Possible Introduction

I'll be the first to admit that comic book movies don't have the greatest reputation, especially with fans of the source material such as myself. Silver screen adaptations in this genre have been notoriously less than satisfying, however over the past few years, things have seemed to turned around some. The comic book movie genre is coming into its own; its matured over the years and is now finally willing to tackle some of the weightier themes that comics have been dealing with for quite some time. That's not to say that these films are perfect; the major problem that these movies run into is balancing their reverence to the source material with their attempts to appeal to a more mainstream audience who hasn't poured over the pages of the comic it's based on. Three recent films, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and Watchmen, stand out in my mind as being perfect examples of superhero movies done right as well as how things can go terribly wrong. By examining the relative merits of these pictures, one can begin to distinguish the balance that must be struck between fan appeasement and audience appeal when adapting comics for the big screen.