Who is excited for the upcoming Marvel movies? As in Phase 2. I am also excited about the upcoming Superman/Batman movie. Even though it feels like a desperation move to Marvel's The Avengers.

Eh. Superman and Batman have always seemed one-dimensional to me. It'll depend on how good the actors are - if any of the Avengers actors hadn't been up to snuff the whole movie would have gone out the window, but since basically everyone knew how to carry their part it was a blast.

I"m super excited to see the new Avengers stuff! I want more Captain America - the first movie was seriously underrated, I think. Winter Soldier promises to be a blast.

I get Superman being 1D, I mean he's boringly predictable, but Batman? He's got one of the most multi-dimensional personalities of any of the major super heroes.

Not really. Angst about parents, angst about violence, angst about terrible city, angst about bad personal decisions - modern versions, at least. The camp versions are all campiness all the time, so it's a change of tone but not more sophisticated.

Common comparison is Batman vs Iron Man. Both rich white dudes who pick up superheroing after personal trauma.

Well, one of them uses that trauma as an excuse to make self-defeating decisions in their personal life, sinks into despair and brooding, and develops a super-creepy abusive relationship with the people they defeat. He uses clearly self-destructive methods of fighting despite *knowing* better options exist and the concern of friends. Lots of brooding while perched on architecture.

The other one refuses to devolve into isolated dysfunctional psychopathy, keeps actively involved in family enterprises, commits to several long-term relationships (platonic and not), and basically stays a functional human being.

Batman is the story of a person who lets their trauma rule their life. Iron Man is the story of someone who uses trauma as a catalyst to pull themselves out of a self-destructive spiral. Batman is kind of a one-note character. Iron Man is invested in the world he lives in.

Bat man stuff focuses on the villain just as much as the 'hero'. You can't bring up Batman without hearing about the Joker, Penguin, Cat Woman, etc. Iron Man stuff doesn't need that. People can talk about Iron Man without need to pull the villains into it to have someone interesting to talk about.

Take Iron Man 3. If someone had subverted the Joker like they did the Mandarin, we'd have had a huge out cry, because the Joker is an integral part of what makes the Batman interesting. But they could do it with Iron Man because Iron Man is interesting enough, *and has interesting enough supporting characters* to not need to rely on villains to make the story feel interesting.

Iron Man's life has enough dimensions to stand on his own. Batman's life falls flat without stage-stealing villains to prop him up.

EDIT: Well, that was a bit longer than I originally intended. Oops.

TL;DR I get tired of the angst wallow Batman can't seem to get out of. The way stage-stealing villains are so important to Batman shows that he has a hard time support a story on his own.

You're reaching there. I have no particular problem with Iron Man (apart from him being kind of boring as a person and lacking in the villain department), but you're really stretching to find reasons why Batman is worse than Iron Man. What's more, you could say most of that about pretty much all of the superheroes. Something spurs them to go superheroey, and for the everyman superheroes, there's not many things that are going to represent sufficient motivation that aren't tragic.

I wouldn't personally compare the two in that respect. They're both everyman superheroes. You could throw in the Punisher and Green Hornet to make clear why that's such a ridiculous comparison. They're all spurred by tragedy, they all have to use technology as they don't have super powers.

As far as Batman goes, he has a much more interesting world to work with than most of the other superheroes. And ultimately it shows. That's always the case with quality superhero stories. The badder the villains the better the hero. And Batman has some of the best villains in the business. It's an essential part of the genre.

Iron Man doesn't need that stuff because you don't want Batman to win. Ultimately, a superhero is very much a product of his or her environment. Take the Green Hornet to Metropolis and it's not going to work. Make Superman clear up Gotham city and it's not going to work. Superman just isn't cut out for the sorts of moral ambiguity that exist in Gotham.

Iron man is boring. I have nothing against him, but I've got no particular interest in seeing more of him, because his villains aren't good enough to justify my attention. As I said, the genre depends heavily upon having quality villains, and Batman has some of the best out there. It means that he has to be tougher, smarter and generally better than he would be if he had to deal with lesser villains.

Likewise, Spiderman has some pretty good villains most of the time. There's a diversity there that's sufficient to make it a genuine question about what the final outcome is going to be. I'm not sure I can agree with you here. You're going an awfully long distance out of your way to justify hating Batman. Of course he's going to be flat and one-dimensional if you ignore the nuance of his universe.

Look at Superman, he has no dimensionality to him at all. There's never really any question about him saving the day, and I've always had the sense that he isn't really ever making hard decisions. Batman at least, occasionally messes up.

Hm. Not sure where you're getting the idea that I hate Batman. I don't feel strongly one way or another towards him.

Your points as I understood them

1) They're both 'Everyman Superheros'.

I'm also not sure where you got this from. It's pretty clear that neither Batman nor Iron Man are typical people, and I'm not sure how it's a rebuttal to my argument that Batman lets his trauma dominate his life.

2) Villains should be just as important as the heroes.

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I couldn't care less about most villains. I don't sympathize with their goals or methods and don't care about their stories. So often 'interesting' villains just seems like the writers are relying on shock value to create a character people will talk about, instead of actually coming up with strong characters and telling a good story.

3) Batman's life is 3-D too.

Well, maybe. I personally haven't encountered any Batman stuff that wasn't 90% angst, and after the 5th brooding-in-high-places moment I just got bored. I know there's some 90% camp movies, but I've never heard they were good.

And yeah, Superman is the most 1-D of them all. I basically don't pay attention to Superman.

Spiderman's redeeming quality is that there's usually a lot of humor. Batman/Superman universes seem to take everything seriously, or go to complete camp. Both of those ruin my suspension of disbelief, because life isn't just one thing or the other, there's highs and lows.

I think DC/Warner Bros are finally going to get serious, using the Batman/Superman film to pave the way for the Justice League. Hopefully...

Actually hoping The Flash movie will get some proper treatment and not end up like the Green Lantern film.

Would anyone ever go see an Aquaman movie?

I guess that's why they never made one.

Never cared for Marvel, too childish and bland for my taste.

As for the Superman/Batman movie, I think it's too soon. As much as I loved Man of Steel (and the DC universe), I think Superman needs another standalone movie to be fleshed out a bit more before teaming up with another superhero. If people didn't have any misplaced preconceptions about him, yes.

hehehe,

Actually after watching "Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox" and seeing WB move towards teaming up Superman and Batman along with the world MOS has set up I think there's definite room to go all out on a Wonder Woman/Aquaman team-up movie. They could show both civilizations revealing themselves to mankind after seeing how they deal with an alien in their midst.

They had a Wonder Woman series all set to air over here and at the last minute, I MEAN THE VERY LAST MINUTE, they yanked it. There are stills all over the web if you look for them. Adrianne Palicki who had the part and is beyond gorgeous did look pretty stupid in the outfit.

I think DC is blowing it. They should take some more time to establish characterswith their own movies and THEN make the Supe/Bats movie and lead that into a Justice League film. It's like they get that Marvel made a shit-ton of money with Avengers, but they can't even be arsed to copy what they did to earn themselves that same shitton of money!

It'll be a double blow up if they make it too much of a Supe vs. Bats instead of a team-up.

If that's the one with the "pants to be darkened" pilot they had VERY good reason to pass on it. They turned Wonder Woman into a crime fighting Lex Luthor on the rag. She was more a villain than a hero.