Of the eight I saw, I think I only saw Iron Man, The Avengers, and GotG in the theater. They were satisfying spectacles in the theater, though my brain did get a bit frustrated being stuck in the lobby without even Pin-bot to keep it diverted.
I just can’t help counting the time I spent watching two Christopher Reeve Superman movies, all four 80s/90s Batman movies, two Raimi Spider-Mans and one Webb one, four X-Mens, a Daredevil, both Ghost Riders, a Constantine, all three Nolan Batmans, the Brandon Routh Superman Returns, and those eight MCU movies. That’s 29 movies, and probably over two and a half days of screentime out of my life. And not one of those movies was I ever tempted to see more than once. Unlike all the Star Wars and Harry Potter and Godzilla and Lord of the Rings and Mad Max movies I’ve seen and enjoyed over and over again. Unlike Dark City and City of Lost Children and Heavy Metal and even, god help me, Laserblast.
Well… the movie was not very different at all from the graphic novel, despite what the Faithful say. Just so you know. Couple of key differences, but not enough to make or break it either way, in my opinion. I liked both.
Yeah, that’s true, and it’s a weird fit for me. I have plenty of taste for utterly lowbrow fare. I don’t need a story that requires a literary degree to understand or enjoy. For me, this whole superhero thing is an utterly subjective objection. I’ll give you a semi-unrelated example of what I mean. I dearly love kaiju movies, mostly Godzilla ones. When I first saw the trailer for Pacific Rim, I was excited to see that it was Del Toro making the movie, but disappointed by the concept of the Jaegers. I mean, I’ll swallow the idea of giant monsters attacking a city all day long with a stupid grin on my face, and the world’s militaries can throw all the conventional and nuclear artillery at 'em that they can. But the idea that the world’s governments would build giant robots driven by people in their heads to fight the monsters?! That’s stupid! Only a little kid would think that was a remotely practical solution! And I had to stop and wonder at myself. Giant monsters: perfectly okay. Giant robots: dumb as a bag of hammers. Huh? I had to work on that idiosyncrasy a bit before I saw the movie, and I did end up thoroughly enjoying it. But when I see Gipsy Danger clobbering some kaiju with a cargo ship wielded like a club, a little part of me dies inside.
It’s the same with superheroes, I guess, but mostly because of overexposure. I mean, 29 movies about the same couple dozen characters? I just feel like I got most of the good story situations already a long time ago. Some guy obtains super powers, and wrestles with how it affects his basic humanity? That was Jon Osterman in Watchmen. Batman’s vigilante/vengeance shtick has been done beyond death. Spider-man’s “great responsibility” angst: ditto. The racism/supremacy/bigotry angle of X-Men got redundant in X-2. Superman himself has never really been interesting as a character. He’s a fish-out-of-water boy scout / space alien. Yawn. And the Avengers squabble with each other while some purple dude floating on a space throne plots to collect colored rocks that will make him noticeably more all-powerful. Jesus wept, kids, go play outside!
And yet I’d happily sit down for a sequel to Doomsday, which absolutely nobody wants. I really don’t make sense about this stuff.
