Even worse was the shameful treatment of "The Green Hornet." That could have been done very, very well and instead it was a joke. Literally.
I'm not a comic book person. I don't collect them, read them or anything but when I was a child I was exposed to some and I remember Green Lantern as being pretty good. So, yeah, I expected better.
While we are on the topic of comic book movie treatments...another franchise that I think was wasted would be Fantastic Four. Again, I remember from my childhood it being a lot better than the movie(s) turned out to be.
I think, though, that the reason the current Batman iteration is so well received is because the whole concept (which, like most comic books is kinda ridiculous) is taken very seriously. That is, Batman really, really, really hates criminals (except Catwoman, apparently) and dispatches them (although almost always short of death) with extreme violence. This taps into an emotion that is deeply a part of the human condition, that the bad guys in society get away with a lot and they should have true judgement meted out to them. Batman (taken to this level) satisfies that fantasy desire.
The whole post modernism concept of bad guys as anti-heroes has, I think, become more than a bit worn out. The movie-going public is tired of seeing sympathetic criminals (think, for example, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") and charming rogues being given the protagonist role in films. September 11, 2001 is probably more than a little responsible for this attitudinal change in modern society and Hollywood ran into an absolute stone wall when they churned out movies for the last decade that made the actual heroes (US military) the villains and tried to paint islamofascists in a sympathetic light.
I watched "True Lies" last night for the umpteenth time and remembered a time when Hollywood wasn't afraid to apply stereotypes (muslim terrorists) where they are appropriate. I rarely get tired of seeing that film if for no other reason than the chance to see a muslim bad guy strapped to a rocket and shot at a helicopter full of other muslim bad buys. I love that scene. I can't remember the last time that Hollywood willingly used muslims as bad guys unless they were forced to by historical accuracy constraints. They need to. These are the enemies of western civilization and civilized society in general.
So that's why, in my opinion, Batman (in its current incarnation) works so well. It has clearly defined bad guys who are really, really bad and a hero who will stop at nothing (short of outright killing them, which is too bad but that's the way the character was conceived so I just have to live with that) to stop them. He beats the crap out of the bad guys and the audience appreciates that. The lack of a villain backstory (which is used to create sympathy more often than not) allows this concept to work that much better.
And that's why, I think, a lot of these other comic book movie franchises miss the mark. They confuse the issue. Sure, having things in stark black and white contrast is kind of simplistic and two dimensional...tough. I don't care. Bad guys are bad and good guys (who do have flaws) are good. I want to see evil defeated. It makes me feel good. If evil wins a battle I can live with it knowing that the forces of good will win the war. If that concept is too basic for movie writers and directors then they can have the hero suffer tragedy like his wife/child/girlfriend/family/dog getting killed in order for good to triumph. I would much rather see heroic tragedy than have to suffer through a big long steaming pile of expositional crap about how the bad guy is misunderstood or how it's society's fault that he is the way he is or that he was bullied as a kid or blah, blah, blah. Who cares? He's evil now. Allow the hero to kill him and his friends. Violently.
They are doing a reboot of Judge Dredd. Hope they can get that right.
"The Lone Ranger" was filmed near where I live this summer. They cast Johnny Depp as Tonto. I expect it will be horrid and hope to be proven wrong.
