Movies and cartoons have been adapting comic books since the early 1940’s with short Superman and Batman serials to also serve as a series being used to serve as propaganda for the war.

In the many decades after, superhero movies have adapted to become something common in mainstream media but at the same time people are still divided on whether these movies are great fun for people of all ages or terrible for the film industry.

The comic book film genre has gained increased popularity all over the world with up to nine movies being released per year cashing in millions of dollars with each release, but even the success of these films doesn’t budge most people’s opinions on them.

One of the first blockbuster comic book movies was 1978’s Superman. Even with this release,  people were sick of the series after the second movie. Even though fans call it the best Superman movie, but the general audience didn’t score it as high as the previous film. Superman 3 and Superman 4 were both a flop. This was also the case with Tim Burton’s Batman films that after the second outing the films went downhill with the audience.

Some saying they are a lazy attempt at making a movie, others calling them pure childish, and some even saying, like Jodie Foster, “It’s ruining the viewing habits of the American population and then ultimately the rest of the world.”

Many people see a trailer for an upcoming comic book movie and look past it, classifying it as “another kids’ movie” and do not bother giving it a chance.

However, comic book movies nowadays are far past the days of the campy 1966 Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Now these movies are building and branching off into multi movie universes. Now these movies are usually a lot more darker and grittier based in the real world. Even aesthetically they take their comic book counterparts and drop them into the real world.

Instead of Batman having grey and blue spandex, he’s wearing grey and black body armor, something with believability that it would protect a man. Same thing goes for other heroes like Captain America and Superman. Gone are the days of spandex and they are now replaced with alienized tech, paneled body armor, and hulking green humans.

People’s opinions are also stirred based off critic scores. If a movie has a low rating people assume it’s terrible and bash it without seeing it. Most times the audience’s opinion can be different than the critics.

Recently Venom was released with an opening critic score of a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. After the midnight release the audience score was drastically different giving, Venom a 86%, a higher score than even Avengers Infinity War.

Aside from that people are highly bothered by the fictional concept about these movies. The mainstream society has trouble connecting to the fictional action and characters they see flying and jumping around, but are able to accept other fictional movies such as The Terminator series, The Godzilla series, and many different horror films, such as Halloween and Saw.

People need to look past what the trailers show and see how much movies delve deeply into a character’s psychology. In a Spiderman move it isn’t just stopping the bad guy and saving the world, for someone like Peter Parker, it’s going to high school, helping out his Aunt May, finding a job, amongst many other things.

A Superman movie isn’t just about an alien being coming to earth and stopping the bad guy to save the world. It’s about the thought of not fitting and being bullied for being different and finding your place in the world, and that is everything Clark Kent goes through.

Apart from the action, comic book movies and comic books in general are adored by so many fans because of the theme each of them give off. The reliability in a hero can help a reader or watcher connect to them or even be inspired to do good.

These movies aren’t all about the action and the ‘hero saves the girl’ story, there are many different deeper meanings in each which makes them equally as good or even better than some other blockbuster releases.

Some people are genuinely passionate about disliking these movies and with first glance saying “they look terrible”, “they are jokes”, and “no adult should be enjoying these films”.

Guardian of the Galaxy’s Zoe Saldana categorizes these people as elitists. Someone who falls into this category is well known director James Cameron. He has directed movies like Terminator 2 Judgement day and Avatar that have eventually been adapted into comic books.

“Not that I don’t love the movies. It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hyper-gonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process,” Cameron has said.

Many other actors that are a part of a comic book movie or movies have come out to defend them.

“A younger audience deserves entertaining but they also deserve inspiration and strong messages of hope and dreams and a great sense of justice,” Zoe Saldana told Net-a-Porter.

Her fellow co-star Chris Pratt expressed his feelings about how much he loves to inspire kids and their imaginations through comic book movies

Letitia Wright, who recently played Shuri in Black Panther and Infinity War, has publicly said “We get to have fun and put out entertaining movies but throw subject matters in there that we can really think about as a society and really make us reflect on ourselves.”

Aside from the real world issues and the thought of inspiring kids and many others, if comic book movies were a joke would they be putting this much time and effort into their movies?

All these movies now are connected somehow within an expanded universe. Captain America and Iron Man are building blocks for the Avengers which is a stepping off point for another movie and so on and so forth.

These movies are in cinematic universe like the MCU, DCEU, and the X-Men universe, amongst many others. Each of these franchises have large and small stories built around each movie to interconnect.

On top of that, big studios like Marvel and Warner Bros are willing spend over 5 billion dollars to make their movies as believable and as good as they possibly can taking them very seriously.

Seriously enough for example, the story of Avengers Infinity War has been built up for 10 years since 2008 with 18 movies, Infinity War being the 19th and Antman and The Wasp being the 20th. The story to this film was so crucial, Marvel didn’t even let the actors preview the movie until it’s release. Most actors were even given a fake script to save from anyone leaking spoilers with only Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Bettany, and Zoe Saldana have been given somewhat of a full script.

Some actors like Tom Holland barely even shot scenes with the other actors. He was placed in a green screen room wearing a motion capture suit to later be digitally added with the other actors after he finished filming his scenes. Holland didn’t even know what his Spiderman suit looked like until the first trailer dropped at Comic-Con.

So much thought and planning go around behind these movies that they are hardly ever put out there for a cash grab. If some movies aren’t finished or could be better, most times studios push around release dates and delay some movies or make room for others.

Rarely are unfinished movies ever made. Some studios like Marvel have their next 10 years planned out with 11 movies in production like a sequel to Spider-man Homecoming, titled Spider-man Far From Home, amongst others like Black panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Avengers 4.

The big point in this whole argument is these movies are based off comic books, work of fiction. They won’t always be perfect or always connect to the real world. Studios do their best to bring the two worlds together and with that they inspire kids and others and discuss real world problems.

These movies give a chance for everyone to not only kick back and enjoy a blockbuster film but also be inspired and have fun putting themselves in the shoes of a hero.

So next time a new comic book movie trailer comes out, maybe think of giving the movie a shot. It might be better than you think.