenes that show it but, this is part of it.

    Marvel blends it so much better

    We know Thanos is all CGI, but here he looks like a practical effect

    Avengers-Infinity-War-thanos-close_1524738643814.jpg


    He looks real vs looking like a video game.

    Even the practical effects look unnatural and sound stage-ish

    Jason-Momoa-Aquaman-Pictures.jpg


    Max edit on this scene and it's still fake

    Marvel has their blending and color perfect

    K4O477YXNVDQDKMGII2UNHMRPU.jpg



    none of it is real, but the scenes look better, they focus falls off right, the color is right, the scene is lit consistent throughout

    avengers-infinity-war-russo-brothers-chris-evans.jpg


    Behind and finished
    source.gif


    While I like the long long Zack Snyder versions of DC Stuff, the Marvel Movies kick their ass from a film making standpoint in my opinion
     
    Haven't seen aqua man yet but I know what you're talking about. I just like the characters of marvel better. I'm a little bias
     
    Totally agree! Not exactly superhero genre, but what James Cameron did in Avatar was impressive from a technical perspective. I'd love to see that applied in Marvel films. Even better would be the rumors that Cameron will be picking up The Matrix. One can only hope he does.
     
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    Totally agree! Not exactly superhero genre, but what James Cameron did in Avatar was impressive from a technical perspective. I'd love to see that applied in Marvel films. Even better would be the rumors that Cameron will be picking up The Matrix. One can only hope he does.

    Agreed. Alita is every bit as amazing a technical feat as Avatar was, probably more so considering the difficulties of doing characters that are either totally or nearly entirely CGI in an environment that is largely not. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch in the theater, especially in 3d.
     
    So I watched Aquaman again last night along with Captain America Civil War, which is really the best of the genre in my opinion.

    The DC stuff is all fantasy, more like Hellboy, fantasy worlds are hidden in our reality. When Marvel does this with Wakanda it's a bit more realistic with a muted world view vs the muted and subtle tones of the Marvel Universe.

    I top of that I saw a lot of lazy work in Aquaman, especially in the beginning. The scene with his Dad and Nicole on the pier at the end, super bad CGI on the Dad in his reverse aging. The same they missed some work with Kidman in the house fight scene, her work was terrible.

    Marvel doesn't suffer from the same lazy CGI work, from the color correction to the filming it is flawless. DC shuffles between Video game animation and film that never quite works. One scene is cinematic, the next is a video game. Lazy.

    The fantasy elements are the downside, they try to follow the Dark Knight leads by coming off realistic and then immediately insert you into a fantasy realm that blows the whole thing apart.

    Watch the house fight scene with Kidman, then watch the opening fight in Civil War, night and day.
     
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    I’ll buy that, but I’ll also add that, from my limited experience, DC films usually suffer from poor adaptation in the transition from comic book to comic movie. Too much is cut or altered. The acting quality is usually sub-par, and often the leads are poorly matched to the characters (Ben Afleck is an awful Batman in comparison to Christian Bale). The stories are usually under-developed as well. They’re usually just rough all around compared to Marvel films.

    Shazaam looks like it may be good, in part because the trailers don’t make it look like they’re trying too hard.
     
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    Pretty interesting comparison. Lighting is huge when you are talking CGI. Can't tell you how many times I've seen CGI'd things but the lighting and shadows around that object/character is all wonky and looks like crap.
     
    Well, Marvel IS owned by Disney and Disney DOES own Pixar so... Oh, and they have a good relationship with Industrial Light and Magic I'm sure too.

    But I feel Marvel beats 'em on a LOT of levels. Characters for one. They just have cooler characters. And they do a much better job with CGI, I'm not a big fan of CGI so for it to work it needs to look like part of the world. And I agree, DC does have a video game feel to it, like the whole thing is just one long cutscene.

    Lots of folks said they didn't like Venom, it got bad reviews, but I LOVED it! Venom is the shit!
     
    I agree as to the lazy CGI in Aquaman, but in addition to that, I felt the acting in Aquaman was horrible. I barely made it through the movie. The DC stuff doesn’t compare to Marvel.
     
    Okay, big superhero movie fan, I watch them all over and over and I realized something watching Aquaman last night.

    DC suffers because they film their movies all wrong. The Dark Knight series got it right, and I really like Zack Snyder but this Aquaman, makes the classic mistake I see:

    Too off the page, or off the screen. You can tell the only thing real, are the actors and very little of the set. The actors stand off the screen and are not part of the movie. Marvel films their stuff like a film, DC films it like they are part of a video game.

    That video game feel to it ruins the idea it's happening. Marvel movies try to suspend disbelief by saying all this going on around us. The DC have that in their storylines but not in the filming of it. It's to gamer and not very cinematic.

    I like the cinematic feel to Marvel movies, their greenscreen work is pretty seamless where you can tell in the DC movies nothing is real.

    I was looking at some scenes online and the DC Characters fly off the screen, the Marvel ones are more subtle and subdued so they blend into the scene not out of it.

    Examples from the internet, not the best, but you can see my point.

    director-james-wan-explains-that-big-tidal-wave-scene-from-the-aquaman-trailer-social.jpg


    Nothing here looks real or is real, and it looks that way, there are other scenes that show it but, this is part of it.

    Marvel blends it so much better

    We know Thanos is all CGI, but here he looks like a practical effect

    Avengers-Infinity-War-thanos-close_1524738643814.jpg


    He looks real vs looking like a video game.

    Even the practical effects look unnatural and sound stage-ish

    Jason-Momoa-Aquaman-Pictures.jpg


    Max edit on this scene and it's still fake

    Marvel has their blending and color perfect

    K4O477YXNVDQDKMGII2UNHMRPU.jpg



    none of it is real, but the scenes look better, they focus falls off right, the color is right, the scene is lit consistent throughout

    avengers-infinity-war-russo-brothers-chris-evans.jpg


    Behind and finished
    source.gif


    While I like the long long Zack Snyder versions of DC Stuff, the Marvel Movies kick their ass from a film making standpoint in my opinion

    Frank,

    The environment you created here is cool— but you missed your true calling.

    Jt
     
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    Soapbox mode: Activate
    In general I think the fact that Marvel excels at "street" level heroes, which are easier to "faithfully" translate to film. This is part of the reason that Batman works on film. The Justice League are pretty much the olympic gods, so it's harder to me to frame a story that appropriately scales up to their level. Ex: It's gotta be a pretty epic threat to warrant Superman to have to break a sweat. Flash should be able to just speedblitz most situations.
    The Superman in man of steel, was bad and missed the point of superman, so they started off their DCU on a bad footing. Then went straight to Doomsday with no ramp up. That's like if Marvel had gone from terrible Hulk movie 1st movie, then Thanos in the 2nd movie.
    DC movies leave me feeling that the filmmakers are not very passionate or knowledge about the source material. Also, I find that Marvel's great idea was to impart humor and levity, whereas DC films seem to focus on what I call the "melodrama."

    To be fair: Maybe DC needs their equivalent of Kevin Feige. I really like DC's animated works. So I don't know why Bruce Timm's side of the house does so well, but the DCU has no idea what it's doing.
     
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