The Soulless 'Blockbusters'

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by LegacyCosts

This. I love superheroes as much as the next nerd but I'm tired of the endless cgi and boring scripts.

Again, he was using a Dark Knight quote in a thread about "What went wrong with Man of Steel?", and the answer should have been self-evident from that:

After we all went goofy over "It Doesn't LOOK Like a Superhero Movie!(tm)", back when TDK made more money than it was supposed to, it threw a wrench into non-Marvel producers' idea of what makes comic-book movies.
Superman Returns tried to avenge Richard Pryor, and flopped for being ponderous, downbeat, depressing, and throwing in character-examining subplots that just didn't fit the character.
Man of Steel tried to avenge Returns, by bringing in the same dark, ponderous "Tragic saga" geek-reverence that Zack Snyder tried to bring to Watchmen, and...well, while it made more than Watchmen, it had about as much shelf-life.
Oh, but it had CHRISTOPHER NOLAN producing it! He knows EVERYTHING about superhero movies, so why wasn't it proclaimed genius??

But don't worry, the Marvel movies still deliver the goodies, right?
Well, er, yes, unless Tony Stark has an unlikable and way-off-canon villain beat the living crap out of everything we find entertaining with him, so he can spend more screentime personally angsting out of his superhero suit than in it.
Basically the message we came out with last summer was "Okay. We GET it. You liked Dark Knight. And did you like Dark Knight Rises, too, or have we gotten it all out of our system now?"
Warner's fears of its own DC franchise keep sending them to pan for any last veins of 08's dark deconstructionist IDLLASM gold , not even realizing that that came from a time when what audiences and critics thought "Looked like a superhero movie" was Daredevil and Fantastic Four, not, say Thor or The Avengers.
We've, um, upgraded our standards since then, thanks.