Batman V Superman: Comic Book Hipsters

This has nothing to do with Japan by the way...

*Spoilers ahead*

I'm gonna just get it out from the get go: Is anyone else sick and tired of the completely ridiculous reviews of hero movies by folks who read comics religiously? They remind me of the hipster culture who thinks they can crash anyone's party just because they know better. Or more pointedly, they remind me of the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

Daredevil is a great example of a failed production. It was fairly criticized by both the comic book reading population and movie critics for it's lack of character development and terrible acting (Ben Affleck at his worst). That said, I watch Batman V. Superman and I really liked it. Okay, I understand there are quite a few storylines that go astray from the comics, but this is to be completely expected, which is why I can't understand why all these comic fans have their feathers in bunch about it. As a movie, it wasn't that bad (rotten tomatoes 29% and falling), and unlike Daredevil, I believe it is being unfairly criticized.

Movies are a completely different art form from comic books. Using comic books as the sole guide for critiquing a movie is about as fair as judging the quality of a hand-painted picture of nature based solely on it's realism. A hand-painted picture will never be the same as the real thing. We judge paintings based on their artistic qualities, not how close they can actually get to the real thing. Movies will never be the exact same as the material they are based on, they simply cannot be so, and expecting anything otherwise is foolish.

Secondly, the comic book market absolutely pales in comparison to the movie-going market. That known fact alone has a huge impact on how these films are written and produced. A lot of the storylines found in the comics simply wouldn't make sense to the general population of people who don't read comics regularly. Comic book hero/villain rivalry and/or longstanding storylines stretch over volumes, and in some cases different worlds, of comics, companies and even artists. Directors have a few hours, at most 6 hours (2-3 movies in a series), to try and introduce, develop, and conclude these massive story lines. For them to do it in such a way so as to please BOTH religious comic book readers AND movie-goers is simply an impossible task. As a result, much of the content inevitably gets abbreviated and seems under developed to the comic book reader.

Finally, the movie itself, while it seemed to move a bit too fast and required some special knowledge to understand what was happening, I felt it contained decent acting (Ben wasn't his worst), and the director did a great job of setting up the next few movies in the series. I also really liked the juxtapose that Superman and Batman represented in the beginning of this film, how it developed throughout the film, and how their strife was eventually resolved through the commonality of their mother's last name. It was a creative twist and totally caught me off guard. I am really looking forward to the next few films.

So this is my request to all of you who read comics like pig fodder and unfairly criticize hollywood hero films: These hero movies are not released exclusively for people like you. Please try to understand the immense task that lay before the director/screen writer of a comic-hero movie before you unleash an unfair critique that has little to do with quality of the movie itself, and more with your comic book fetish. Thank you.