A Comparative Study On The Story World Construction Between Marvel And DC Cinematic Universe

From the birth of Superman,the first real superhero movie in 1978,to the release of Aquaman in 2018,American superhero movies have gone through a forty-year development course.The Marvel/DC duel is already in place.In 2018,Marvel put forward a concept of "Cinematic Universe" with shared world view,infinitely extended story system and complex character relationships through series of films.Its approach of clustering films and linkage of content effectively breaks the time and space limitation of a single film,so as to meet the demands of young audiences for a grand "world view",and at the same time facilitate the access of its content in other entertainment channels.In this paper,20 superhero films in three stages of Marvel cinematie universe from the Iron Man in 2008 to the Ant-Man 2 in 2018 and 6 films in DC Extended Universe from Man of Steel in 2013 to Aquaman in 2018 are specifically studied.And also,we use the most representative superhero characters such as Superman,Iron Man,Thor and Wonder Woman,in combination with other superhero movies with different characteristics,to compare the story world construction between Marvel and DC cinematic universe from the perspectives of characterization,narrative characteristics and world view,and summarize the characteristics of world view of superhero movies and the shaping strategy of unified world view.In terms of structure,the main body of this paper is composed of four chapters,but the thesis embodies totally six parts,including the introduction and conclusion.The main content of the introduction includes the research purpose,significance,research status at home and abroad,research content,theoretical methods,innovation and difficulties.The first chapter reviews the origin of superheroes,sorts out the background of the emergence of superhero images,and divides the debate of superhero movies between Marvel and DC into three periods:the exploration period from 1978 to 1998,the period from genre solidification to the flourish,and the era of the cinematic universe after 2018,and then summarizes the strategic advantages of the cinematic universe.Chapter two compares the differences in superhero movies between the characterization of marvel and DC from the perspective of internal attributes and external images.The difference of the inner attributes of superheroes lies in the heroic positioning of human nature and divinity,and the heroic attributes of comedy and tragedy,while the difference of the superhero’s external images lies in some aspects such as the role actors,action skills and the second interview styles.The third chapter mainly compares the narration of marvel and DC cinematic universe,and sorts out the differences between them from the three aspects of story core,story plots and narrative time and space.The fourth chapter summarizes the world view shaping of Marvel and DC cinematic universe,looks for the differences between them,analyzes the characteristics of the world view of superhero movies,and summarizes the shaping strategies of the unified world view across media.The last part is the concluding summary of the whole paper,summarizing and sorting out the main differences in the construction of the universe story world between Marvel and DC movies.The author hopes that the study on the world construction of superhero stories in this paper can provide reference and experience for Chinese film creation.