A Brief Comment on Marvel Cinematic Universe vs. DC Comics

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has already launched phase three. Up to this day, Marvel has produced Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Marvel's The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016). It has been eight years since we first watch Iron Man (2008). The audience has grown to know much more about the Marvel characters and the dynamics between the Avengers.

As X-men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool, etc. movie rights are sold to Fox and Spiderman is sold to Sony, these movies are excluded in the MCU. Sometimes people wonder why they re-make Fantastic Four and Spiderman (from Tobey Maguire to Andrew Garfield to Tom Holland) every few years. It's because the studios bought the rights and they need to re-make the movie before the rights expire.

After watching X-men: Days of Future Past (2014), it's jaw-dropping that they wiped out the previous X-men stories' history (which many main characters died) and they will re-write X-men in a clean slate.

It's interesting that there are characters who appear in different universe. The first one is Quicksilver in X-men and MCU. They are played by different actors, but both actors, namely Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Evan Peters, starred in Kick-Ass (2010). The second one is Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds appeared in X-men Origins: Wolverine (2009) as no-mouth Wade Wilson. He returns to Deadpool (2016) as Wade Wilson again.

Visual Guide to Marvel Character Movie Rights
 

DC Comics has produced a lot of Batman and Superman movies, namely, Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), Superman IV (1987), Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), Batman Begins (2005), Superman Returns (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Man of Steel (2013), Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016).

The Christopher Nolan's Batman series is no doubt a classic. However, the recent two DC movies (Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad) were a flop. Mostly because they tried to squeeze too much characters and stories into one movie.  There is not enough screen time to develop character arc for characters like the Flash, Aquaman, the Joker, Enchantress, Captain Boomerang, Katana, etc. You see, MCU has at least one movie featuring a single character before they group them into Avengers. So the audience know much more about the characters before they see them in a group.

I actually enjoyed Suicide Squad as I think it is playful and the music matches the plot brilliantly. The make-up and costume are perfect. We just want to know more about the characters, where they come from, what are their intensions, etc. However, if they do not have any character arcs, they're just flat and boring.