Note: I am a Marvel guy collectively. But a bigger Batman fan individually.
Now that we know a great comic book mashup such as The Avengers can be made and with Christopher Nolan saying goodbye to the Batman, comicbook movies will be taking a brand new route and will be exploring exciting new grounds, some of which many will like, but if not taken care of properly, will truly dispel anger among readers of these characters.
Our next comicbook movie will be Man of Steel, Superman's rebirth in the post Raimi/Nolan/Avengers era. The character, as we can see from trailers and film maker's descriptions, will be darker, more emotional, "gritty" and majestic. The character will have the "Nolan Seal of Approval" so it has the "Dark Knight touch". But the decision to go forth with this interpretation was made before The Avenger's impact. Before we, as an audience, knew of the "fun comic book factor" that was sacrificed so that comic book movies could be taken seriously (see Hulk (failure), Batman Begins (success) ). So, now we have a Superman movie that is darker, in an age of lighter, more aggressive and true-to-source interpretations. Is that what we as an audience want? We were satisfied with this method in The Dark Knight Trilogy, but does each comic book character NEED to do this? See The Amazing Spiderman, met with mixed results, no questions about that.
The problem with this new adaptation, is that DC Comics, now has pressured themselves into giving us a Justice League movie, something that was pondered for years, but do to Marvel's extreme success, is now trying to rush. Yes RUSH. We all now what that means. RUSH FROM EXECUTIVES. BAD. Yet Man of Steel, the apparent kickoff to this franchise, was conceived before this decision. How will a JL movie play out? As a serious interpretation? I consider the DC characters much less realistic and sillier than the Marvel characters seen in The Avengers. Even though Batman and Superman are above all of the assembled characters, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Flash, truly seem a lot sillier and less adaptable than all others. And even if they manage to bring them to life well enough, they will still seem to silly for a true "dark adaptation", so DC might want to consider the "fun, action packed" method of the Avengers, something that would seem as a tone change to the Man of Steel.
Now the true elephant in the room is, what are they going to do with Batman? Is Blake the true next Batman? Or was just that a device used for CN to truly cement his "undying legend" theme from BB? I am all for JGL playing Batman, even though he is a bit short and skinny. But the reason I do not want him to play Batman, is to maintain CN's trilogy intact, without compromising it's own legacy. So who else would replace Batman? Question, questions and questions: LET THE GAMES BEGIN.
So after this, we also want need to analyze the fact that Avengers 2 is going to be huge. Not only do we have the current characters, but we have Ant-Man, Guardians and the new characters from IM3, CA2 and Thor2. That movie is going to have a really huge suspension of disbelief. The same thing that to me, made the ending of the Avengers a bit hard to swallow. Marvel did a great job at grounding it's Phase 1 movies, to really send them sky high in the climax of the Avengers. I know this is what happens in the CBs its just a strong change that at least I can observe. And now with Guardians and Ant-Man, they are really going to blow the lid off of the fantasy bottle. And I really do think the movie is going to be packed, great, but packed. Yet, the Avengers 2 NEEDS to have a better plot. Ok, we gave it to them on the first one, but if they stick to the same dumb plot lines, they are not going to have the same success. We all know that.
So now that each company is moving forward with their own plans, each one faces the challenges to bring their characters into cohesion, present us with a great package, do justice to them and respect us, the audience and the comic book readers. DC's main challenge is going to be pacing. Making the movies skillfully and not rush them, such as Marvel did. They said the JL movie would come out in about 3 to 4 years and we don't even have one movie from their "phase 1" until a year from now. And the best Batman ever has just ended. People are not going to go down lightly. They stayed true to Spiderman and that was after 5 years and a really bad last movie.
IF they are only going to give us ONE movie before the JL, I suggest they should do something in the vein of Watchmen: Present the group as a whole organism and then individually explore them. Thoughtfully and carefully.
Now Marvel truly has freedom, but they need to manage that freedom correctly and not let them abuse the power. The guardians are a tough group, very fantastical, we are going to have aliens and anthropomorphic characters fighting side by side with Iron Man. Would we have imagined that in the first Iron Man? They need to make the transition easy and correctly. If not, they are going to blow this thing out of the water and loose their "wide-audience". And they are not going to give as a really direct interpretation from the comics, because that would just alienate the whole population. The resulting question is, where is Spiderman going to fit in? Phase 3?