4. Live Action Doesnt Equal Film
One of the biggest disappointments in comic book adaptations has actually been in the form of animation. If Marvel says that special effects and cost impairs their ability to be faithful to the source material I can totally buy that, but animation mitigates all of those issues so whats the excuse then? DC has taken advantage of the animation market with more consistency than their cross town rivals, but have played fast and loose with their interpretation of the source material. Ive heard many arguments as to why its necessary to almost arbitrarily change stories that are obviously being marketed to the readers, but none of them have been satisfactory. Ask any comic book fan and they would go on and on about how cool it would be to actually see The Death of Superman in animated form, but what did they get? Some crap. Why? If they could make that hour and a half of complete horses#!t then DC could have just told the damn story. They own all their IPs, so they could have included every character and major event from that story. How compelling was the argument that they could do a better job than Dan Jurgens, and how come whoever made that argument wasnt immediately shown the door or at least executed by Jurgens himself? Jay Baruchel blogged about the cancelled JLA project that was going to be filmed in motion capture CGI style like Beowulf. I immediately felt cheated, how could such a dream project that could have faithfully captured the essence of the super hero genre come that close to completion just to be dumped so I could sit through six plus hours of Pack-a-Day Batman (You have no idea how hard it is to type with your fists balled up)? I always felt like I could look past really dumb comic book movies if the companies nailed it in animation, because those are worthy film mediums in their own right, but no. Marvel isnt the House of Ideas, its the house where dreams go to die.