I gotta admit that I've been incredibly surprised by the quality of Marvel's superhero films. Two years ago, I was predicting people would quickly get sick of the flood of superhero films. But Marvel did this genius thing that I never expected; all their films are hybrids. They all combine the usual superhero tropes with elements from other genres. Iron Man has elements of 80s sci-fi comedies. Thor brings in fantasy tropes (especially with the sequel). Avengers is kind of like an 80s action film. Captain America 1 is a campy WWII movie. Captain America 2 is a conspiracy-thriller. Guardians of the Galaxy is a space western. Ant Man was intended to be a heist movie (although I have no idea what the state of it is now). With the new X-Men films, First Class had a fun 60s tone and Days of Future Past was also a good political thriller.
This is amazing for me. There may be way too many superhero products these days but there aren't enough good space westerns, 80s-style comedies or conspiracy-thrillers and Marvel really taps into that longing for more variety. I think the problem for DC is that they don't seem to have recognised what Marvel are doing. They just look at the Dark Knight trilogy (also a film series where the best bits were nothing to do with superheroes) and try to imitate that with everything else. Unless DC have plans to release some fun movies among their dark films, audiences are going to get sick of them very quickly.
Edited by Raien, 01 November 2014 - 11:58 AM.