10 Things You Need To Know About The DC Extended Universe

5. DC Aren't Trying To Compete With Marvel (But Will Be Different)

The whole Marvel vs. DC rivalry is something that seems to only exist in the minds of fanboys too stubborn to be glad that all of these heroes are being brought to the big screen and thriving, rather than anything on a company level. After all, Warner Bros' DC Comics slate crashing and burning would do Marvel no favours because if moviegoers keep getting bad superhero movies like Fantastic Four, they're going to sour on the genre as a whole regardless of producer. A big part of how Warner Bros. are going about differentiating themselves is from a tonal standpoint. While Marvel has been embracing humour since Iron Man (and particularly since The Avengers), these DC movies are going for a much more serious and darker tone not dissimilar to that of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. In fact, Snyder just recently said that he's grateful to the director for establishing such a vastly different tone to Marvel with those movies and added that the DC Extended Universe will carry that over to some extent. The DC Extended Universe has also been described as "ancient world", an indication perhaps that it will have much more history than Marvel's Cinematic Universe. While Marvel has filled in certain gaps in history through flashbacks, the fact that Batman has been operating for twenty years when we meet him in Batman V Superman just goes to show that this is going to be a world where an awful lot has happened that we've never seen, something which will no doubt lead to more established villains and relationships.