A child is playing with his friends at recess and lets his secret slip that he is a fan of Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings. The child is then ostracized and taught that being a geek is reason for ridicule and exclusion. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? That’s the way things were for decades. It’s hard to say exactly when the tipping point was, but now Star Wars is one of the most anticipated movies of the year, Marvel is a power house, and being a geek has never been more widely accepted.
So why is there still such unrest in the geek community? The battle lines have been drawn and there is a culture growing around the Marvel/DC rivalry. Marvel fans talk about how miserably the DC franchises have been handled and point to movies like Green Lantern to state their case. DC fans will talk you to death about the Nolan Batman trilogy and how the new universe is shaping up, and then remind you of the likely downfall of Marvel with Antman. But why does the success of one studio have to mean the failure of the other?
The rift isn’t relegated just to Marvel and DC though. The second Star Wars teaser trailer was released, and on the same day the Batman v Superman trailer was leaked. It took mere moments for nerds around the globe to start touting one as flawless and pointing out all of the shortcomings of the other. It wasn’t a day of bliss that two amazing movies were giving us further looks into what was to come, it was a day of division and ridicule because there had to be a clear winner. The thing that no one realized is that there was a clear winner: geeks!
Go back to the child at the beginning of this article and tell them that not only are they getting a movie with Batman AND Superman on the same screen, but that Marvel has their second Avengers movie coming out and they’re bringing the Civil War storyline to the big screen. Do you think that kid will choose sides? Hell no! Their head will likely explode and they will weep tears of joy because clearly this is the second coming.
We are living in a golden age, but that lack of torment from the muggles has left us unsure how to react, so we have started tormenting ourselves and each other to fill the void. But the fact remains that everyone will still see both Batman v. Superman and the Avengers. Antman will still make a profit, the Justice League movie will still get made, and geeks will continue to reap the rewards.
The division of geeks into waring factions needs to end. Stop complaining about getting everything you could possibly want and revel in the bounty that is geekdom.