There’s no way around comparing Civil War to Dawn of Justice, and not just because the proximity of their release dates is close enough to hold the attention span of the Thinkpiece Industrial Complex. Meanwhile, Civil War posted the fifth-biggest opening weekend in history. Worse, that precipitous drop-off at the box office after its opening weekend suggested an eager audience was deeply dissatisfied with what they saw, and not necessarily eager to come back for more. The latter’s creation of its own multistrand, multi-movie universe, which begins in earnest with BvS, is a blatant attempt to follow in its opponent’s footsteps. But the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 with Iron Man, and the end of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, turned the tables: Suddenly Marvel was running the table and DC was playing catch-up. But these all-star team-ups - specifically, Warners/ DC Comics’ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Marvel/Disney’s Captain America: Civil War - are in a fight of their own, and not just to see who can come up with the more unwieldy title.įor years, DC had the prolific, and sometimes even Oscar-nominated comic book franchises, while its chief competitor’s characters were in cut-rate movies that were less than stellar (or in the case of that infamous Roger Corman production of Fantastic Four, were literally unreleasable). The spring’s big comic-book movies feature the superhero trend du jour of good guys fighting one other: Batman takes on Superman, Team Captain America versus Team Iron Man.