(Please note this is a first time article, I'm hoping the editors can make a reasonable article out of the incomprehensible mess that follows! Give me some pointers, please, any constructive criticism is required for better articles in future!)
The year: 2000. The film: X-men. Arguably, the first film since Batman Returns that really mined source material for any sort of resemblance to it's namesake.
What follows was what I like to refer to as the first Renaissance of comic-film.
Why? Let me explain, for Odin's sake!
By the late 90's, genre films (and by extension, the burgeoning comic-film genre that books booms today) was struggling. Batman and Robin tanked, as well as the first attempt at an American Godzilla, which was so terrible it managed to destroy Trendmasters (the American toy company that held merchandising rights for Godzilla at the time), and things were looking grim. A matter of years earlier, Burton's Batman films and movies like Independence Day raked in the cash. But meddling executives and directors who had little respect for the properties they were handling and the fans that came with them managed to (apparently) burst the bubble that had been tenuously erected by previous films.
Enter Singer's X-men. Love it or hate it, X-Men entered the scene as an entertaining, thoughtful film that was rooted in the souce material ( for the time, anyways...) and managed to make a hefty chunk of change in the process.
Fox-Men, whether you like it or not, spurred a flurry of new comic films, for instance, Sam Raimi's Spider-man and it's sequels, Ang Lee's HULK, and more, leading up to Chris Nolan's Batman Begins, which helped further strengthen the genre of comic-films, while also displaying the monetary potential of the "reboot." Meanwhile, films like 2009's Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, and even more recent reboots of popular franchises such as Robocop (2014... as if we'd already forgotten!) Ninja Turtles (also this year, though forthcoming) and Dredd (2012) proved profitable enough, in one way or the other.
Flash-forward to 2014. On the horizen is Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: the Winter Soldier, a second American Godzilla, the aforementioned Ninja Turtles reboot, and more! The time we live in is rife with comic and genre films up the proverbial wazoo.
And yet, here we are, warring over Marvel and DC. Going from X-men to the Dark Knight to the Avengers, and still trying to knock people for their own personal tastes. Perhaps only because one person likes one over the other, and they feel the need to attack one because they don't belong to their camp.
I've got news for you, my friends, nothing good lasts forever. The comic/genre film bubble will burst, and one day our comic films won't be so plentiful. We'll look back with fondness on the days of BatFleck and the Billy Idol Goblin, I guarantee it. So love your brother from a competitor, just because heprefers DC to Marvel or vice versa, doesn't mean he/she isn't a comic fan too. Both sides have done their characters justice, why battle? We should all shed a tear when Batman is miscast, or the new Fox-Men sucks, as we're all comic fans, and we all want to see our beloved characters brought to life properly.
Preaching accomplished! What did you think? Please help my next article to be better, and until next time, be excellent to each other!