Luke Owen looks at brand loyalty…
As one would expect, we’ve posted a lot about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War over the last few months. We’re not even halfway through 2016 and already we’ve had three big superhero movies with a lot said about all of them. However the discussions that strike me the most are the ones about the first big screen outing of World’s Finest.
Back in 2012 when Man of Steel was released, we had a lot of defenders in the comments section of the site and on social media denouncing negative reviews and articles about the movie, but not to the level of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It’s been vehement. Myself and Oli have been slammed on Twitter for bad-mouthing the movie on our podcast and in our Scooperhero News video series, and the comments section exploded over the weekend with the news of Zack Snyder being at war with Warner Bros. over Justice League.
If you look through Twitter you’ll see it there too. DC fans declaring that Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is “for kids” and their family-friendly outings are ‘ruining comic book movies for everyone’. Those who say bad things about the DCEU are branded ‘idiots’ (to put it mildly) and critics have come under fire for having ‘Marvel bias’. When walking into the theatre to see Captain America: Civil War last Friday, I overheard a discussion between two people saying that Disney and Marvel pay off critics to give them favourable reviews over DC films, and that’s why Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was lambasted. That is absolute insanity of the highest order. While I could articulate this point further, film critic Scott Weinberg put it best with these tweets:
Theory
Critics write mostly positive things about Marvel movies because they're well-made and entertaining.
— Philly M. Nerd (@PhillyMovieNerd) April 14, 2016
"Film critics are in Disney's pocket!," said the dummy who apparently forgot all about John Carter and The Lone Ranger.
— Philly M. Nerd (@PhillyMovieNerd) April 24, 2016
NOTE: As a member of the film critic community and deputy editor of FlickeringMyth.com, I can confirm that no transactions have occurred between this site and the overlords at Disney and Marvel. They’ve also not got a gun to my head to type this article.
It all comes down to brand loyalty. If you’re a DC fan, you have blindly like everything they put in front of you regardless of whether it’s good or not. And if it’s something that doesn’t satisfy you the way you wanted it too – as evident by some tweets I saw from DC fans after seeing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – you simply say that it was ‘interesting’ or ‘not what you expected’ or ‘I need to see it a second time to fully appreciate what [director] did’.
The other side of brand loyalty is to say that everything the competition does is rubbish. If Marvel put out a trailer for a new movie, you have to say that it’s trash or that it won’t be as good as what DC are putting out. If a director leaves a DC project over ‘creative differences’ – like Seth Grahame-Green did with The Flash – you must remind people that Patty Jenkins left Thor: The Dark World and Edgar Wright left Ant-Man for the same reasons. If someone points out that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has fallen short of $1 billion, you must point out that it made more at the global box office than Deadpool (ignoring that Deadpool is an R-rated movie that cost a fraction of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s production budget). No doubt that when Suicide Squad comes out and, presumably, gets better reviews than Batman v Superman, you must cry out that people were wrong to write off the DCEU so early on. The utter fools.
Now of course, this isn’t a one-way street. Fans who have brand loyalty to Marvel do the exact same things. No one really points at Marvel fanboys as being blind, however, because everyone is seemingly on their side. The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to deliver hit after hit with both the box office and audiences, with the early reviews of Captain America: Civil War are bringing up derogatory comparisons to DC’s team-up effort back in March. Marvel fanboys and girls have the same blind optimism to their output, but at least they have people agreeing with them. And so instead, they just point and laugh at DC’s misfires and continuous bad news.
Neither side is better than the other, and neither side is right.
Originally published May 3, 2016. Updated June 30, 2023.
