The competition that started in the pages of comic books between DC and Marvel has made its way to the screen, where one side seems to be having much more critical success than the other. Chris Pratt thinks he knows why. While the actor says that he likes the DC movies overall, he thinks that what Marvel did to build up each of the Avengers separately before bringing them together went a long way to making them stronger characters. According to Pratt...
I really like all the Warner Bros. movies. I think they're really cool and I'm not a real tough critic on those movies. But one of the flaws might have been they were introducing too many characters in Suicide Squad. They spent 10 minutes telling us why should we care about these characters, rather than creating trilogies for each character and convincing us to care about the characters.
It's difficult to argue that Chris Pratt isn't on to something with his comments to iO9. The Avengers didn't have to spend a great deal of time setting up their characters because each one of them had at least one full movie of introduction previously. It was something of a gamble, because it required the audience to have seen those films, but it certainly paid off. On the other hand, a movie like Suicide Squad had to introduce every character, and because there were several of them, none of them could be given a great deal of screen time. For Pratt, and likely many others, this had the effect of making them less relatable.
On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that Chris Pratt's own Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, had to do the exact same thing. That team didn't have as many members as the Suicide Squad, and maybe that difference was enough to make the introduction of all of those characters easier. Still, Pratt seems confident that giving the characters time to breath is the better way to do it.
It's like hardwood. They grew it really slowly so it's strong. They didn't create The Avengers first. They did Iron Man. And they tested it to make sure it worked. Then they did [Iron Man II] and [Iron Man III], then they did Cap, and then they did Thor. And they created a thirst for these characters, and that's when they put them in The Avengers.
While the critical consensus has been squarely in Marvel's corner, that hasn't stopped DC's movies from making plenty of money, showing that fans are happy with what DC is doing. Every entry has been a huge box office hit. And it's not like each of DC's heroes is getting ignored individually. Solo movies are planned for The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg as well as Wonder Woman, who is getting her shot first when her movie debuts in June. DC may be taking the opposite approach to the way Marvel did it, but they certainly know what needs to be done.
