It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Marvel dominates the superhero genre. The Avengers in 2012 grossed $1 billion dollars in nineteen days and is the twelfth film ever to reach the milestone. Since 2011, Marvel Studios has put out one film a year, more often than not releasing two films in a single year. This week, The Avengers: Age of Ultron teaser trailer leaked ahead of its Tuesday broadcast premiere and gained 34.3 million views in 24 hours, according to Marvel. It’s a pretty exciting trailer.
DC and Sony Entertainment (The Amazing Spider-Man) will have trouble keeping up.
Or will they?
Warner Brothers, the studio holding the DC entertainment properties, announced the titles of its ten upcoming DC films. Several of the titles are old news—Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad set for 2016, two Justice League movies a little farther down the line, and Shazam!—and others are a little to be expected, like The Flash and a Green Lantern reboot. What is interesting, are the remaining three titles: Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg.
Wonder Woman, as the title suggests, will be headed by Gal Gadot. Between Marvel and DC, this is the first female led superhero movie since Marvel’s Elektra in 2005. Even then, Sony beat both studios when it announced back in August, two months ago, that it will release a female led movie written by Lisa Joy.
(That’s another thing, between the three studios, Lisa Joy will be the second woman to write for a superhero film, following Nicole Perlman’s co-writing credit on Guardians of the Galaxy. There have been no female directors, though Warner Bros. is searching for a female to direct Wonder Woman.)
Black Widow will appear in her fourth movie in 2015. None of them her own.
Marvel struggles on its female front. Janet van Dyne, cut from the film featuring the team she founded, will be dead before the events of Ant-Man, featuring her husband. Fans called for a Black Widow movie since her introduction in Iron Man 2. Six years later, Black Widow will appear in a fourth title but has no plans for her own. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige continues to say he’d like a female lead but introducing a new character would halt the franchise. Because new characters aren’t added yearly.
The remaining two DC films, though unexciting in its choice of characters, hit Marvel’s other weakness: non-white leads. Cyborg, as one of DC’s most notable African American characters, will naturally be led by a non-white actor. Ray Fisher has been cast for the role. On the other hand, Aquaman is more interesting in that the character is typically imagined as a white man. However, Jason Momoa has been confirmed long confirmed to be playing the character. Momoa, of native Hawaiian descent, will be the first non-white actor to head a superhero film from anyone since, maybe, Hancock in 2008.
I did go to school for Marine Biology, but the cool thing is… the greatest thing for me is that Polynesians, our gods, Kahoali, Maui, all these water gods, so it’s really cool and a honor to be playing a [water] character. And there’s not too many brown superheroes, so I’m really looking forward to representing the Polynesians, the natives. My family are some of the greatest water men on earth. I’m not, but I’m going to go train with them. But it’s really an honor just being a Polynesian.
Marvel may make more money and more movies than its competitors, but it has catching up to do.
Nice piece. It will be interesting to see how DC’s next few movies play out.