when you compare MCU/DCU 'phase 1' ..

Huge bigger?

This is something fans of the DCEU love to point out. It’s *mostly* true. But, any chance it is because when MOS (which did not exceed expectations) came out DC in general was more popular than Marvel? You know, Nolan’s Batman Begins rightfully gave the property a good reputation again and superhero movies overall were becoming a thing. However when Iron Man hit, it was a surprise success to begin with. I mean, did Tony Stark have the same name recognition as Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent? Not even close. Captain America & Thor? When these characters were introduced to the MCU, they weren’t anywhere near as well-known and popular as they are today, either. Bearing that in mind, their origin films were very successful in their own right.

But point is, Iron Man, who wasn’t a household name like DC’s biggest heroes, put the MCU on the map and changed the game for superhero films. And with the subsequent MCU films that followed, everyone (DC) was starting to take notice at what Marvel was accomplishing. That only proved to be more true after The Avengers came out, which made the MCU bigger than ever. So big in fact even Doctor Strange, a character unknown to most movie goers, managed to make more than the HUGE Justice League movie. Oh, it also received great reviews. In Suicide Squad and BVS’s case, as awful as they were, they turned in a good profit. And why wouldn’t they? The hype for SS was strong and BVS was the cinematic event people all over the globe waited decades to see. Although, while BVS’s box office is nothing to scoff at, everyone expected it to gross over a billion but ultimately it suffered as a result of poor reviews and was deemed a financial disappointment. After all, the title characters are, or should I say WERE, the biggest superheroes in the world.

As for WW, a beloved pop culture icon finally ended up getting her own movie and it was surrounded with nothing but positive buzz. It’s no surprise it did better than the Cap and Thor movies did at first. Credit where credit is due. (It’s worth noting in 2017 the three MCU movies outperformed the phenomenon that was WW.) After JL however, it has become apparent general audiences rather skip DC movies with a bad worth of mouth even though comic films with big superheroes are supposed to be sure hits. The MCU? Their popularity and level of quality only keeps growing and every sequel to their previous films has only performed better than the last. In conclusion, Marvel is doing so much better than the DCEU is in every single way.

And by the way, the first Blade Runner movie flopped at the box office while Transformers is one of the largest money making franchises in movie history. A movie making money does not determine if it’s good or not.

You also need to look at the timeline when you take box office results into consideration. Prior to the release of the Nolan Batman trilogy (starting with "Batman Begins" in 2005) and Iron Man (in 2008), comic book movies were still a pretty niche market that supposedly catered to the "nerd crowd". Yes, there were some breakout hits like the Tim Burton "Batman" (1989) film and the Richard Donner "Superman" film (1978), but those were the rare exception to the rule and not something that happened commonly.

For example, "Batman Begins" only earned $374-million world-wide... and it was a critical and financial success.

But then, along the way, something happened... comic book-based movies went from being perceived as the purview of the nerds to becoming popular in the mainstream. In 2008, you had the surprise hit of "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight", and comic book movies morphed into popular mainstream "event" movies.

Since that time, the track of box office results for ALL comic book movies has been on a general uptick. In the case of the Marvel movies, each sequel to the origin movies has earned more than its predecessor, and the box office totals, in general, continue to increase. We are now at the point where a movie that earns $650-million at the box office is considered a failure, when back in 2005 "Batman Begins" was considered a huge success earning nearly half that total.

By 2013, when "Man of Steel" was released, the hard work had already been done and comic book movies were now a mainstream cash cow, and even poorly received films earned box office that would have made their predecessors green with envy: $644-million for "Thor: The Dark World", $668-million for "Man of Steel", and $1.2-billion for "Iron Man 3".

So, while it is technically true that the DCCU's initial movies had higher box office earnings than their Marvel counterparts, it's largely due to the fact that Marvel and the Nolan Batman trilogy had paved the way to turn comic-book based films from something seen by geeks into something that attracted a larger, general audience. We can only speculate that, had "Man of Steel" been released back in 2005, its box office numbers would have been right around those of "Batman Begins", leveling the perceived playing field between the DCCU's and the MCU's initial origin movies.

absolute bull fucking shit , when iron man was released this was a first for Marvel, it was just starting out , MOS made piss poor box office , superman has been established in Movie for 30 odd years, then came BVS which should of been huge and grossed over 1 billion , but it was god awful , WW was good and did ok.

DCEU is far far from on top , it cant even beat films consider C class characters , every Marvel movie released in 2017 beat DCEU even JL and WW, id always thought a movie with Batman and Superman would make Avengers type box office, but it failed miserably.

DCEU is wayyyyyyyyy behind marvel , just look at the trailer hits for Infinity war, Marvel will always come out on top over DCEU.

What everybody else replied so far, but also, the DCEU blew its load pretty early, putting it's trinity together in the second movie and glossing over some pretty big stories that could've been saved for future movies (Dark Knight Returns, Death of Superman, etc). They still have more stories to tell, but now everybody has a bad taste in their mouths and it's gonna take much bigger events to get them back into seats than it normally would (unless they focus on making halfway decent movies like Wonder Woman). Seems like they treated this race as a sprint and not the marathon that it is.

even DC fans don't like most the films of "phase 1".

and what do you mean by "bigger"?

and JL did not deliver in any way possible.

I remember you from IMDB--"Bozo" is the perfect username for you.

This argument is tired...and dead.

You're comparing MCU's experimental Phase 1 during an ere where comic book movies were still in their semi-popular era to the DCCU's first slate of films which came out headlong into the golden age of comic book movies?

It's BECAUSE OF the MCU that people were excited for the DCCU because they were thinking: "YES! DC will get the same universal treatment Marvel did!" Plus, those films starred well known DC characters so OF COURSE people were going to watch those films in the golden age of comic book movies.

Also, you're conveniently leaving out the FACT that WB only did the DCCU because they saw the MCU's success and decided to create their own analogue to it.

Plus, you're leaving out the FACT that every single DCCU movie thus far has, more or less, been an event movie:

-MOS was billed as the "return to form" for Superman and the first true silver screen Superman reboot
-BVS was an historic event movie that put Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman onscreen together for the FIRST TIME IN HISTORY
-Suicide Squad was the first ever live action villain comic book movie in history and the return of Batman and the Joker in one movie (riding off of The Dark Knight's success)
-Wonder Woman was the first time we've ever seen Wonder Woman in live action on the big screen
-Justice League needs no explanation

What was phase 1 of the MCU? A bunch of experiments which led to ONE historic movie that was OF COURSE going to grab everyone's attention.

The irony here is that you DCCU zealots are actually only serving to making your DCCU look extra bad by doing this comparison because you're shedding light on the fact that, in the golden age of comic book movies, the DCCU released a slate of event movies and THREE of them were teamup movies and could barely beat anything MCU dished out beyond their first experimental Phase 1.

It reeks of desperation.