Two little jabs at handling DC comics characters

This is one of the topics that makes me frustrated.

As it leads to shows like Young Justice being canceled, not because of ratings, but because they can't figure out how to sell enough toys.

GRR.

Hey, market to ALL The fans and you might sell enough toys!

Woodclaw wrote:

lfan wrote: Thanks, I remember reading Dini's interview before. I think I read another article talking about Disney Marketing that was shockingly similar. It was something to the effect that they had the 'girls toybox' (e.g. Princess stuff and TV shows) for the girls and a 'boys toybox ' (e.g. Buzz Lightyear, and TV shows) for the boys and they try not to mix the two demographics. I mean, I know they are in it to turn a profit, but that marketing strategy seems pretty myopic to me.....

ElF

More than myopic it's the result of decades of stereotyping. A teacher of mine once told me that the big different between a creative (being a writer, a designer, a director etc.) and and exec lays in vision. Creatives are trend-setters, they pioneer new ideas -- both bad and good -- and try to push the forward. Execs are trend-followers, they rely on the proven concepts and milk them to death.
People like the bronies clearly show that more often than not productions are switching from their intended audiences to different demograhics, but this concept seem too radical from some people to understand. They prefer to play the old tunes once more.
While there's nothing inherently wrong in sticking with proven concepts, doing this at the expense of possibilities seem lame to me.

in fairness to all of this- its not like Marvel has a great history here either. DC's female characters are unarguably the more iconic- but well..what does marvel have? After a couple books in the forties after Stan Lee It didn't have any female centric titles till the very late 70s. They did have a spiderwoman show back in the day-but well that is a loooong time ago.

In the last 10 years its done 4 times as many movies as DC(well marvel and the other liscene holders)...and how many of them have had female main characters-one. One movie that from what i have heard is kind of a contract fufilment. The rest are mainly male characters. Spiderman, Wolverine, Punisher,Iron Man, Hulk, Thor Etc etc All men, all (why not) white. They have made close to dozens of them.

They did have a number of team movies-X-Men, Fantastic Four, Guardians, Avengers- and with the exception of the last one...well the woman characters do fall in the background a bit. For all of the love Guardians got, its Not Like Gamora has all that much to do in the movie. in the X-men movies the classic characters like Storm, and Rouge-well they kind of don't do much at all. Rouge for a time was basically the star of the X-men. in the movies shes a pawn.

Black widdow has been a wellish done character in the films-and one of the more iconic-but she does tend to be religated to a fight or two at the side of the climax type role.

There is frequently talk of giving her own movie-nope no plans. Ant Man. There hasn't been a: Ms. Marvel Movie, A she Hulk movie, or well a Squirrel Girl movie. Nope none. All of these are out there. You can argue that these are the second tier marvel characters-but well what is Ant Man? Right now theres a She Hulk comic-ain't one for him, haven't been for years.

Meanwhile DC..has a large back cateloge with which its not doing much movie wise-but well the numbers aren't getting larger.

DC is owned by Warner Brothers which has kind of mismanged this push in superhero movies. i think everyone will agree. However they done so by producing all of there movies in house since the 80s. Marvel have done all of this by liscening out there properties-which was the process of desperation and arcane, but has worked out for them i think well enough-they did so in lots-Which means---well its not one producer somewhere saying no to the superwomen-its like a dozen. You could see like A dommino movie from Fox, or A Spiderwoman movie from Sony, Ms. Marvel from disney. Hell if i had a couple of million dollars, i could have probably picked up the rights to Squirrel Girl a couple of years back.

And TV Wise- You can't Say DC isn't trying. Live Action Wise they have 3 shows going on television right now. two of which are focused on male centric protaginists-one is looking more like an ensamble. However they are working on a Supergirl Pilot. A couple of years ago they did a Wonder Woman show(which i didn't think was that good). They have worked quite a few shows that never went off the ground(electra girl, Ultra) etc. but well you know there is effort here-Sometiems expensive effort. Marvels Agent of Shield..isn't a good show. They do have have a Purple Girl Show in There works but well...it looks more like an online only miniseries then anything

Animation Wise- well since around 1990 i think most people would say DC has pushed Marvel out of the water. I would say its perhaps a tad more neutral-but well they did do an animated Wonder Woman movie-i wasn't a giant fan of it, but it exists.It probabbly cost a couple million dollars at least-so yeah.

All of this is a project of commerce, thats true. i am not a Bronnie, but i can endlessly respect the creator of Friendship of Magics comment that, yeah people where going to think this was just a stupid tie in show for toys, but she was going to work hard on it endlessly. All of the above examples are in someways that. These are all the projects of Execs looking at numbers and saying yes is no, while creative people try there dammdests.

But i will say-in terms of Diversity in roles, in working on protagnists who are female-well i can't entirely be Mad At DC.