4. Some Movies Are Praised & Others Reviled
Another thing the two franchises share is that some of their movies are highly praised and critically acclaimed, while others are reviled and highly criticised. For the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins was praised enormously. It was seen as the dawn of a new era of superhero movies and took Batman down a darker path than most other superhero movies had been down before. The Dark Knight was praised even more so - thanks largely to the performance of Heath Ledger as the villainous Joker - and was nominated for an absolutely insane amount of major awards, several of which it won. However, The Dark Knight Rises, whilst a massive box office success, was very widely criticised - not least here at WhatCulture! - for a variety of reasons, many of which were concerned with supposed plot-holes, supposedly out-of-character Bat-behaviour and supposed continuity issues. Regarding the MCU, the Iron Man trilogy has been a phenomenal success, with the first one often being given the title of best superhero movie of all time, while the second and third - albeit still successful at the box office - have been the source of various criticisms. Mickey Rourke's Whiplash character was said to be underdeveloped while the Mandarin plot-twist has garnered more controversy than you could possibly shake a stick at. The Incredible Hulk wasn't a bad movie, but it suffered the fate of being released too close to the first Iron Man movie and didn't get the recognition it deserved as a result. It received slightly above average reviews and was certainly seen as better than Ang Lee's earlier effort, however. Captain America was received positively as a good old-fashioned action movie with some good performances. Thor was generally applauded for its action, direction and visuals and was successful to enough to spawn a sequel. The culmination of the origin movies was The Avengers movie, though. It was a resounding success at the box office and was generally reviewed positively thanks to its excellent action, superb visual effects and its ability to share the screen equally amongst its many stars - though many people saw it as a mindless popcorn flick for kids. Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, is already being written off as a joke by some people who just don't see a movie with a talking raccoon as being able to fit in to the MCU - we'll have to wait and see if that does indeed turn out to be the case.