Well I did say childish, not mindless. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I was more following up Ben and wasn't meant as a direct criticism. Though I will admit plenty of it is my own built in knee jerk reaction from having to defend my reading comics for over 20 years. Old habits die hard so don't take it too personally, it wasn't meant to be. But I think you might be missing that both of those quotes imply that a comic book film or a super hero film simply can't be a serious crime drama, though that might not have been your intention in the statement. they took a super hero, a comic book, and turned it into a gritty, powerful, and completely engrossing crime thriller. This statement just makes me scratch my head. Batman is a detective comic, has been since it was created. And it has been a consistently gritty comic for over twenty years now. Did the Schumacher films and the TV show really convince people Batman was only a campy joke? Reading some of this thread, I feel like I'm being told I can't appreciate comic movies the way readers of the graphic novels and comics (of which I read plenty) do. I certainly don't think that. But I do think it sounds like people are justifying their liking a "comic book movie" by claiming it doesn't feel like a "comic book movie". The phrase "comic book movie" just seems to imply a vague, and possibly negative, connotation. American Splendor is a pretty accurate adaptation of the comic, does that feel like a comic book movie to people? Does Ghost World? Or if I put it this way, if I heard someone say, "I can't believe they turned a Jane Austen novel into a gritty, powerful, and completely engrossing crime thriller?!" I would understand that, as Jane Austen novels are simply none of those things. So when I hear someone say the same about a comic book movie, immediately I think "Do people really think that comic books can't be gritty, powerful, and completely engrossing crime thrillers?" It would be a shame if people did. So I guess my question is, what exactly makes a comic book movie feel like a comic book movie?