Note: I posted this waaay before I was done, so multiple edits have been ongoing, my apologies for the changing in-development nature of the writing.
Folks are making a lot of great points now in this thread and I want to comment on a bunch of them:
Rocky didn’t win at the end of his movie.
The Batman isn’t without criticism but I did enjoy it. And I didn’t even dislike it for the reasons you cited, I more disliked that the strong independent black female mayor ran a campaign against white men, etc that felt a little too on the nose. Cat lady being a racist pos is fine, but she’s a criminal and is not a good person. She’s no Anne Hathaway charisma wise but she was acceptable.
tbh, I think Zoe Kravitz is abrasive in everything I’ve seen her in except Mad Max Fury Road. And I’ve seen her speak in person before, still arrogant and abrasive.
I think people who like The Batman tend to like the
style of The Batman potentially more than movie itself as a cinematic whole. The movie *looks* great and Matt Reeves is a fantastic director; the movie isn't well-written or plotted at all, though. The same "he never stopped any of them" criticism has been leveled at Indy in Raiders but that movie is an Archeology professor and adventurer reacting to Nazis trying to get a relic, not the World's Greatest Detective™ dueling with the Riddler.
It's also got the most Woke trappings of any super hero movie I can think of off the top of my head. It's such a product of its time; it won't age well.
Rocky's victory isn't in winning the actual fight, its in making something of himself. He is beating the system, overcoming his surroundings, society and himself, finding love, and doing something real by not being a bum. Him going the distance and walking away is the victory. He was a massive underdog who showed good. People loved it so much, it resonated with the audience so resoundingly that they demanded Stallone make a sequel where he gets to win, because in the 80s we still believed in happy endings. Cynicism is the order of the day now, and it feels like its more being fed by the artists than demanded by the audience.
The people making these movies stopped caring about making money and care more about their ESG scores. These studios are also populated with activists at every level. It's not just the studios, though: I work for a traditional energy company, and you would not believe the Green energy advocates who hate "Fossil fuels" who are happy to have them pay their bills who ask questions at high level Q&As,
Batman: The Animated Series is thoroughly amazing. However the 90s Superman cartoon in the same studio is just as amazing. I watch 90s Batman sometimes because it just holds up so well. Superman too. Even the X-Men of the 90s is great.
"The Late Mr. Kent" is the 22nd episode of the second season of Superman: The Animated Series, and the 35th of the overall series. While investigating a murder case, Clark Kent himself becomes the apparent victim of a murder attempt, and cannot reveal that he survived without exposing his secret...
dcau.fandom.com
This is by far my favorite episode of anything Superman. It stuck with me even as a kid. I was maybe 11 when I saw it and it stuck with me. Clark Kent as a nobody journalist is able to solve a murder case and he didn't want to solve it as Superman. The killer realized Clark was onto him and carbombed him. Not knowing he was Superman and just survived it he then had to find a way to come back. The killer gets executed and just can't figure out how Clark survived the carbomb until he has the horrifying realization that Clark Kent IS SUPERMAN then dies in the gas chamber.
I’d recommend reading “The Dark Knight Returns” (1986) by Frank Miller. It’s probably my favorite depiction of the Superman in comic form. Superman is basically the right hand of the USA govt and how that plays out against Russia and against illegal vigilantes like the Batman.
The Death of Superman (1992) by a handful of authors is also based and genuinely complex. A lot goes into the morality of who Superman saves, does he even need to be Superman, etc. there’s even a point where he’s fighting Doomsday, uses his super heat vision and misses Doomsday but catches a suburban house on fire with people inside. Then Doomsday leaves to Metropolis, so now Supes has to decide to save the people in the burning house or to stop Doomsday from killing more people in Metropolis. Either way: people will die from his choice.
Superman can be written like a boy scout or be written like a complex psuedo Dr Manhattan. It really depends on who is writing him but your complaints are hella valid on how lazy writers have portrayed him.
This is so true: Superman is a cipher such that he can be as much or as little as the writers put into him. He can be boring Big Blue Boy Scout™, or he can be the nuanced version described by Quinton Tarantino in Kill Bill, or he can be the inscrutable Pseudo Manhattan raised by Kansas Farmers, there is so much to be done with him insomuch as the writers want to explore. Plus he has been powered anywhere from You will Believe a Man can Fly™ to Space Jesus to DemiGod; it all depends on what kind of story you want to write. The point is you need to have to story to tell and understand what kind of story needs to be told with the character; that's an intersection of where business, art, and the audience/society all need to meet to be sucessful.
"Evil Superman" is such a tired trope now its as done to death as Zombies. Yes, an uber powerful capricious being was interesting I guess when the trend started but that's because like Batman, comics are produced monthly and writers need to roll out content continuously. EVERY hero has been made a villian, because A) it's easy B) the writers are terrible. Cyclops, Reed Richards, etc all have become horrible monsters because the that's how the writers view them. It's also interesting (at least to me) to map out audience trust in (Divine)authority over time to interest/acceptance in Evil Supermen from a sociological, as well as a psychological perspective. How much do people want to *be* Homelander rather than Paladin Superman? I think the id tide is turning, though, and the time for the Superego Superman is returning.
This is TLDR territory but to wrap up the main issue with all of these movies, (The Batman, Superman, all of the bad superhero movies and shows) is the writers aren't up to the task, whether due to being "lazy", ideological, or just poorly skilled. You could have written The Batman to have the hero stop the Riddler multiple times, and the plan be multi=layered so that it takes continued effort to stop him, not that the hero's efforts are seemingly in vain. You could have Superman not be de-powered to an insulting degree and de-centered in his own story, made incompetent. These writers hate these heroes and what they stand for, ideologically and morally. They change and undermine them, use them for their own devices. The audience has responded with resounding indifference.
