Hey guys, I'm a new user here, although I've been visiting the site regularly since (about)the filming of The Dark Knight Rises, so I finally signed up. I always enjoyed reading the comments, and thought it might be fun to get into the action.
The first Superhero movie I saw was Batman Returns(I was born in 1988 and must have been maybe 5), and I loved it. It and Terminator 2 were my go to movies when I was a kid. I'm sure I've seen each over 50 times. I actually built a room sized Gotham City for my action figures. I enjoyed the first Batman too, and would watch it from time to time, but it was Danny DeVito's Penguin that drew me in, I think. The discarded outcast who wants to fit it and be accepted aspect of him appealed to me, and I was always (maybe even more than) a little sad at the end when he dies and the penguins drag his body down into the water.
So time goes by, and I get older, but I catch every "superhero" movie I can: Darkman, Blank Man, Mystery Men, Blade, and of course Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but the point is I watched everything I could including the various DC/Marvel animated series of the 90’s. But around 2000 I guess I started to lose interest. Maybe I thought I was getting "too old" for these make believe characters anymore, but it was probably just being a teen and gaining an interest in new things. I would still catch the new superhero related movies that came out like X-Men, and Spider-Man (I was shocked it had the big opening weekend it did: 114 million!)on dvd. To make a somewhat long story shorter, things went on like this (me liking superheroes and all, but not really caring enough to see the films in theaters, with a few exceptions) to about 2008, when of course The Dark Knight came out, and like most people thought it was brilliant. This is probably around the same time I started going back and watching Smallville. I know the show is sort of ridiculed around here because of the CW’s typical teen drama format it followed, but I just found it to be exactly what I was looking for. Because of that show, Superman became MY hero. It’s still in my top five of favorite television shows, although I watch some of it now and just wish Clark would stop mobbing so much.
Since I’ve talked about DC so much, maybe now is the time to point out that I’ve always been a big Marvel fan too, it’s just… they didn’t have Batman. So I was always more of a DC guy to be honest, although I’ve seen every MCU film in theaters with the exception of “The Incredible Hulk”, but as I started reading more comics the last few years, it was Marvel that I really seemed to gravitate towards. When I came on this site, I was quite surprised to find that this “DC vs. Marvel” fan debate had grown out of the friendly rivalry stage and had become a situation where people were literally wishing/hoping that either DC/Marvel would fail. Of course I’m not talking about every user here, but there were quite a few who seemed to be of this opinion. This type of thing is just Ridiculous to me, and as a fan of wrestling in the 90’s I know that competition is only a good thing. So I sit here thinking to back when I was a kid, and would get maybe 3 superheroes movies a year, and now I get to enjoy around ten a year. Yea things have gotten better, not to mention that most of the films we get now are actually based on Comic Books, not just a superhero-like character that some screenwriter made up(not that those are always bad). Then you have to realize the change of culture that these movies have brought with them. Back when I was a kid, superhero merchandise was somewhat easy to find, at least regarding kid size clothes and the action figures, but you certainly didn’t see adults walking around in Superman shirts or anything like that. Even when I got really into Superman a few years back, stuff wasn’t really easy to find. Sure you could find an S shield shirt pretty easy, and your basic things like that, but as the Marvel movies came out over the past few years, the stuff is everywhere it seems. As big and great as The Dark Knight was, I believe it’s the MCU that’s really changed things. We the nerd/geek are still the minority, but nowadays if you’re out and about with a Superman shirt on you’re a lot more likely to get a “Hey Man of Steel! Right on!” than a “So you think you’re Superman huh?/while giggling”. Us and our crazy “cartoon characters” are finally being accepted guys. So instead of us arguing over which is better, maybe we should just shut up, watch the screen and Marvel that the World’s Finest characters are being brought to us like they never have before, and that the world is watching them with us.