General/miscellaneous Marvel and DC film discussion

Since there's really no catch-all thread for States of the Franchises kind of stuff, I figured I'd start this thread.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/kevin-feige-marvel-dc-movies/all

In the midst of the massive geek Mecca that is San Diego Comic-Con, the big Marvel Studios movie panel had all the theater of a presidential campaign rally. Tom Hiddleston appeared in costume as Loki, the bad guy from Thor, and rallied the crowd in character. Then: so many movie stars, including the full casts of the upcoming Captain America sequel and Guardians of the Galaxy. And just when it seemed like it was over, Joss Whedon, patron saint of nerds, walked out for a Steve Jobsian one-more-thing and introduced the first teaser for The Avengers sequel. Eight thousand fans, some of whom had been waiting in line since the night before, shrieked like their souls were being ripped from their bodies.

Back in 2006, the very first Marvel Studios panel didn’t have quite the same swagger. Iron Man director Jon Favreau was there, and it was like, the Swingers guy? Louis Letterier was insisting his version of the Hulk would wash away the arty taste of Ang Lee’s earlier version, while Edgar Wright promised Ant-Man, like he always does. In the middle of it all was the stalwart, relaxed studio president Kevin Feige, the man with a production credit on just about every movie and TV show with a Marvel character for the last 13 years.

And...

DC’s Green Lantern tried it with Angela Bassett’s character Amanda Waller, who has a connective-tissue role in the DC universe similar to Nick Fury’s in Marvel. Which makes Green Lantern an object lesson in what would have happened if Iron Man flopped: nothing. We all move on. Nothing to see here. No bigger universe.

This basic take-away for the piece is that Marvel has a Kevin Feige as the guiding influence behind all the individual franchises. He's the equivalent of the editor in chief. He basically keeps everybody walking the line.

Marvel Studios can do this because Marvel is the "parent" company, Marvel staff make up a good portion of the studio's personnel and they can innovate in these ways. They're specialized in adapting comics to screen. It's the studio's entire reason for being. Because of that, they can dream... and dream big!

Warner Bros. is an old school film studio. They've done things a certain way for decades and so forcing a change of this magnitude simply to accommodate a flavor-of-the-month genre is really asking a lot.

For years I always thought that DC's primary advantage of Marvel was being under the Time-Warner corporate umbrella. And back in the 90's, that was indisputably true. You think the Marvel films of the 90's were bad? You should check out the shit that never got made. Different companies owned different properties and any concept of the shared universe we now take for granted was bad comedy. Shit, time was the Venom movie rights belonged to a company that didn't own the Spider-Man movies rights. THAT is how fucked up things got at one point! And obviously some of those decisions haunt Marvel to this day.

But Marvel Studios specialization combined with Kevin Feige's guidance means the sky is the limit. Marvel Studios can innovate while WB is still stuck in their 1940's approach to making films. Marvel is getting ready to release a film starring a talking tree while WB is cautiously poking a toe into the pool of a shared universe.

The article is a bit lengthy but well worth reading.