Popcorn to the left, soda to the right, and the ticket booth has a line all the way to the entrance. The marquee displays the new Marvel movie and the new DC movie. The theater for the Marvel movie is full of anticipating fans wearing Captain America or Iron Man shirts on the edge of their seats, watching a huge fight scene.

The DC theater is a different story.  A half full audience with their cell phones out, bored to death with their choice of movie. All they are thinking is they wish that they had chosen the Marvel movie because face it, Marvel movies are way better. 

These two movie franchises have been competing with each other for decades as each strive to portray strong hero characters. While each franchise is completely different, they both still run on the same audience platform of action-thirsty fans. As Marvel movies average a massive $13.509 billion in box office sales, DC only manages a $159,429,006 average according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. 

The two universes also have superhero teams with their own movies. DC has released a fairly new movie “Justice League”, which had scored an overall 39 percent on the popular movie rating system, Rotten Tomatoes. Marvel has also released a new Avengers movie, “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, which scored an overall 75 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Based on the scores alone, the clear winner of audience favorites is the Marvel Universe. 

Not only does the audience root for Marvel the production budgets do too. Marvel’s total filming budget is around $3.207 billion as DC’s total filming budget is $2.1 billion according to TheNumbers.com. With a greater movie budget, Marvel has more room for props and special effects and an overall better movie. 

Production can’t carry the whole movie, casting is also very important. Marvel movies such as The Avengers, have a very well-known platform of actors with tons of experience such as Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans. DC has limited casting as Superman and Batman movies receive the most focus. Only a few actors/actresses such as Ben Afflack and Gal Gadot have had the multi-movie experience. 

Some may argue that DC has the more famous and likable characters such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. While that may be true from the perspective of a fan of the comics, it is the overall quality of the movie that sells the audience. If a movie has the main focus of Superman but the casting and production are poorly put together, the movie will suffer when fans are disappointed at the outcome. It doesn’t matter what characters are put on the screen, if the movie is produced incorrectly the box office tickets sales will plummet.  

With great casting, a high production budget and audience approval, Marvel movies have won the battle against DC.