Batman vs. Superman, DC vs. Marvel, and the Whole Shape of Hollywood Shifts With Them

Whoever wins, everyone ends up back at Hollywood's formula of blockbuster plus merchandise. The extra money only buys a bigger IP.

"The red capes are coming, the red capes are coming."

Marvel has met a real enemy. For eight years the world has waited for a challenger to Marvel — or, more precisely, waited for DC to charge.

In the US, the weapon of that charge — Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Batman v Superman hereafter) — did the job nicely. It took $82 million on its first day in North America, the biggest spring-season opening in North American box-office history. Its opening weekend was projected at $170 million, a record for the spring season and Warner's best opening weekend ever. Until now, no film with a Rotten Tomatoes score below 63% had opened above $150 million.

It was weaker overseas, with a projected $254 million worldwide. China contributed the most: 370 million yuan.

Batman v Superman drew all this attention not only because it was DC's first formal counterattack in years, but mainly because it cost $410 million, $250 million of that in production. A few million more and it would pass Pirates of the Caribbean 5 to become the most expensive film ever made.

$410 million means Hollywood's "high risk, high reward" model has reached a new level. We have taken apart Hollywood's "blockbuster model" in earlier pieces: when box-office risk cannot be controlled, only blockbusters can bring in a steady stream of money — from the global market and from the ancillary revenue that comes from outside theaters.

For the same reason, the core of a Hollywood blockbuster keeps getting simpler. "What kind of film can cross the language barrier and be accepted in different countries? A simple film. Adventure action, comic-book heroes, fantasy. Films that are a bit more complex don't hold as much appeal for international markets, so they're harder to distribute." Mark Harris, a documentary director just past 80 who has won three Oscars, thinks the globalization of the film market has made movies all alike, like industrial parts.

Seen from this angle, Batman v Superman is a contest on at least three levels. The first and most obvious is DC against Marvel. The second is Warner's standing in Hollywood as a whole. The third is Hollywood's past and its future — remember the point Steven Spielberg and George Lucas raised in a conversation once? "If one summer every blockbuster bombs, will that be the end of Hollywood's good years?"

1. Warner

"Warner Bros. has always released more films than any of the other 'Big Six,' and not only because of its production capacity. It also leans on the marketing and distribution muscle of its parent, Time Warner, which can cover every channel. Blockbusters don't need to worry much about channel coverage, because they are news events in themselves — but you can't flood the market with blockbusters alone," a publicity staffer at Wanda Cinemas told the reporter.

Warner released 26 films last year, four more than the year before. Full-year revenue was $1.603 billion, up 2.6%. Its market share was 13.9%, down one percentage point. And of those 26 films, not one made North America's top 15 at the box office.

Warner's ability to turn out films is beyond question, but the ability to make films is not the ability to make money. A cautionary example sits right in front of it: Paramount.

In 2011 Paramount was still the box-office champion. Now Wall Street calls it "hopeless" and says it should be sold while there is still time. Thin output is a big reason for the slide: over the past three years Paramount has released an average of only 12 films a year, against an average of 17 for the other "Big Five."

The other reason is that it has no blockbusters in hand. The rebooted Star Trek and Terminator have underperformed — whether the Terminator series continues at all is now in doubt — and the Transformers series has ended, with most of its money going to Hasbro anyway; the films work more like spin-offs of Hasbro's toys.

So betting on Batman v Superman looks like a gamble for Warner. In fact Warner was the first studio to put out superhero films. In 1969 it bought DC and with it the rights to every character under the label. In 1978 came the Christopher Reeve Superman, still widely considered the best Superman film ever made; Reeve ducking into a phone booth and bursting out in costume became a scene audiences have never forgotten. Clean, simple, pure — the film became one of the templates for every superhero movie that followed.

Warner's superhero road after that was not smooth. Superman IV came out in 1987; under a wave of bad reviews, the sequel project was shelved. As for 1997's Batman & Robin — if that fourth film had not carried the name "Batman," it would have been forgotten long ago, but precisely because of that name it became a nightmare that film fans and comics fans cannot shake off. Studios turned cautious about greenlighting superhero projects, and Warner banished the genre outright.

Warner Bros. did not need superhero films then anyway; it had too many other projects in hand. The Matrix opened in 1999, and Warner went on to release The Lord of the Rings trilogy. By the time that trilogy wrapped, Warner's decade-long Harry Potter series was already sweeping the globe. Through the first decade of the 21st century, Warner was never short of a big franchise.

But the more important reason was that a big company fears failure.

The old Superman series ended with Superman Returns, a $300 million production whose story and characters had not kept up with the times. The film lost money badly, and Brandon Routh never landed another big commercial production.

Then in 2012 The Dark Knight Rises — the one superhero film that could stand against the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its own — was released, ending that series too. Warner had to start planning again.

Man of Steel gave Warner confidence in 2013. Superman: Man of Steel was the first film of the DC Extended Universe, but when it opened Warner had not yet decided whether to really launch a DC film universe of its own. Only at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con did Warner announce publicly that it would make ten films over the next five years.

Batman v Superman is only the first step in Warner's attempt to rescue its standing in blockbusters.

2. Marvel's Rules, DC's Opening

Marvel created a "universe."

A "universe" is simply a set of stories that stand alone yet connect to one another, together forming a single film system. Comics had been doing this for years; Marvel brought the idea into Hollywood and stretched the older Hollywood notion of a "franchise." It no longer draws hard lines between the main story, spin-offs, prequels and sequels. They interlock instead, with no fixed hierarchy, and each film is shot in as different a style as possible — the Thor films play like classical mythology, while Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a spy and political thriller — so as to reach more kinds of moviegoers. And when one film in the universe fails, it does not directly drag down the next one.

In theory almost any film can be expanded into a universe, and in practice Hollywood is doing exactly that. A Transformers universe, a King Kong vs. Godzilla universe, a monster-movie universe. Jurassic World, last year's big hit, announced that it would push the story out of the park and into the whole world, and Star Wars, now owned by Disney, has started spin-off projects to expand its own universe. Marvel is still the most successful of them all.

Eight years, 12 films, every one opening with the Marvel logo. Marvel — the Marvel Cinematic Universe — has taken more than $8.7 billion worldwide. Marvel is a money machine for Disney and the clearest case of the "Disney model": television, animation, toys, games and theme parks all prospering along one long chain. For Disney, ticket sales have never been the most profitable part of a film.

The sharpest difference between Marvel's place at Disney and DC's place at Warner is that the first kept running independently after it was bought, while the second is only a subordinate department — and Warner Bros. Pictures is itself a company under Time Warner.

DC's film strategy has to serve Warner's overall slate, and as long as Warner was not short of blockbusters, DC was never its first option. Even The Dark Knight trilogy was made as an ordinary blockbuster. Nolan's trilogy sits closer to crime drama; its characters and story drop the exaggerated comic-book style, which also made it hard for Batman to interact with god-tier figures like Superman.

But Marvel's own troubles are showing more every year.

Marvel as it now works puts the "universe" ahead of any single film, holds costs down wherever it can, uses high-risk, low-cost actors and directors in quantity, and signs them to long contracts that amount to indenture (actor deals start at six films). It also insists on the links between films, asking directors to give each work its own character while fitting it seamlessly into the Marvel universe's worldview.

The grip is tight enough that in May 2014 Ant-Man director Edgar Wright left the production over "creative differences." Drew Goddard, the producer running the Daredevil TV series, likewise resigned from his post on the show.

An anonymous 20th Century Fox employee explained that Fox's superhero films used to be more adult, their stories more concerned with human society, but now everyone understands that "Marvel's bright palette and cartoonish character design sell better."

That style risks wearing audiences out. Even with Ant-Man and the box-office hit Deadpool, Marvel's underlying film style and values have to stay consistent. Captain America: Civil War tells the story of Civil War, a famous event in Marvel's comics, where after a brutal fight Captain America dies in the end and Spider-Man and the other heroes pay dearly too. But the directors have said on several occasions that the civil war in the film is more of a "family quarrel," a story "about the feelings between brothers."

DC's opening — Warner's, really — is to open up a blockbuster style unlike Marvel's, one built in a certain sense on individual personality.

Zack Snyder was shaped by Nolan: serious, dark, realistic. His work runs to heavy, dim colors laid on thick, especially in comics adaptations. That style has also brought some worn-out subject matter back to life. In Man of Steel and Batman v Superman he adjusted it further, making it far friendlier to audiences by comparison, yet the distance from Marvel is still obvious at a glance.

Where Marvel goes "solo first, team up later," Warner is doing "team up first, solo later," using its popular characters to carry the other characters in the film. On Wonder Woman at least, the strategy worked. Marvel itself has even started using it: Black Panther appears first in Captain America: Civil War — with a fairly big part, judging by the trailer — before getting a film of his own.

To some extent Warner had no choice. The studio had originally planned to start with Green Lantern (2011) and lay the groundwork for the characters' relationships slowly, building the whole DC universe and picking up smoothly where "The Dark Knight" left off. But Green Lantern cost $200 million and its worldwide box office barely covered the production budget. Warner had no time to go slow, and took the opposite route.

As things stand, DC's next film, Suicide Squad, will take a lighter line — a lesson learned from Guardians of the Galaxy.

3. Hollywood

Some will say: in 1996 DC and Marvel worked together on the comic DC vs. Marvel, and now it is really happening in Hollywood.

That is a dramatic way to put it. What we are talking about is Hollywood filmmaking, and no typical Hollywood film can do without the great battle, the rival, the nemesis. Their fight is only one chapter of the new blockbuster era described above.

As noted, Batman v Superman cost $410 million, and other reports say the two parts of Avengers 3 will come to a combined budget of $1 billion. Hollywood's revenue from outside ticket sales keeps growing, which makes studios unafraid to sink huge capital into films even when the margin is thin.

"Film is no longer just Hollywood's business. It's the shared business of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street," a film investor told QDaily.

Put at that level, Disney and Marvel have run into trouble but still have a very strong hand at developing IP. The first generation of Avengers contracts are expiring one by one, and Marvel has already begun its handover plan. "No one can replace Robert Downey Jr." — but that does not mean no one can replace Iron Man. Marvel has also reversed its old habit of not hiring big stars, bringing in "Cumberbatch," Benedict Cumberbatch, to play Doctor Strange. Clearly, Marvel has changed since Kevin Feige took control.

Comic-book fan will lian thinks Batman v Superman "is nowhere near enough for DC to go head-to-head with Marvel in the film market," but that "just as the subtitle says, Dawn of Justice, the cool flash of Flash and Aquaman passes by in an instant, like the darkness before the dawn of DC's rise." Batman and Superman carry too much historical baggage to look fresh, will lian says; the character most likely to win fans is still Wonder Woman. "I hope she can pull the whole DC universe along, and pick up some goodwill by riding the current global moment on women's rights."

In the end it all comes back to those two tired words: winning fans. The chips the big Hollywood players put down keep multiplying, and the greater the risk, the greater the push to expand the boundary of the universe outward. Batman v Superman is one more step pushing this business down a road of no return.