Of course, comparisons between the two films are inevitable. They're by far the most anticipated CBMs of next year, and for good reason.
The Dark Knight Rises will be the epic conclusion to Chris Nolan's critically-acclaimed
Batman trilogy, following up to what's commonly considered the greatest CBM ever,
The Dark Knight. Meanwhile, on the Marvel side,
The Avengers is anticipated because it's the first real superhero teamup film (not counting
X-Men or
Fantastic Four), bringing together heroes such as Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor in the same film for the first time in cinematic history. So obviously, many would anticipated
The Avengers the most. Even I have more excitement for
Avengers than I do
TDKR, but of course I try to anticipate both.
I'll go ahead and be honest - the first few marketing pieces from
The Avengers weren't that impressive IMO. Sure the two pieces of promo art showing the full team was unbelievably epic, and the Loki promo art was cool too, but everything else felt pretty underwhelming. We all know of how mediocre the EW cover was, but let's look at the first trailer and poster. The teaser poster, while pretty cool, looked extremely generic/predictable, and it didn't look that different from some fan made posters I've seen. As for the trailer attached to the after credits of
Captain America, that was also cool, but at the same time underwhelming. IMO, it wasn't much more than a bunch of random shots of different scenes/characters, and I didn't even know what was going on in the trailer until the HD version recently leaked online (you can watch it
here). But did it affect my anticipation of the film? Hardly. And any doubt I had was blown out of the water when the full trailer debuted last week, IMO it could be the best trailer ever. So I have high hopes that
The Avengers will deliver.
As for
The Dark Knight Rises, I've really loved what's been released so far. The teaser poster is definitely one of the more creative posters released in recent years (although it looks a bit too similar to posters for
Inception and
Batman Begins), and it certainly raised my expectations for the film. The trailer raised them too, and say what you will about how 'unrevealing it is' - at least it's better than the first
Avengers trailer, which was released right after the
TDKR one. I've heard complaints about the
TDKR trailer reusing old footage from previous films, but not as much as both
Avengers trailers reusing clips of Iron Man from the 2008 film. You can say that the effects weren't finished to reveal much new footage of Iron Man, but what about other
TDKR footage that was being edited at the time the trailer was being finalized? Don't bash a movie for doing something, when accepting another movie doing the very some thing.
Anyways, I do admit that the
TDKR trailer seemed rather rushed. I do believe that Warner Bros. wanted to get a trailer out by
Harry Potter 7.2, because that's how their marketing works.
The Avengers trailer felt somewhat rushed too, just so it could be a little treat after the credits of
Captain America. So it's more or less a lose-lose situation for both films, because of their studios' marketing plans.
Despite my criticisms of both films' marketing, I am looking forward to both of them VERY much. I'm itching to see how the Batman trilogy ends, while
The Avengers will indeed be the superhero film of a lifetime. I'm a lover of both Marvel and DC, so of course I'd look forward to films from both. Which leads me to my next point - most of the bashers of either film are either Marvel or DC fanboys (mostly Marvel). Every day I see comments on a
TDKR article saying things like "The Threequel Curse strikes again!" or "THE DARK KNIGHT REHASHES!" (not pointing fingers at anyone in particular) without knowing
anything about the storyline, or what goes on in the film. I see hate on
The Avengers as well; regularly I see comments calling the film a "kids party film" and giving retarded reasons about why the film will "bomb" at the box office (which is impossible, considering the recent record broken by the film's trailer). I'm not biased concerning either film, so I'd appreciate it if there was unbiased treatment of both films (not that I can control anything, just a suggestion).
While we're on the topic, I'd like to talk about something that I've seen on CBM ever since I joined the site - people are too quick to judge a movie before seeing the whole picture about what it's about. I've addressed this in editorials about
Green Lantern,
X-Men: First Class, and most recently
The Dark Knight Rises. It's a very common problem, and while it's impossible to please everyone, it's getting pretty old. Is it wrong to have expectations about a film? Not at all. But judging something before there's enough to judge isn't really fair. Look at
X-Men: First Class - in my personal experience, I was practically hating on it at first, but now it's one of my favorite films of the year (second only to
Captain America). Even
Real Steel was better than what most people expected. Both are just examples of why we shouldn't judge a film when there isn't really enough to judge.
In conclusion, the purpose of this article was to look at both
The Avengers and
The Dark Knight Rises from the view of an unbiased comic fan, making criticisms and praises when necessary,as well as addressing the ever-common Marvel vs.DC debate (if you like one company more than the other, then fine; just don't go hating on anything from the other company just because it's from that company). I'd be glad to see a day when an
Avengers or
Dark Knight Rises article doesn't explode from a a DC vs. Marvel flame war in the comments, in all honesty. Finally, it's best not to judge a film before we've seen enough of it to decide, and we'll definitely have our decisions made next summer.