Why Marvel's 14-Year Movie Plan Should Cause Concern For Warner Bros.

Full disclosure: Jeff Gomez was joined by Fabian Nicieza in the writing of this piece. Mr. Nicieza has written Captain America comic books for Marvel Comics, and applies his unique insight into the character for this article. 

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” has grossed more than $480 million in global box office after three weeks.  

The film is both the second in a projected trilogy, and ninth in a series dubbed the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was launched with 2008’s “Iron Man.” 

More than another action-packed superhero romp, “Winter Soldier” serves as a primer in successfully structuring and steering a sprawling franchise, and stands as a warning to rival Warner Bros. and its DC superheroes that old school one-off tent pole development is becoming a thing of the past. 

Two Very Different Strategies

Marvel

One facet that makes Marvel’s movies stand out are the films’ seamlessly interconnected nature, which has delighted fans and is the result of intense creative planning and maverick business practices. Marvel Studios President, Kevin Feige recently told Bloomberg News Marvel has such a rich roster of characters, and such a huge library of spectacular stories that his plans actually run through at least 2028. 

Strangely, Warner Bros. seems unmoved. Clearly satisfied with the auteur-driven Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan, and last year’s “Man of Steel” by Zach Snyder, the studio has yet to place a definitive and fully empowered creative visionary in charge of its superheroes.  

While WB CEO Kevin Tsujihara has paid lip service to an impending Justice League movie uniting several DC superheroes characters, and has shown commitment to producing more DC Comics-based television shows, there is no evidence Warner Bros. is planning anything near as elaborate as Feige’s mind-boggling 14-year rollout strategy. 

In a recent interview with IGN, David Goyer, who served as writer/producer on WB’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, “Man of Steel” and the upcoming “Batman Vs. Superman” revealed the puzzling hesitation the studio was experiencing toward developing a similar plan, “I know Warner Bros. would love to make their universe more cohesive. There have been a lot of general conversations about that, but it’s really, really early… It’s just been vague conversations so far.”  

Marvel Heroes Go Global 

Disney/Marvel

With “Winter Soldier,” Marvel has accomplished a major advancement in the status quo of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, which in turn has served to sharply distinguish its characters and multi-platform approach from Warner Bros.’s trailing DC heroes. 

Feige faced a daunting creative challenge for his thriving film series: while Nick Fury and SHIELD served as the perfect impetus for uniting a disparate band of dysfunctional superheroes, now the filmmakers were stuck with global icons like Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man effectively bowing to a secret American military organization. That had to end, but the choice of making Captain America cut the umbilical cord? Genius. 

Warning: There are some spoilers ahead.

A testament to clever (some say subversive) storytelling, the film has Captain America and his superhero allies responding to a deeply infiltrated and corrupted SHIELD by standing against illegal incursions into foreign territories, protesting NSA-style surveillance on U.S. citizens, and thwarting drones designed to preemptively strike at national and international targets without due process. Our heroes even pull off a WikiLeaks-style information dump of SHIELD secrets—all without stirring the ire of audiences on the political right.  

The result is the fall of SHIELD, and the vast U.S. military-industrial complex no longer stands as the leash-holder to Captain America and his superhero allies. Steve Rogers becomes apolitical, while still representing the world’s perception of American selflessness, justice, and heroism dating back to World War II. 

So “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” now repositions the character as emblematic of what a Marvel superhero stands for: the fact that virtue is its own reward, and that wrong must never be done in the name of right. The ends no longer justify the means. 

Captain America Sparkles, While Batman & Superman Brood 

Warner Bros.

This is in stark contrast to the consequentialist behavior of Batman and Superman in the Warner Bros. DC Universe films. In “Man of Steel,” a storyline which strays much farther from the comic book source material than Marvel tends to, Superman allowed his battle with General Zod to occur within a heavily populated city, killing thousands, and ended the villain’s threat by killing him. This generated plenty of controversy among fans, as did several other aspects of the film, such as its portrayal of true father Jor-El as a gun-toting badass and adoptive father Pa Kent as morally gray to the edge of paranoia. 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GZ6QEC

In Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, Batman used any means necessary to catch the Joker, including a number of deceitful plots. He hacked the cloud, invading the privacy of every citizen in the city in order to obtain information to find the Joker. Even WB’s “Arrow” television series features a superhero who murdered dozens of bad guys in the show’s first season before the loss of his best friend forced him to reconsider his approach. Do Marvel superheroes kill? Sure they do, usually in war: Captain America shoots Germans, Thor smashes Frost Giants, and the Avengers wiped out a lot of invading aliens. So why does Marvel get a pass? Perhaps it boils down to a matter of tone. Steve Rogers’ explanation when asked if he wants to kill Nazis: "I don't want to kill anybody. I just don't like bullies.”  

The aggressive, self-serious, and at times, extreme behavior of the DC films’ superheroes has given Warner Bros.’ series a darker, more “mature” tone, but has left a sour taste in the mouths of many longtime fans. The WB’s filmmakers get to indulge in moral ambiguity and a more frighteningly resonant type of disaster spectacle (the devastation of Metropolis; the terrorist ransacking of Gotham City in “The Dark Knight Rise”), but these are almost certainly less kid-friendly.  

Old School Vs. New School 

The approach has kept licensing and merchandising campaigns around DC movie properties far less profitable than Marvel/Disney’s, whose global licensed merchandise averages over $6 billion per year. In an interesting contrast, Warner Bros. Consumer Products also reported $6 billion in licensing revenues (in 2011), but they do not carve out DC superhero merchandising as Disney does, so their number includes sizable Harry Potter, Hobbit, and Looney Tunes revenues among other franchises.  

The studio does not dedicate a separate division or production house for DC properties as Disney does. Different executives, and third party partners have been responsible for shepherding underperformers like “Green Lantern,” “Jonah Hex,” and non-starters such as Joss Whedon’s “Wonder Woman,” or TV shows like “Smallville” and “Arrow” under different silos. Perceiving the story world as a singular, carefully orchestrated gift to a global fandom simply flies in the face of traditional studio filmmaking and marketing. 

Disney / Marvel

Meanwhile, with the light-hearted space extravaganza “Guardians of the Galaxy” (which features Bradley Cooper as a laser gun-toting raccoon) primed for this summer, and Whedon’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” tapped to complete the studio’s Phase 2 cycle of films, Marvel is running on all cylinders. It would take multiple box-office bombs to even begin to slow them.  

From a creative standpoint, Marvel's superheroes have become beings that transcend national law, national borders, and national agendas. They now belong to the world, and we’ll all be able to follow their adventures across theaters, network television, Netflix, and game consoles, to say the least. This long-term transmedia strategy employed by Feige and his team places them in keeping with the most important tenets of 21^st century franchise production: franchise visionaries must put up tent poles now, even if they have to move them later, and the story world must be accessible across an array of digital and traditional media portals, each piece adding to the narrative whole.  

What’s stopping (or at least slowing) Warner Bros., while studios like Sony Pictures and 20^th Century Fox announce elaborate, interconnected film series for its Spider-Man and X-Men/Fantastic Four Marvel sub-universes? That’s a mystery perhaps only the Dark Knight detective can solve. 

Note: With five films apiece, Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20^th Century Fox have actually become even bolder with their official scheduling of Marvel superhero movies than Disney/Marvel Studios. Warner Bros. has only announced a single film.