You are looking at a TV screen. The very first shot you see is a body attached to chain tumbling down, coming to an abrupt stop as the links pull taut. Then we see a glimpse, just for a second, of a face filled with pain, anger, and despair. We hear, “Well I know what you’re thinking, how did this happen?” There’s a pause and the scene abruptly changes. A snowy landscape appears, whirling around us as a horse is saddled. A man rides off into the whiteness and we hear a deep, husky voice say, “We have to be ready. You. Me. The others.”
Hold on, wait, you think. Who’s thinking something? What’s happened? Why do we have to be ready? The others? You’re so drawn in, and you want to know what happens Will it be exciting and funny, or emotional and sad? One thing is for sure, it’s going to be a wild ride, no matter what.
These opening lines to the trailers for Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League have been exciting superhero fans and moviegoers left and right since they were released this past year. Despite this, the age old debate of Marvel vs DC is still going strong, with fans taking sides as the movies approach their release in November. It seems, however, Thor is going to take center stage this fall and overshadow the Justice League despite recent hype due to Wonder Woman’s success.
Marvel and D.C movies seem to be dropping around the same time recently, with Wonder Woman (June 2) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7), and now Thor: Ragnarok coming out November 3 while Justice League follows two weeks later on November 17. With two huge names like this in quick succession one will likely prove stronger and end up rising to the top, and in this case Thor has the distinct advantage as the one coming out first. With Ragnarok’s jump start, it’s very possible the Justice League premier will be less of a bang and more of a pop in the background.
Based solely on the excitement the trailers generated, Thor comes out on top. When the teaser trailer was released this April, it quickly became Disney’s (not even just Marvel’s) 24-hour record holder with 136 million views in the first 24 hours after its release. In comparison, it took Justice League two weeks to get 25 million views. And, a Comic Vine poll ruled Thor as the movie with the most hype by 26%, as well as a Fandango survey that put Thor in the number one most anticipated fall movie spot. This isn’t to say, however, that Justice League should be thrown under the bus at all. In a recent Twitter poll, Justice League won the vote by twelve percent, and in the Fandango survey Justice League was the close second.
Yet we can’t look at these two films without giving a nod to their predecessors, most recently Spider-man: Homecoming and Wonder Woman. Both of these films were huge box office hits, with Spider-man making $330 million at the domestic box office, but Wonder Woman topped that with $411 million.
Many critics attribute Wonder Woman’s success to her director Patty Jenkins, who took the movie out of the gloom of Zack Snyder (Batman v. Superman) and made it something fantastic. Wonder Woman has given fans hope for the upcoming movie, but what many don’t realize is Zack Snyder doing the directing. He did have to step down after the movie finished shooting, and there have been reshoots under the new director, Joss Whedon (The Avengers), but some are still skeptical.
Justice League isn’t the only one with a new director though; the Thor franchise is on its third director in as many movies, but fans remain optimistic. Taika Waititi, director of the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, seems to bring a new vibe to this section of the Marvel universe with an almost Guardians of the Galaxy-esque feel. However, some fans are worried that Waititi will just ignore the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and take this movie way too far out into the Nine Realms.
However, the only real way to answer this question is to look at what the fans think. I scrolled through pages of comments on the posts of various websites (some glorious entertainment, let me tell you), and much of the time it seemed to be fairly even. Fans seem to be able to argue all day about if Surtur’s reveal (the giant fire guy) in Ragnarok was the equivalent of Dawn of Justice revealing Doomsday, and whether or not humor belongs in a Thor movie. But, there are many more superhero fans besides just the ones on the forums, and we can’t neglect them because as far as I can tell they will be the deciding factor between these two movies and their success or failure, and as one comment read, “I’m sitting back and just appreciating that we’re getting these films. What a time to be a comic book fan.”
Hardcore fans can be seen all over the internet on forums such as Comic Vines with comments like “The MCU is just better” and “I’m trying to control my fanboy during those Aquaman scenes,” but just looking at comments on the trailers themselves give us a better indicator of the opinions of the general population. YouTube users comments on both of the movies trailers ranged from “I’ll watch this just for Wonder Woman” and “Why is the villain so hot?” (a reference to Thor’s Cate Blanchett), to “WHERE IS SUPERMAN!?” and “HA,HA,HA,HAA,HA”. A lot of these comments are people who watch the trailer without a lot of background knowledge of either movie or cinematic universe, and I believe the excitement you see on places like this is going to determine the real outcome of the movie.
The tendency with Marvel and D.C. is for people to immediately take a side and then holler at each other from their respective corners instead of appreciating the fact that they have different views on superheroes. While I am a Marvel fan myself and I love Thor (and Loki) I can tell Justice League has a lot of potential, but right now that’s all it has. If it does, as seen in its latest trailer, draw more on humor from the more jokester characters like Flash and occasionally Cyclops, Justice League has a good chance pull to off success in the same way Guardians of the Galaxy did. It is completely possible the turnout for this movie will be amazing and everyone will love it, but we will have to wait until November 17 to see if Justice League will live up to its last trailer.
Nonetheless, it seems going in right now, Ragnarok has generated the most excitement from the largest base. Marvel is already a well established brand, and even those who aren’t hardcore fans know MCU delivers what it promises, so there is already confidence in the film. Also the trailer kicked butt when it was released and enthusiasm has spread rapidly by word of mouth. No matter what Thor: Ragnarok promises to be an awesome movie with one crazy wild ride after another, so I can tell you with great certainty that I will at my local theater November 3 (in costume) ready to be wowed by quite possibly the top movie this fall.
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