2. Not Setting The Ground Rules Properly
This is a "common mistake" that is way more applicable to the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but other comic book movies aren't entirely innocent. That's to say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, vast and impressive at it undoubtably is, doesn't really play fair with its audience: it changes the rules all the time whenever it suits the story, granting its characters with new powers and abilities from one movie to the next. And although we kind of allow the filmmakers a certain amount of poetic license to do such a thing, it can occasionally get really, really frustrating. Loki's abilities, for example, are different every time we see him - he's either more powerful, or less powerful, or he can control people entirely, then he can't, and now he has the ability to take on anybody's identity... it's all a little too casual and vague, as if the producers aren't too bothered about keeping a constant. Another example concerns Loki's brother, Thor: how powerful is Thor? How do we know what's hurting him and what's not? It's never established. And though it might seem petty to complain about that specifically, it's hard to get invested in a character if we don't know how to weigh his injuries. I literally have no idea how much damage Thor can take. Can he even get hurt? The biggest and most frustrating moment in this regard - for most of us, anyway - came in The Avengers, where Bruce Banner suddenly revealed that he was "always angry" during the climatic final battle, which was basically writer/director Joss Whedon's way of having the Hulk team-up with the rest of the gang for a while without trying to murder them all. Fine. But the simple fact remains: this wasn't really explained in enough detail, and whether or not audiences missed the point or not regarding the ins-and-outs of the Hulk's transformations, it wasn't properly explained. "If he's made angry, he'll transform by accident, but he can also become the Hulk whenever he wants, too!" was the most common explanation for all this from Marvel fans, and though that makes sense if you think about long and hard enough, you can understand how audiences might have deemed that as something of a cop-out. What I'm asking, then? That Marvel make it a little clearer, inside of being purposely vague as a way of trying to please everyone. Because that's what it ultimately comes down to: don't rock the boat too hard, and let's watch this movie make a billion dollars.