Sorry, held that post back a minute!
No one will ever top Batman becoming Batman and then spending two movies trying not to be Batman. Deepz.
I know there's a big backlash against the onslaught of the Nolanites from years back. Rightly so. Seems like many of those guys wanted to erect a Church of Ledger Joker in honor of those films, and read way more deeply into them than they probably should have. But in my opinion--and I'm a guy who really enjoyed those films, but didn't watch them 50,000 times, write my dissertation about them, dream about Nolan Ledger coming to me at night, etc.--the first two Nolan films are still the "deepest," and most artistically successful "traditional" comic book movies yet (traditional because no one can match A History of Violence, and no one ever will!).
They were thoughtful and relatively sophisticated, they did develop and address complex situations and characters, and I think there is a greater meaning below the surface in the way that there is a greater meaning below the surface in all well made art. In that sense, I think they distinguish themselves from the other stuff we've seen. Not to bash any of it for that, it's just that they differ in that respect, and in my opinion should be judged based on what they are attempting to do, not on what they can't hope to achieve since these achievements aren't goals of the filmmakers (case in point--fleshing out a truly multi-dimensional Black Widow). My favorite comic movie isn't one of the Nolan films, but X2. But I think I'm calling a spade a spade here.
There's a continuum of artistic/dramatic success in comic book movies. On one side, you have movies like Catwoman, with no artistic value and no real entertainment value, either. Toward the middle, you have movies that are good and well made, but don't have much artistic merit, and aren't really trying to delve into questions of who we are and why we do what we do, aren't spending a lot of serious time or thought into the symbolic meaning of behaviors and accomplishments in the film, etc. And there I would place much of the Marvel Studios stuff. Or, you have movies that attempt to do more, but miss the mark in the eyes of a majority of critics and onlookers, and I would put Sucker Punch in that category. A little further down I would place the Singer/Vaughn X-Men, who are still trying to entertain audiences with action and comic booky wackiness, but mix that with a little more dramatic depth. And on the far, opposite side of the spectrum I would put the first couple of Nolan films. Maybe they are a bit pretentious, and maybe they aren't all that Nolan or his acolytes pretend that they are. But they're still "more" than anything else we've seen, yet.
