Odd Moment of Realization of How Badly DC is Handling Themselves At the Moment - courtesy, Randy

So, Randy IM's me:

Hey, did you hear they're making a Guardians of the Galaxy movie?  With Rocket Raccoon?

And I wrote back about how I was excited, even though I hadn't loved the comic, but the movie might give the neat idea a second lease on life.

Then, about three minutes later I realized:

Rocket Raccoon will get a feature film before Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, or any of DC's other staple players.  


Rocket Raccoon.

Look, I LOVE Rocket Raccoon as a concept, and I loved his early appearances.  I read all that mid-00's Marvel cosmic stuff til I got bored at some point during some cross-over or other and noticed I wasn't really missing the series.  That, and having your cast just standing around glowering isn't characterization.  Just saying.*

Batman ain't got nothin' on Rocket Raccoon

But, man...  Despite Marvel's fairly well mapped ability to turn themselves into a brand and studio, DC just simply cannot get their act together enough to simply copy Marvel.  Even the comments at Comic-Con from WB employees read basically as "if Superman fails, we're done".  Now, they didn't say that exactly, but there's no bold plan on the table at DCE or WB.  It's all conservative number crunching - and the problem with that is that there's no magic formula for making a blockbuster.  Instead, you wind up with a paint-by-the-numbers movie like Green Lantern that's greatest weakness was the utter predictability and 90's checkbox storytelling mentality of the movie.  Every decision was a "safe" one, from casting the supposedly bankable Ryan Reynolds to the pat telling of the origin to casting Angela Bassett as Amanda Waller.  

In the end, the movie arrived as a lifeless husk.

And the hiring of Zack "I did comic movies before!" Snyder for Superman?  WB wears their risk aversion on their sleeve.

The fact is, Marvel has put out more duds than big wins, but the big wins help build the brand so you'll at least give their flicks a chance.  And they've been willing to do some interesting hiring, from Sam Raimi to the Crank guys on the latest Ghost Rider (wait, Ghost Rider has had two movies and Shazam has had none?), and all that means they're constantly mixing up the formula to get new blood and excited talent in there.

Anyway, if you told 14-year-old-me that I'd be looking at a Rocket Raccoon movie in 2014, I would have burned you for a witch.

*I went to high school in North Houston.  I associate standing around glowering with drunk red necks sizing me up to see if I'm some uppity city folk they might need to learn a few things