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what's up wisecrack michael here and today we're diving into a topic that people are totally
reasonable and level-headed about one that we can all see eye to eye on and talk out our differences
without resorting to name calling no no no i'm just kidding we're comparing the mcu to the dc eu
and we're not here to tell people whether or not justice league is better or worse than infinity
war or endgame instead we're here to figure out what the differences between the marvel and dc
films mean so join us for this wisecrack edition on the dc eu vs the mcu and spoilers ahead for
well you know what just just roll the list but before we continue i want to give a quick shout
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a free license so check it out now back to the show we're going to be talking in broad strokes
here so there will be some notable exceptions but let's establish what we think is a key difference
between the two universes namely the dceu is full of warriors and the mcu is full of magicians you
don't have time for your magic tricks illusions dad you don't have time for my illusions
not literally but hear me out we're going to take a quick crash course on narrative theory
particularly the work of author carol pearson in her book the hero within pearson theorizes that
any fictional hero can be grouped into one of six basic categories or archetypes which build upon
one another those are the innocent the orphan the wanderer the warrior the martyr and the magician
importantly a hero's archetype can primarily be determined by the lesson they must learn on their
journey as pearson writes the innocent lives in the pre-fallen state of grace the orphan confronts
the reality of the fall the wanderer begins the task of finding oneself apart from others the
warrior learns to fight to defend oneself and to change the world in one's own image and the
martyr learns to give to commit and to sacrifice for others and the magician well the magician
is the hero who learns to truly understand themselves and their place in the universe
key to all of this pearson believes is the fact that heroes often progress through multiple
archetypes sequentially on their journeys as they become more rounded better beings a character that
starts out as an innocent may turn into an orphan then a wanderer and end up as a warrior or then a
martyr or even a magician usually but not always in a linear progression but what does any of this
have to do with superheroes well pearson's model not only accurately describes the vast majority
of on-screen superhero narratives but it also highlights the main difference between dc and
marvel films see while the dceu focuses primarily on heroes that fit the first half of the journey
from innocent to warrior the mcu has staked its claim on the latter half of the journey from
warrior to magician to see what i mean let's take a quick look at the film that launched the dc eu
zack snyder's man of steel snyder is quick to establish superman as the archetypal innocent
i mean he's literally a baby not just any baby but the first natural born child on krypton in
centuries and the literal hope of his entire civilization but sensing an impending planetary
catastrophe his parents ship him off to earth a place known for having zero impending planetary
catastrophes anyway from here superman must move into the orphan phase where he experiences what
pearson would call a fall from grace to that end the orphan must learn two important lessons one
that the world isn't the great place they once thought it was and two that it's not their fault
that the world sucks early on we see a young clark kent struggle to control his powers while
growing up in kansas whether it's him dealing with super hearing induced panic attacks or
being labeled as a literal gift from god he saw what clark did i know he did
i'm sure i'm sure what he thought he saw was an act of god jonathan but despite all these
challenges clark with the help of a loving mom and dad must accept the fact that he didn't do
anything wrong to deserve these hardships quite the opposite all these things are happening to him
because a greater destiny awaits him but only when he's ready now on one very literal level
clark kent wanders the world first moonlighting as a fisherman and then as a barman but on a more
symbolic level we see this archetype represented in clark's crisis of identity as is usual for the
wanderer clark is struggling to find out who he is and how to use his powers should he be the man who
saves people from a burning oil rig or the guy who skewers an 18 wheeler out of petty revenge
these questions fall away though once he discovers the kryptonian spaceship clark learns that he was
meant to guide the people of earth people of earth are different from us it's true but ultimately i
believe that's a good thing they won't necessarily make the same mistakes we did not if you guide
them can't in other words our hero's wanderings have come to an end he's not only introduced to
someone he will want to defend i.e lois lane but he's also introduced to his trademark suit
oh and also we learned that symbol is not an s the symbol of the house of earl means hope
in assuming the mantle of superman clark kent then becomes the most well known of the hero archetypes
the warrior according to pearson the warriors learned to trust their own truths and act on them
with absolute conviction in the face of danger to do so moreover it is necessary for them to take
control of and responsibility for their own lives and we see this behavior in superman who finally
stops hiding himself from the world and takes a stand against zod to defend lois but here's
the thing superman only really exists as a warrior he never progresses to pearson's other archetypes
like the martyr or the magician and while he does technically give his life while fighting doomsday
it was more of a happening to die while defending my girlfriend thing and less of a willfully giving
my life for the sake of others then and by the next movie he gets resurrected and immediately
gets back to doing warrior stuff unlike say tony stark who's dead dead after carrying out the snap
heard around upstate new york but superman isn't the only dc eu hero to fit the warrior archetype
consider zack snyder's justice league where we're introduced to cyborg and flash both of whom hew
closely to the journey we just outlined cyborg for example starts off as victor stone a regular high
school student i.e an innocent that is until a car crash kills his mother and his dad turns
him into a cybernetic frankenstein's monster this moves us to the orphan phase where victor harbors
some seriously deep seated rage against his dad his situation and the world at large left to his
own devices victor then enters the wanderer phase like superman before him victor begins to test the
boundaries of his powers as well as his own morals notably by hacking a bank to help a struggling
single mother he also tentatively teams up with the justice league and just like the man of steel
the snyder cut ends with victor fully accepting and asserting his superpowers i'm not broken
he has in short become a warrior now i know what you might be saying
this journey is ubiquitous to the superhero genre and especially origin stories but there are some
important choices snyder makes here and we can understand them by figuring out what marvel does
differently what's different about the mcu is that their heroes rarely stay in the warrior archetype
for long for example take doctor strange in it we see the now tried and true progression from
innocent to warrior dr stephen strange starts the film as an acclaimed neurosurgeon and innocent
until yet another car crash gets in the way i.e orphan sending strange on a journey to repair his
hands and study magic a comrade ergo wanderer but as the doctor transitions from wanderer to warrior
the film begins to differentiate itself from its dc eu peers after being gravely injured in battle
strange must reckon with the fact that strength alone won't be enough to save the day there is
no other way you lack imagination he must be more than simply a warrior an archetype obsessed
with binaries like strong and weak and winning and losing instead he must become a magician
according to pearson the magician gains their power from the realization that they are not
the center of the universe and as such can't solve all the world's problems she writes
magicians discover that at a deeper level force does not work that if they are not flowing with
the universe but rather are struggling against it no amount of perseverance skill courage or
wit will help them get what they want and doctor strange's finale trades in an epic battle for some
careful dialogue as the dark dimension engulfs the planet strange bargains with the big bad dormammu
who isn't interested in a deal that is until he realizes that strange has trapped them both in
a time loop and the only way out is through a mutual agreement and your assault on my world
never come back do it and i'll break the loop in the end strange saves the day not through physical
strength but by talking it out and strange isn't the only character to become a martyr or magician
in the mcu for example take the marvel universe's uncle jesse tony stark while he might have started
as an innocent albeit a billionaire arms dealing playboy kind of innocent he eventually assumes
the mantle of iron man and becomes a warrior but something changes after the first avengers film
in which the once selfish tony nearly sacrifices himself in order to save new york city in doing so
tony enters kicking and screaming into the martyr phase of his journey now you don't have to go on a
suicide mission to become a martyr rather they're more like the wise old man who gives of themselves
freely and we see tony begin to give back in ways that would seem at odds with who he used to be
for example he begins mentoring a young spider-man not only offering him a high-tech suit i can keep
the suit yes we were just talking about it but also offering him wisdom and tough love
sort of like uncle jesse moreover understanding tony as the martyr explains why the ending of
infinity war is such a gut punch i don't feel so good as thanos snaps and peter parker fades away
we know in our hearts that tony would have given anything for their roles to have been reversed
but tony doesn't remain the martyr forever as we see an endgame sure he starts the film still
very much in that role now a loving parent who's just happy that he and his family were spared i
got my second chance right here again camera with dice on it but just as doctor strange before him
tony learns that he isn't the center of the universe while he initially doesn't want to
do superhero stuff anymore he must learn to put his own happiness aside for the greater good
but he must also come to recognize his place in that universe when all hope seems lost in the
fight against thanos it's telling a doctor strange a magician himself looks to tony and gestures
one this is a callback to infinity war in which strange says that there is only one
scenario in which they defeat thanos how many did you see 14 605
how many we win
one realizing that they are in that one reality tony accepts the role he must play i am inevitable
and i
iron man in doing so he saves the day but loses his life but this isn't the sacrifice
of pearson's martyr but rather the man who has embraced his destiny he has become in pearson's
term the magician archetype now an argument could be made that because the dceu is a
younger franchise they need to use their films to establish origin stories for their heroes
following them from innocents to warriors and maybe setting them up to one day become magicians
this differs from the mcu which has already had plenty of time to develop characters like
cap and iron man over multi-film arcs but we're not totally sold on this line of reason for one
superman has been in three films across the dc eu and has yet to take on the role of
martyr or magician similarly the batman we're introduced to in the dc eu is an established
hero and warrior who has shown little growth out of this archetype meanwhile the mcu has
characters like doctor strange whose origin story wraps up with strange becoming a magician
we think the difference in narrative archetypes between the dc eu and the mcu lies in something
more fundamental reality or at the very least each cinematic universe's relationship to it
on the most basic level the dc eu and more specifically the snyder verse doesn't try to sell
us on the idea that superheroes could really exist for one consider the over-the-top visual style of
the dc eu and we're not just talking about all the breathtaking slow-mo sequences of which there are
plenty we're also talking about the exaggerated color palette and the hyper stylized set design
more than anything though what these stylistic choices are hinting at is that the dceu is a
symbolic representation of reality we are watching larger than life figures gods amongst men as it
were duking it out in epic battles of good versus evil and the dc eu seems to readily acknowledge
this fact often talking about characters as if they were symbols themselves there are six not
five there's no us without him in sharp contrast most of the films in the mcu are grounded in our
everyday reality sure wanda will create her own reality but she's not above hopping in a buick
after witnessing the corpse of her dead lover even grander conflicts sometimes revolve around
very real world issues the whole captain america iron man split began over questions about whether
the un or any governmental body should regulate the avengers and their use of force and while
similar themes might pop up from time to time in the dc eu they're ultimately just precursors sure
superman might get hauled to congress to testify about the use of his unlimited power a moment
that spurs bruce wayne into action but his kinds of questions are completely dropped by the time
justice league rolls around in the mcu even when we have a literal god of thunder we see him down
and out with a beer belly and a fortnight problem that kid on the tv just called me a [ __ ] again
noob master whether it's the avengers hunkering down for a post-battle shwarma or sam asking for
a bank loan the mcu constantly lulls us into believing that our heroes aren't really that
different from us but how does this explain why the dceu seems to be so preoccupied with telling
stories about warriors while the mcu is more interested in stories about martyrs and magicians
well it all comes down to the importance each cinematic universe places on symbols according
to anthropologist ernest becker symbols are how we cope with the inevitability of our own death
as he notes in his book the denial of death man is literally split in two he has an awareness of
his own splendid uniqueness and that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty and yet he goes
back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever but since
we can't overcome our own impending debts we feel compelled to conquer it at least symbolically to
becker this is heroism the desire to make something of your life be remembered and in
the process reach a sort of symbolic immortality building off this philosophy it's not surprising
that the dceu would venerate the warrior archetype in large part because this archetype as pearson
notes amounts to a rejection of death the warrior goes forth slays the dragon and returns with the
life-saving elixir and whether it's the epic of gilgamesh or die hard we see this archetype return
over and over again because we as human beings want to be reassured that we too can conquer death
and taken in this context the dceu's highly stylized symbol-laden world begins to make a lot
more sense we watch these larger-than-life heroes embody our literal hopes and dreams while fighting
back the embodiments of certain doom in contrast marvel chooses a situated cinematic universe in
our own reality now we're not gonna say that the mcu is light on symbols because that's simply not
true but because marvel is more interested in telling stories that are couched in real life
we see archetypes that focus on accepting not rejecting death in fact one of the biggest
lessons the martyr will learn to embrace is their mortality sure captain america might help
save the day but what happens after he gives up the superhero identity that has dominated
his whole life in order to live out the rest of his days with his long lost love peggy carter
and this moment resonates with us on a very different level than comparable ones of the dceu
precisely because steve rogers chose to live a quiet normal life with the one he loves very much
like any of us would do he's old he's frail and he's entirely human and it gets you right in the
feelings in contrast it's pretty much impossible to picture any hero from the dceu hanging up their
costumes for a life of domestic bliss or getting day drunk playing video games with their friends
but what do you think wisecrack do you think given time the dceu will reach past the warrior
archetype or does the snyder cuts bleak epilogue imply that the acceptance of death is going to be
far away let us know in the comments big thanks to our patrons for all your support
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