1. Embrace The Superhero Aspect
This one is especially important, because Warner Brothers seems to be ashamed that theyre making superhero movies and TV shows. Now this isnt entirely their faultX-Men and Spider-Man started the modern superhero boom, and theyre movies about people who sometimes wish they could be normal. And its an approach Warner Brothers has adopted, almost to an extreme. Smallville was the first example, and for the first few years, it worked well. But after a while, the whole no flights, no tights rule became ridiculous given all the superheroes that traipsed in and out of the show before Clark became Superman. And Clarks desire to be a normal guy quickly went from a simple hopeless wish into a really irritating annoyance. I will also direct some criticism at Warner Brothers other two popular ventures as of latethe Dark Knight trilogy and Arrow. As much as I love them both, theyre obsessed with the idea that these characters arent superheroes. Arrow especially falls prey to this: when Oliver is in costume, he uses face paint instead of a mask and he's called the "Hooded Vigilante" or the "Hood" instead of Green Arrow. They even dropped the "Green" from the show's title. And there seems to be this unwritten rule with Warner Brothers that superheroes most be mopey. Again, I can direct some of the blame for this at the success of X-Men and Spider-Man, especially Spider-Man because holy crap was there a lot of "woe is me, why am I a superhero" in that trilogy. When you look at the Avengers, how often do you see Tony Stark moping about the fact that he has a sophisticated suit of armor? What about Steve Rogers complaining about how hes no longer a frail guy? Does Thor complain about having this hammer that gives him control over the elements? The closest we really come to that sort of dynamic is Bruce Banner, and in that case its more about the loss of control than anything else. Other than that, we get the sense that he kind of likes being able to cut loose. They also aren't afraid to be seen in costume or to embrace their superhero names. The point here is that Marvels movies have embraced the superhero aspect. A superhero complaining about having amazing abilities is like a rich guy complaining about having a lot of moneyit gets very old, very fast. Yes, there's always been a bit of the absurd in superheroes, but The Avengers have shown that not only is the general moviegoing audience okay with that, they really like it. So get rid of your hang-ups and let your superheroes
be superheroes!