They also needed to not mash people that should have been three completely separate characters into Diamondback so that he made no sense at all and would have seemed like a hack's contrivance in even a superb actor's hands. I don't know if Erik LaRay Harvey is great in other things, but neither he nor the writers…

I really, really hope they don't make him likable. Or admirable. He's a serial killer. His job in a heroic milieu is to be the bad example.

I feel the same way about the first half of Luke Cage S1 and the first half of Daredevil S2. Cage moreso, though — the contrast is far greater between the front and back halves.

He's really just such a good role model, with the killings to satisfy his psychological needs, the stealing, the torture…so glad he gets to be the hero of a series.

Spider-Man hasn't always been consistent, but he's hovered between real poverty and middle-class-but-not-truly-secure most of his life. He's been a tech entrepreneur and industrialist in very recent years, but that phase is going to draw to a close in time, and quite possibly soon. There have even been points where…

X-Men are an interesting case. I almost mentioned some of their poor backgrounds, and those of some New Mutants as well, but then the classic setup has them being lifted out of those backgrounds and deposited in a very upper class and privileged environment at the Xavier/Grey/whoever-died-now School for Mutants. It…

He actually came from an upper class family in the 1800s or something now? And by "now" I mean they wrote that origin like 20 years ago. The "raised by wolverines" thing was just him trying to explain away some sexual kinks.

I think to really break this mold, Marvel needs to do a villain-centered movie. Make it his story, and the heroes are his obstacles.

There's 37 different vowel inflections that are used to connote what animal you've most recently been savaged by. In this case, it was a drop bear.

Great, now I have a new fetish.

I'm… I'm not alone!

That ending action/chase sequence does a lot to redeem the movie.

A lot of those villains also took literal decades before they were given motivations more complex than "Richards made me look bad in college", "I'd like to have a bunch of money", or "HOORAY NAZIS VOTE TRUMP REDSKULL OUT, BITCHES!"

There's a significant satirical aspect as well, you're right.

I totally agree with basically all of this. The Dark Knight has serious problems that I think a lot of people gloss over in the rush to praise its strengths (most of them inherited from Batman Begins), one of which is that Heath Ledger died soon after giving a rather good performance in a very oddly written role.

We also still talk about Avatar, a movie that no human being on the planet has deliberately watched twice.

Guys, I found the new Manimal!

The other primary flaw of the DCEU is that they've taken a hack director who is overly fond of two incredibly specific visual tricks and the misanthropic conservative stylings of Ayn Rand and Frank Miller and made him the primary architect of the tone and story direction of their film franchise.

Also wasted: the character of Malekith and basically the entire concept of the dark elves.

They'd have so many avocados, though.