DCU vs MCU and why they both make sense.
So I saw the Justice League movie today, and it’s not half bad. It also lets me forgive a whole lot of things I didn’t like so much about how it was put together in terms of the storytelling for the whole of the DCU.
You see, I had a revelation about halfway through the movie that makes the DCU suddenly just... make sense. I’ll admit, being largely a Marvel Girl, I never expected this to be the case. I was mistaken.
I think you’ll agree with me why they’re so dramatically different even though they’re both hero movie series’, and why they still make sense, regardless of how very different they are, given this revelation of mine.
Okay, so here we go.
In the DCU, they follow the idea that there were Old Gods, Amazons, Atlanteans, etc, around during the human formative years that guided and protected them. This is a fact. This is mentioned in multiple places and multiple movies in the current series. In other words, there were always heroes, and more powerful figures and beings were either the Good Guys or the Bad Guys, with no real middle ground that didn’t scream ‘uninvolved’ or ‘baseline human that needs protecting’.
In contrast to this, within the MCU, humans were on their own save the occasional land war and conflict of people from off planet mucking around, followed by them being ditched by said aliens, be they good or bad, for the umpteenth time. You see this in the situation with the Kree that leads to the Inhumans, who left the planet as soon as they were able. You see this with the Asgardians who stuck around to fight the Frost Giants before they pulled the “I’m entirely hands-off” card until Loki got involved again during the age of heroes.
In other words, the DCU humans were trained from early in their evolution to rely on protectors and beings more powerful to take care of their problems, while the MCU humans were taught to be independent little shits.
This is why the DCU is so black and white, why bad isn’t really forgiven, and good is extolled so intensely. This is why Heroes have pedestals and people will always rally behind them unflinchingly. This is why even Heroes that falter are so quickly shoved back into a position that gives them power over the lives of people around them, to the extreme detriment of villains who aren’t allowed to truly ever properly repent for anything. Nor, honestly, is repentance accepted when they try.
This is also why in the MCU the rise of Heroes is regarded with a nebulous sort of doubt, why they’re always brushed aside before they’re embraced, and why the community of humanity, on the whole, demands responsibility. It’s why villains can be given chances to be good, and why Heroes are regarded as just more people that have to follow the rules everyone else has to.
In the DCU, humanity was taught that Heroes were untouchable. In the MCU, Heroes are just people, if particularly admirable ones.
And that, my friends, is why both universes make sense, in their own ways.