Apologies for taking so long to respond to your comment, for which much thanks. Let me try to address your two questions, which are both on issues that for reasons of space or complexity I didn’t tackle in the original post — but upon which I did reflect.

Until “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” I would certainly have said that there was consonance between high value, high intensity color and emotional tone in the MCU. As you say, whimsy and wit are frequently to the fore. While even the Phase One films can go to bleak places and frequently revolve around near-apocalyptic events, tonally the MCU movies are really not that far from musical comedies, which from one pointe of view they also resemble in their melodrama and emphasis on colorful tableaux and dense, elegantly realized choreography. The self-conscious evocation of films like “Three Days of the Condor” in “Winter Soldier” led to a one-off departure from that established tone, shifting the franchise much closer to DC offerings than prior Marvel films and the network TV series. “Winter Soldier” certainly represents a precedent of sorts for the grittiness of “Daredevil” in terms of emotional tone, for it’s all metaphorically shades of gray — though literally it is, as I’ve suggested, more strongly infused with color.

As to the issue of blood: well, this is obviously one important manifestation of saturated color in “Daredevil” that I didn’t mention. That Matt Murdock so copiously bleeds, and so thoroughly bloodies his opponents, is surely at one level a function of his belonging to the recognizable, quotidian world, though I do wonder whether this level of untidy violence would have been so strongly evident if Joss Whedon had had his way and “Daredevil” had been rebooted as a movie. It seems to me that context is all, and that the relegation of Murdock, Jessica Jones, Danny Rand and Luke Cage not merely to television but to Netflix is significant. While I suggested in my post that vivid color is one of the ways in which brand consistency, and thus potentially brand equity, are upheld in “Daredevil,” in emotional tone there’s no question that it’s pushing the envelope. For Netflix, however, it’s nothing new; on the contrary, it’s a pretty logical extension of the prevailing tone of their original programming, picking up in different ways in the moral and visual murk of series like “House of Cards” and “Hemlock Grove.”

That said, if Netflix can be understood as a natural home for the grittier, more ambivalent end of Marvel, it’ll be interesting to see whether at any point the movies do embrace a harder-edged, grittier tone, and deal with superheroes who are less super — and less heroic, or at least less amusingly anti-heroic than Tony Stark. My guess is that this won’t happen, but I could be proven wrong as early as “Civil War.”

I very much enjoyed reading your post. It’s interesting seeing these two major comic book companies and the different stylistic routes their film franchises are taking. As you say, Marvel is going the more colorful route.

DC is taking the “grittier” direction with muted colors. “Man of Steel” received much notoriety for this (and still does). The upcoming “Justice League” movies will likely adhere to the same look. There’s also the somewhat recent pictures of Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot as the new Aquaman and Wonder Woman, respectively. Missing are the bright colors, especially Aquaman’s signature costume with the orange upper body.

Do you think the directions of style each “super-franchise” (as you put it) reflects their emotional tones? Marvel’s movies of the MCU seem to balance the “end of the world” stakes with humor. DC, judging by “Man of Steel” and the teaser for “Batman v Superman,” seems to be committed to somber tones and being mostly humorless.

Also, I’m wondering if you have any additional thoughts on the language and graphic bloody violence in “Daredevil.” While I loved the show, I was very surprised by some of the things said and by the sheer amount of blood. Not offended, just surprised to see these things in a Marvel show. As you said above, Marvel movies sticks to PG-13 ratings, so there is the violence and destruction, but it’s largely not bloody. Could this be due to Daredevil’s status as a “street-level” superhero? A superhero who is lower on the ranks, so he gets the messier, rougher jobs?

Thank!
– Ryan