Speaking of Cowboys and Aliens, I found this highly amusing but not safe for work (unless your job is awesome).

Superhero Films Since 2000

Superhero Hero Films from 1990-1999

Superhero Films Before 1990

• The writing was consistently clever and entertaining.  I’m not sure how much of it I will remember a few weeks from now–most of it wasn’t brilliant–but it was a very fun time.
• The movie played with a few superhero tropes.  For example, there’s the obligatory chase scene where a villain tries to escape by throwing a civilian into danger.  A villain throws a boy into a river and runs off.  The Captain glances at the boy, who says something like, “I can swim.  Go get him!”  However, I think they could have more smoothly handled the trope that the super-serum could not be replicated.  Spoiler: The project falls apart because one scientist gets killed and he didn’t have any notes or additional doses of the serum anywhere?  Didn’t he have any lab assistants?  (I don’t think it would’ve been hard to plug this hole.  Maybe he was worried that the Nazis would steal his notes, so he did as much from memory as possible and/or he used a code that only he could understand).
• I liked that Steve Rogers proved himself, whereas many other superheroes are just passively chosen for greatness (e.g. they’re born with superpowers or happen to be in the right place at the right time for a genetically-modified spider bite).   Rogers is selected as the test subject for the serum because he shows uncommon character, cunning and bravery.  The bravery struck me as a bit banal (he leaps on a hand-grenade without knowing it was a dummy).  The cunning was much more memorable. That flagpole scene was pretty kickass.

• If you think too hard about the plot, it probably makes less sense than most other good superhero movies.  For example, Captain America uses a car-door and a Hollywood prop shield to stop bullets and he’s instantly brilliant with his superpowered shield even though he’s never shown practicing with it.
• It was a bit refreshing to have a superhero story without a secret identity.  Among the superhero movies with secret identities, I feel the only two that have used them notably well have been Kick-Ass and The Incredibles.  For example, after Kick-Ass gets mauled by a criminal, he begs a paramedic to get rid of his costume so his father doesn’t find out his secret identity.  This leads to a touching and grimly hilarious scene where the father misconstrues just what the crime was.
• As in First Class, there was some minor historical whitewashing.  Rogers’ unit is racially-mixed, which would have been uncommon in World War II.  (Most Army units were segregated until the Korean War).
• As with most superhero universes, pretty much everything is hereditary.  (I didn’t see any notable traits distinguishing Shannon Carter from her grandmother or Tony Stark from his father).
• I found the Stan Lee cameo highly amusing.  ”I thought he was going to be taller?”

One of the commenters responds:

While critics in general are happy to give approval to comic book films (and, I think, many critics do treat them fairly), I think there’s no question that there are elements of bias in many critics’ reviews.

First, look at the language many critics use. When giving a positive review, many will say things like “despite its comic book origins,” or “leaping beyond comic books,” as if being based on a comic book is in some way a handicap.

Actually, I think being based on a comic book (or a novel or TV show or anything else) is a handicap for a movie.

1. It’s harder to surprise viewers with an adaptation.  Whether you’re adapting Spiderman or the Bible, 90% of the audience knows 90% of what is going to happen.  In particular, readers will know about any substantial failures/setbacks in advance, such as the death in Kick-Ass. In contrast, it’s much harder for somebody watching The Incredibles to guess whether it will end with a stereotypically happy conclusion or something more bittersweet.  (For example, the health inspectors close the rat-staffed restaurant in Ratatouille and the boy’s family is just as screwed up at the end of Up as it was at the beginning).

2. The studios usually want sequels, which badly limits the screenwriters’ options. This just in: Batman will survive every Batman movie, the villain will lose, and the villain (probably) won’t even accomplish anything important enough to get mentioned in any of the subsequent movies. When a villain DOES accomplish something meaningful in an adapted movie (such as Ozymandias vs. New York), it’s almost always known to viewers beforehand.  Most cinematic adaptations can only surprise us with execution and concepts that don’t have much bearing on the arc of the plot.  Is Spiderman going to marry Mary Jane in this movie or the next?  Which national landmark will Magneto attack this time?

3.  The original material may not be well-suited for cinematic adaptation. For example, you might have to gut the story to get the movie short enough.  Avatar’s first season has 21 episodes totaling  ~7 hours of running time but the movie was 94 minutes long.  The first six Harry Potter movies had ~2.5 hours each to cover an average of 150,000 words of source material.  In such cases, I think the best-case scenario is to make serious cuts to make a coherent, well-developed movie rather than try to gloss over everything that happened in the original.  Subplots and perhaps even some characters may need to go.  Some people will still be unhappy because they’re attached to what got cut.  Although a movie might somehow come up with a coherent, unbloated plot without shortchanging fans that want a straight retelling of the story, I think it’s clearly harder than just creating your plot from scratch for the movie.

Movies since the early 2000s have generally performed quite well in Rotten Tomato ratings, as Jim Emerson noted.  If superhero movies did that well despite the adaptation-related handicaps above and the critics generally being prejudiced against the concept, that would be quite remarkable.  I think the most plausible explanation is that critics are receptive to good movies whether the hero wears bright tights or not.

I recommend that you read all of it, but this is my favorite part.

BRUCE WAYNE is standing in front of a mirror, flexing his sculpted, shirtless torso.

BRUCE: Let’s do this.

Cue AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”  A series of quick shots show BRUCE gearing up: putting on the boots, slapping on the gloves, a brief glance across those beautiful pecs.  Finally, there is no longer BRUCE WAYNE, but BATMAN standing before us.

BATMAN: Back in black.

Pyrotechnics erupt in the distance.  Wailing guitar solo.

Virtually nothing in Superman Returns worked.  At the very least, the next Superman movie needs a new cast, new writers and a new villain.  A different mood might help too.  I don’t think that a “darker” Superman will be much better, but it’s hard to imagine that it could get any worse.

*In the cartoons and the comics, Lex Luthor actually gets superpowers, so his fight scenes are interesting, but that’s probably too campy for a movie.

B. MAC ADDS: I walked out after around an hour of Superman Returns.  I can’t remember the last time I walked out on a movie.  Hell, I made it through Superhero Movie.

JACOB:

I agree.  For example, Han Solo shoots Greedo (first), flips a coin to the bartender and says “sorry about the mess.”  That sequence shows something about his personality and it’s also funny.  In contrast, every LOTR protagonist slaughtered tens of orcs.  Who cares?  What’s that meant to say about them?  It establishes a capability to prevail (the ability to kill many orcs), but without any reason we should care about whether they do.

CADET DAVIS:

I found LOTR more coherent.  The first Star Wars movie was marketed as a romance between Leia and Luke.

Also, Lucas’ dialogue is criminal bordering on felonious.  Han Solo got a few decent lines in (“we’re fine here, thanks” was improvized by Ford) but they were fleeting.

B. MAC:

Star Wars’ characters were archetypical but at least they grew.  Luke became responsible, Han became unselfish, etc.  LOTR felt more like a trek from points A to B to C.  It spent so much time describing each goalpost of the journey that the characters never really emerged.

PAINGOD:

Both movies suffered from notably incompetent bad guys.  At Paingod’s Academy for Supervillainous Excellence, we stress that villains must exterminate any muppet-like creatures upon first contact.  LOTR would have been dramatically improved if Gandalf had decapitated Frodo with a firework.

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:

Exhibit E:

The bad news is that Hayden Christensen, the same “actor” that ruined Star Wars and Jumper, is starring as Case. Dare I say that John Travolta could do this better? Egads. How could we have come to the point where John Travolta is the lesser of two acting evils? Hayden [censored]ing Christensen.

What truly blew me away was that the highlight of this movie was… Harvey “Two-Face” Dent. Go figure. Anyone who watches it will find that they believe in Harvey Dent. I do!

Tangent time! I’d like to offer kudos to the writers for having more interesting police characters than the mutant-hating monsters in the X-Men movies. Also, I was pleased that Batman didn’t kill any cops in cold-blood, unlike Wolverine. (Batman had to disable cops in one scene, but even then the cops were well-intentioned). Batman also includes a scene in which a nameless National Guardsman is the voice of reason against a violent mob, which subverts the cliche that the faceless military guy will always be the most bloodthirsty.

CADET DAVIS adds: It also earned left-of-center brownie points with a very gentle dig at the restriction of privacy rights. It’s a good thing every thug and SWAT officer in Gotham has a cell-phone…