For as long as there have been superheroes, there have been many debates over the various continuities that we as consumers have been blessed with on the silver screen and beyond. But one of these debates has been quite heated in recent years: Marvel v.s. DC, which has better movies? I believe it is DC, and no, it’s not just because I’m a contrarian through and through. I grew up with both DC and Marvel and can confidently say that DC has better movies. 

I will be the first to admit that Marvel has certainly upped their game over the last 18 years with their “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” a relatively new frontier of cinema that DC has certainly struggled with. However, without DC, there would be no MCU. In 1989, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton, gave us Batman. This film made superhero films mainstream and caused a massive worldwide phenomenon called “Bat-Mania.” The success of this film led Marvel to start seriously considering throwing their hat in the ring and creating their own Bat-Mania (Especially since they were going through major financial issues at this time, even declaring bankruptcy in 1996). While they had some minor successes with Blade, X-Men, and Spiderman (none of which were even fully owned by Marvel at this point), DC continued to dominate the box office until 2012. 

With the release of the first Avengers, Marvel finally turned the tables and earned a higher box office than its DC counterpart, The Dark Knight Rises. From then on, Marvel movies consistently made billions of dollars and pulled Marvel out of their financial crisis. Marvel’s influence throughout the 2010s is quite clear when you look at how many more cinematic universes were spawned because of the MCU’s success. Nearly every major studio tried its hand at a cinematic universe of its own; however, it could be argued that this influence was not a net benefit for the film industry as a whole. While an interesting concept on paper, when executed poorly, it can lead to subpar movies and incomplete storylines.

Overall, while the MCU’s track record has been better in recent years, DC has been much more instrumental in the success of Superhero movies, laying the foundation for the MCU to thrive.